“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity” ~ Tom Peters
Recently, while debating a friend, I made a simple statement: “Ethics do not alter.” It’s the type of statement I would consider an axiom. After a two-day argument, however, I realized I was missing a few words. What I should have said was “ethics do not alter according to situation.” My friend wouldn’t have agreed with that statement anymore than the first, but it would have saved a few hours of semantic negotiation.
As a person who does not believe in spiritual forces of good or evil, I am of the opinion that ethics and morality have evolved over the course of humankind’s walk on this planet from a communal commitment to survival. Survival taught our ancestors that there was safety in numbers (not to mention greater odds of procreation), but it must have also been obvious from the beginning that some people just don’t play well with others. From that start came compromise, standards, values, hierarchy consequences, and a number of other factors. For me, this is simple logic. If you remove assigning morality to the decree of a “higher power” then all that remains as a constant in the human condition is survival.
A number of great minds over the centuries have tried to make the case for mankind being inherently good- or bad-natured. In my opinion, such a debate is a waste of time. People are neither. Some are more predisposed to empathy or creativity or destruction, but that’s usually based on bad meat development or funky chemistry. It’s not about good or bad; most people are just inherently simple — they want their survival necessities, their creature comforts, and to spend most of their time seeking pleasure. From an evolution standpoint this makes infinite sense. Evey hive has more drones than queens. The balance of hive society rests on rewarding worker bees just enough so that they don’t want to eat the queen’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Advanced citizenship places extra burdens upon its drones, however, and that can generate rifts. Republics and democracies break down if the people do not hold their leaders accountable. In a free market, if consumers do not keep corporations from overreaching, you get things like depressions. I don’t know the math, but I’m sure there is a probably an equation that demonstrates how much falloff to expect per removed generation. Someone like myself takes a great deal of freedom for granted as a basic right, but someone who immigrated to the US from a less generous nation would likely not take as much for granted. It takes a while for entitlement to set in.
Entitlement is not always bad. Cultural entitlement is how society sheds the scales of previous ills. For example, generations coming to age now in the US and many other countries take equality for granted and are largely repulsed at the notions of racial or sexual discrimination.There are types of entitlement, however, that paralyze or destroy systems like government and commerce because people forget they carry a burden of obligation that goes along with privilege. The pursuit of pleasure has a price tag; how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
Ethics and consumer advocacy thus become the “everyman’s burden” in a free society. However, the less these burdens are underscored by survival needs, the lower the odds that the average person will uphold their side of the social bargain. Corporations exist free of ethics. They are, for all intents and purposes, emancipated psychopathic entities that are only charged to follow the letter of the law and generate money. They don’t have to consider the spirit of law or any benefit to society; their survival is often contrary to human survival.
If you look at what is going on in the real world these days in regard to how the general population addresses ethics and consumer advocacy, you can almost draw a line between the things that link directly to a sense of survival and how much the public invests in fulfilling their side of the social bargain. (Religion, of course, is the eternal wildcard in this deck, but I think you have to consider religion intimately linked to survival in the minds of followers — they view spiritual survival at least as important as physical survival.) Downloading unauthorized entertainment or circulating copyrighted material is hardly even a blip on the moral radar of most people. Despite what Lars Ulrich told congress in 2000, no one died from downloading illegal copies of Metallica songs. Unethical corporate CEOs nearly killed the global economy, but other than a few slaps on the wrist, they didn’t have to break stride or surrender an ivory-handled backscratcher. They may have evaporated the savings of billions of average people, but they didn’t directly cause any death, so they didn’t trigger any survival instincts. I don’t equate downloading songs to bankrupting the civilized world, but apparently, most consumers do, because the consequences are largely the same: nothing. In the case of corporate CEOs they even managed to sell the narrative that consumers and the government were at fault. In a way, that’s true. Holding corporate greed accountable is the responsibility of the citizenry.
It is chilling to consider what effect this could translate to when looking at Virtuality. With few exceptions, survival does not come into play in the virtual world. Virtual goods are about as removed as they can possibly be from that key element. And what is the result? Customer service is frighteningly absent from places like Facebook, Blizzard, Linden Lab, etc. Most average consumers don’t even expect immediate responses to inquires anymore, or have been conditioned to accept long hold times to get addressed. Consumer advocacy is also pretty thin on the virtual ground, and when you get a consumer advocacy heavy hitter in technical circles, they invariably end up the target of some power-crazed entity.
Personally, I believe that ethics and consumer advocacy are, in themselves, survival structures. They balance the scales between the average citizen of the world and those offering service in exchange for power. Just as those who feel they are entitled to everything without maintaining their side of the social bargain disrupt the balance, so do those who see problems and choose to do nothing.
If we can’t be trusted, as a society, to connect the dots between greed-based corporate entities ushering in an information-age depression, how can be we be trusted to police the current or next generation of virtual world players? If we don’t redefine survival to include these advanced concepts, how will we maintain ethics? Or will the virtual world transition from the domain of anonymous and free expression to the territory of corporations abandoning consumer care and ethical standards without consequence? Are we already owned by our dependency on a handful of big names?
Don’t get me wrong — I lean capitalist, but capitalism isn’t just about companies, it’s about consumers, too. Yes, it is the job of a company to make money, but it is the role of consumers to demand companies execute their duties with ethics and fair play and it is also the responsibility of consumers to assign consequences when companies fail the basic standards of society.
What consequences are any of us willing to execute in order to define ethics and standards?
Social interaction is the most valuable element of almost every virtual environment and it happens on MMOs, social networking sites, virtual platforms, forums, etc. With that in mind, ask yourself the following:
A) Would you give up your favorite virtual social outlet tomorrow if the company behind it behaved in a way you felt was unethical?
B) What kind of ethical trespass would have to happen for you to give up your favorite virtual social outlet?
C) If you wouldn’t give up your favorite virtual social outlet under any circumstances, do believe you would have any obligation to try and advocate for change of the policies you feel are unethical?
D) Do you even pay attention to the policies of your favorite outlets?
I’m not looking for anyone to answer these questions for an audience, but I think it’s important we ask ourselves things like this and figure out where our own standards are and where we expect them to be and how we plan to address ethics when removed from survival.
If you’re not willing to walk away from something, it owns you, so here’s the million dollar question and really the only one that matters:
E) If you look at your online habits, add in the ethics you’re willing to take a stand on and evaluate the outlets you’re not willing to do without — what owns you?