Kirby is right: ethics is universal, not provincial

A person who dies of starvation is no less dead than one who is killed by a bullet and there is no moral or logical basis for rating Western lives more importantly than those of Africans. That’s why Justice Kirby is correct to note that America is “obsessed” with September 11, pointing out that more people die each day from AIDS than were killed in the New York terrorist attack.

Justice Kirby’s comments were made in the context of an appeal against the control order slapped on “Jihad” Jack Thomas. Yet despite the misconceived criticisms that Kirby has been subjected to for his comments, they will hopefully provide a catalyst for a re-jigging of some of the moral priorities in contemporary Australian society.

The provincial and nationalist nature of ethical discourse in Australia is highlighted by the fact that the number one social justice issue over the past few months is the detention of David Hicks. In reality, his ongoing detention should barely register as a micro-dot on our moral radar. His suffering is piffle compared to the pitiable lives endured by hundreds of millions of people around the world, 30,000 of whom die daily from hunger and other preventable causes.

There are lots of ethical theories doing the rounds of philosophy departments. Some ethicists prefer theories based on abstract notions such as rights, others, like myself, are only concerned about maximising good consequences - even if it means trumping the occasional right. Irrespective of which theory one endorses, there is one incontestable ethical truth: the interests of each person count equally. This is so whether they get the short straw and happen to be born in Africa or live in opulent Australia.

There is no logical or normative basis for ranking the interests of one person higher than another. An argument along the lines that “I am more important than you” is inherently discriminatory and morally vacuous.

Most readers will find the logical upshot of this principle jarring. It means that as a community we need to increase the level of concern that we show for the lives of distant destitute strangers. Tangibly, this would require Australia to massively increase its aid to the developing world - currently we fall woefully short of the international benchmark of contributing 0.7 per cent of gross national income to the impoverished nations.

Basic elements of the human condition might appear to militate against expanding our sphere of moral concern. But I am not so pessimistic. Over the past 100 years there have been considerable advances in the levels of flourishing enjoyed by women, minority groups, and in some nations, animals.

Future moral progress requires us to ditch several fundamental failings that are imbedded in the moral thinking. The first is the “doorstep phenomenon”, which recognises that proximate suffering matters more to us than anonymous, distant suffering.

The occasional fleeting glimpse of starving children on the evening news typically evokes some sense of sympathy or guilt. Unfortunately we are too good at escaping these feelings - however, we need to be conditioned to hold onto them. The extent of another’s suffering is not measured by our capacity to directly sense it, neither is the scope of our moral duties.

The generosity displayed by Australians following the South Asia tsunami two years ago was a striking and welcome departure from our normal level of disinterest towards desperate foreigners. This, however, only serves to highlight the reality of the door-step principle. Our wallets were forced open by the media bombardment of the tsunami that pushed the tragedy into our living rooms.

The second basis upon which we deflect responsibility for preventable suffering is the “acts and omissions” doctrine. This is the principle that we are only liable for the consequences we cause, rather than the tragedies we fail to prevent. This doctrine is flawed.

Morality, defined exhaustively as a set of negative prohibitions, fails to explain why it would be morally repugnant to decline to save a child drowning in a puddle in order to avoid wetting our shoes.

The circumstances in which we are liable for our omissions are in fact demarcated by the “maxim of positive duty”, which prescribes that we must assist others in serious trouble, when assistance would immensely help them at minimal inconvenience to ourselves.

Our non-neighbours are included in this principle by virtue of the fact that human life does not come in different levels of importance.

The last reason is the most fundamental. Contemporary moral discourse is framed in the language of rights. We like rights. They are individualising claims and seem to give us a protective sphere. But rights are nonsense.

They have no foundation and limit our moral horizons to ourselves and those closest to us. Rights appeal to those of us who have a “me, me, me” approach to life. Hence, we just make up rights as we go along and give priority to whatever right happens to coincide with our self-interest.

The emptiness and absurdity of rights based theories is highlighted by the fact that against this backdrop we have convinced ourselves that our right to keep our excess food outweighs the right to life of people in the developing world. It is only once we erase this indecent belief that world poverty will be history.

This can only occur if we abandon the notion of rights as the mainstay of moral discourse and make consequences the main moral building blocks. What matters most is maximising flourishing, not adding to the ever increasing catalogue of rights, which can only be enjoyed by many people at the conversation level.

The predictable response to my argument is that we should multi-task and fix backyard issues such as Hicks and global concerns. This is code for moral nihilism. It is a sure-fire way of continuing to consign more distant people to early unmarked graves from readily preventable causes.

Concern for others, like economic resources, is finite. It is important that it is not warped by crusades that narrow our moral thinking and distort our compassion trigger.

Of course we can continue to act in a manner whereby Australian lives are more important than others. But then we also need to peg back our moral self-assessment and accept that in the end the human condition is such that self-interest is trumps.