JOURNAL: WEEK TWO

Toward a Personal Model
During Week One, I considered the various aspects of how my experience in design paralleled the ethical design process. I think it is fair to say that there are plenty of direct comparisons. At the same time, there are some pretty significant differences too. Ethical decision-making is not as practical as the artistic design process, which is, at best, an applied form of reasoning. The purview of the ethical process, by contrast, is not limited to just practical matters, which is always the case in graphic design. Furthermore, there is usually no direct physical product as in art. Ethical decisions can certainly have very tangible results, but usually they are by-products of the decision itself. Finally, ethical resolutions have the propensity to involve more costly forms of compromise in terms of personal sacrifice than in art. The results in art may satisfy no one else, but if they satisfy the artist then the work is considered successful. The same cannot be said of ethics where the satisfaction of the decision-maker may well be rendered irrelevant depending on the situation. The process of arriving at an ethical decision is more definitive of the decision-maker than any result.That is why developing a personal model of ethical decision-making may be so important. The model presented by Cooper on page 20 of the text includes the typical inductive-deductive movement of the rational decision-making model. I know that that model would work for me, just as it has for others. I wonder, however, where in his model there is room to explain the more irrational aspects of ethical decision-making--in other words, means of intuiting solutions.

Intuition is featured prominently in the artistic design process. Although intuition is probably not the point of the ethical model, it certainly can inform decision-making at any point in the process. Indeed, the model would be somewhat incomplete without intuition since human beings rely on it for most every decision. Hence, we are struck by a comparison or hit upon an idea or go with our gut. Instinct cannot be readily ignored, nor should it be easily discounted. Though it is early in the text, Cooper's view of ethics seems to be more prescriptive than it is descriptive of how decisions are actually made. Obviously, the text is mainly concerned with ethical practicalities at the expense of other considerations. The whole point is to make the process an overt one for administrators so as to maximize the opportunities for reflection.

The vissitudes of decision-making theory aside, people need tools they can use to help them do their jobs better. Becoming self-conscious about decision-making, however, is not just a means to an end; it is also an end in itself. Indeed self-awareness of this type is what many religions, such as Buddhism, strive toward. Thus, if I, as an enlightened Zen administrator, come to know myself through a keen awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses (and through ginormous amounts of reflection), I should be able to swim the political waters of administration like some kind of administrative version of Mark Spitz. Moreover, perhaps my heightened sense of my own developing repertoire and sense of character will allow me to move toward a comprehensive personal model of ethical problem solving--one which takes into account my intuition as an essential driving force for my particular problem solving style.

The Decider
Cooper uses the concept of "moral imagination" to account for the way people navigate between objective and subjective responsibilities and to generate alternatives. Needless to say this concept appeals greatly to the creative side of me. The whole point of an advanced degree, one might say, is to cultivate a sense of possibility where others see only black and white. There is freedom to be found in shades of gray:freedom from the tyranny of simple-minded extremism. I view extremism as the greatest force of evil in the world today and for all time.Relativism has been mocked in recent years by conservative pundits and religious ideologues as a mere by-product of radical leftist social philosophy--a symptom of cultural decadence and moral decay. These voices claim that without absolute values of good versus evil, that refugees from the 60's opened a Pandora's box of social ills ranging from pot smoking to child pornography.

This kind of rhetoric is not simply reprehensible and false: it is a slap in the face of reason. Hypocrisy is among my biggest pet peeves and there seems to be a lot more of it to go around these days. One need only a cursory glance at the history of the human race to see that the main culprits of murder, genocide and hegemony have always been religious and cultural extremists. Those feta-loving founders of Western culture, the Greeks, understood this well after centuries of war and bloodshed. They arrived at the Aristotelian ideal of moderation and balance. America's Founding Fathers didn't build these ideals into the Constitution on a whim. They didn't invent democracy, nor the republican ideal, but they did perfect them. They deliberately constructed a careful balancing act between delegated powers, resulting in a slow, deliberative process to fulfill the terms of the social contract between government and the governed. Now that contract is dangerously close to being nullified through monolithic one-party dominance, a cowed legislature a polarized judiciary, and an executive branch run amok, willing to sacrifice our most cherished principles in the name of national security. Jesus's flair for terseness seems apropos: "They who live by the sword, die by it." Therefore, now is the time that the American intelligensia must step up and take a stand against the twin scourges of irrationality and reactionary thinking.

Those who would have us sell our American birthright offer, in the poetry of REM, "a truck stop instead of St. Peter's." To me, the Western tradition handed down to us by way of the Constitution represents the apotheosis of culture, the temple of the secular "religion." We are standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants. By contrast, those who would defer to authority, the so-called "values" crowd, are falling for a sales pitch involving manipulative dominionist dogma that would make P.C. Barnum blush. They are the cannon fodder in the so-called battle for the soul of America. The real agenda is not about saving souls so much as keeping a heavy thumb on the scales of economic progress. The price for that mendacity has been an artificial polarization away from the great political center where lasting social change is most prevalent.

As a result, the classic ethical schism of conequential versus non-consequential theories of morality has been somewhat resurrected in recent years. Consquentialists, most often associated with relativism, tend to agree that the rightness of an action depends mainly on the results. The utilitarian ideal states that the total net good of the results is the moral yardstick. Even murder can be justified simply by appeal to self-defense, the defense of others or of the nation in time of war. This does not mean that murder is ever easily justifiable. Rather, it means that ends CAN justify some of the most appalling of means.

By contrast, non-consequentialist theories discount the importance of the results in their evaluation of actions. They appeal to established moral principles and to higher powers that have set the bar. Actions for them fall onto a preset moral continuum that determines their rightness. Ends are irrelevant since the action sets the precedent. I think that this distinction is perhaps overdrawn from a postmodern perspective. Needless to say, bad means can lead to good ends and good means can lead to bad ends. Rather, the residual distinction is between those who favor utilitarian formulas for action versus those who favor the intrinsic value of actions. For example, utilitarians would justify war by saying that action had to be taken to prevent further bloodshed. If, for example UN forces invade Darfour to avert further genocide, then killing some insurgents is preferrable to letting the situation fester.

Conversely, those who favor value of actions over utility would say that it is right to fight for your country even if that means killing the enemy. This would be the John Wayne school of patriotism. Doing the right thing, most would admit, is not always so clear cut. One can count on a healthy dose of uncertainty and ambiguity prior to tough calls. Afterward, one may even expect to experience residual stress, guilt and other mixed emotions. Being a decider, is not all that it is cracked up to be. It may very well involve reconciling seemingly irreconcilable alternatives and avoiding ethical extremes to come up with complex solutions that require more than blind patriotism. Ethical analysis can tell us what is just, but we still have to have the courage of our convictions as a people to do it. Moreover, we should not forget what makes America great: our commitment to liberty. More so than average citizens, intellectuals have an obligation to fight the slippery slope of extremism and find a way that is free from the snares of our own worst fears.