Security, dignity, and quality

Today, UCU are foregrounding their campaign against casualisation of university teaching in their ‘stamp out casual contracts‘ day of action (you can find their newsletter here). A substantial part of their campaign, as well as the more general campaign by trade unions against zero hours contracts, emphasises the psychological as well as the financial burden placed on employees by insecure and uncertain work.

We may all have experienced the uncertainty of trying to find a job in order to pay our bills and achieve a decent standard of living, but when you have found employment, and that remains no guarantee of keeping the wolf from the door, workers remain in a state of ongoing anxiety and must devote a substantial proportion of their efforts to looking for additional work or sources of income. There is a fine line between claiming such tactics encourage entrepreneurial behaviour and promoting extreme exploitation as firms attempt to evade their moral responsibilities towards employees.

Such arguments sometimes fall upon deaf ears, after all those of us earning enough to succeed by such work may see little harm in the arrangements. But in doing so we are often inclined to overlook our own privilege in health, wealth and the unpaid support of family or friends. With individuals as with corporations, our successes are never truly our own, they rely upon the supportive and nurturing work of others who came before us to provide us with education, nurse us through sickness and protect us from tasks of which we were not yet capable. It is also easy to over-simplistically compare our situation with those of other countries which exhibit wildly different taxation arrangements with significant consequences for quality of life.

It is worth noting that our moral actions and sentiments promote collective productivity and sustainable lifestyles, while the egoism of putting the individual first often comes at the cost of long term prosperity and happiness. In the International Labour Organization’s measurement factors of decent work, job security is a notable factor contributing to the dignity of workers. This is not because job security is a marker of status in society, but rather because of our interdependence as human beings. Having some security in our work and income allows us to enter into supportive relationships with others; to support our parents or our children, to make plans for our future, to develop time for our education or to give something back to our communities. From this, many more than the employees of one company benefit from the stability, and such organizations benefit from peaceful, stable markets in return. Workers are also less fearful, and are more likely to raise issues with their employer, which though it may reduce productivity in the short term, help to develop a better company, better products and better relationships within that company.

In the case of academic work, the pursuit of knowledge is not assisted by anxiety, fear and a reticence to speak out promoted by casual contracts. It may not seem immediately apparent to students surrounded by beautiful new buildings and high-tech equipment, but without the dignity and wellbeing of securely employed staff, these are a poor measure of educational quality. The best teacher or mentor, advisor or adminstrator you will ever need, might be that person who wasn’t able to keep up with the three jobs worth of work they were only being paid one salary to perform. They might be the person sleeping in their car between lectures because they stayed up all night marking exams. They might be the person who becomes unable to get to work because they simply couldn’t make ends meet. A small mistake might undermine your learning due to no hours being paid to update your teacher’s training in the library, or your administrator’s knowledge of new software. And as a result, they might not be there for you, at their best when you need them most.

We are much more interdependent than an uncertain transaction of time would have you believe. Stamp out zero hours contracts; not only for worker’s dignity, but in recognition of our worth together, as more than the sum of our parts.

Captain America, Human dignity & Marvel-lous Ethics

Photo credit: Stingmedia for Disney

Be forewarned, this post contains spoilers on the plot of various Marvel branded movies and TV shows released to date (notably Captain America: Civil War). I have not read the comics, so this commentary relies entirely on the cinematic universe portrayed by the movie franchise. I’m not a scholar of film, media or popular culture, but I have been intrigued by some of the themes cropping up in the Marvel franchise and the way in which these themes are generally dealt with. In particular, I find some of the elements of narratives around superheroes interesting, as they reflect upon what it means to be human (or not) and what constitutes moral behaviour (or at least what separates the ‘good’ guys from the ‘bad’), especially among leaders or celebrities.

There are many interesting elements which appear in the Marvel franchise around the role of government, the implications of covert organisations and ties between wealth and politics. There are also underlying questions about the ethics of methods and outcomes; is it okay for the good guys to work in the same way as the bad if they catch the bad guys in the end? In Avengers: Age of Ultron the narrative revolves around the implications of delegating responsibility for judgement of criminal action to automated systems – the very same debates which surround the use of drones in real warfare today. In Captain America: Civil War the narrative continues with these themes and explores the difficulties of collective governance and responsibility versus the pursuit of an individual moral code.

In these narratives there is a fundamental question over the extent of law and central authority to safeguard the collective public. In the landscape of these comic book narratives, which originated in and related to satirical drawings as well as war propaganda in their earliest forms, this draws strongly on the cultural inheritance of a time where capitalism and democracy as forms of social order agonised over the threats of communism and fascism. The contemporary Marvel narratives also seem to query the consequences of relying upon single individuals, often male heroic figures, to take action or make a decision in a position of imperfect knowledge or resources.

I first became interested in the role of these heroes in the Marvel franchise in their first contemporary cinematic movie Iron Man. This is a tale of a successful scion of industry who has profited from unethical and unscrupulous business practices and who lives an unscrupulous and immoral playboy lifestyle yet, after experiencing a life changing event and developing empathy for the suffering of others, changes his ways. Throughout the movie, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) is questioned and criticised for his drastic actions as putting his company’s  financial stability at risk.

According to Kantian views on ethics, those matters of action which constitute questions of right and wrong but fall outside of matters of compliance with the law, moral action should be decided only based upon maxims that are categorically imperative. This contrasts hypothetical imperatives to act (e.g. I wish to acquire riches, I ought to sell more products) where the action relies upon the pursuit of desires for what might be, with categorical imperatives for action (e.g. I know a product to be dangerous, I ought to stop manufacture of the product). The second action fulfils Kant’s notion of the Categorical Imperative, or ‘fair play’; a moral duty is only one that would be right for any and all persons in any circumstance. This is sometimes referred to as the test of universalisability. Kantian ethics is therefore a rule or duty-based system of ethics  (compared to other systems of ethics such as consequentialism that focus on outcomes).

This seems rather counter-intuitive, especially to those who point out that all business relies upon competition, to produce the best product, to command the highest price, to attract the best talent. The marketplace rewards outcomes, not intentions. Yet Kant makes this very point, and highlights that our intuitions are often unethical, that it is education, discipline and civilisation that teach us when to act on more than intuition, to act instead upon reason.

Dignity and Human Rights

Kant’s categorical imperative is sometimes expressed in a formulation which is foundational in human rights literature and in the literature on dignity in business and management studies.

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.

This highlights the importance of universality in human rights discussions, because even when individual human beings or communities of human beings have differing beliefs or practices regarding what constitutes moral behaviour, Kantian ethics determines that practices which cannot be right if they are universalised, are not moral. And for Kant, it is the ability of the will to identify perfect duties (which must be performed all the time) and imperfect duties (which must be performed in certain circumstances) as different from preferences, which is the reason human beings have a special dignity.

Kant’s notion of dignity has been challenged on this basis, as has his views of ethics, for not being able to contend with the complex vulnerabilities of human beings; their need to be supported by others (as children or invalids, for example). Yet it is Kant’s formulations that underpin the contemporary legal framework of human rights legislation.

Our Dramatis Personae under discussion

Steve Rogers/Captain America: His backstory from the films

Born 1918 to Sarah Rogers, a war widow and nurse who died in 1940. Rejected in 1942 for enrollment in military, but recruited for a secret military project and following administration of a mysterious compound developed extraordinary physique, strength and healing abilities. Undertaking numerous wartime missions against the Nazi-financed HYDRA, he led his own unit of POW survivors entitled the Howling Commandos which included his childhood friend James (Bucky) Barnes and blossoming love interest Peggy Carter. Bucky was believed lost in combat and Steve entered an involuntary hibernation following a plane crash in the Atlantic in an attempt to bury the otherworldly item conferring HYDRA’s technological advantage. When Captain America is recovered 67 years later he struggles to adjust to modern US life and culture, but remains under quasi-military supervision from SHIELD (a US intelligence agency). Working with other superheroes to prevent an alien invasion he meets a variety of people who act by a different ‘warrior’s code’ (such as Thor), have been more used to working for various government organisations as spies and black ops, or have not had any military training, such as Iron Man. In later films he also faces his childhood friend Bucky, who had been rescued by HYDRA and succesfully transformed into a mind-controlled super-soldier comparable to Captain America. Bucky recovers his memories with Steve’s help despite remaining opposed to him in combat and escapes.

 

Tony Stark/Iron Man: His backstory from the films

Born 1970 as only son to Howard Stark, who emphasises Captain America as a role model, having worked with him during WWII. Tony has a poor relationship with his father and is mostly raised by family retainers including their butler, Jarvis. Tony nonetheless performs well in education with a talent for invention, robotics and computing similar to Howard’s and becomes good friends with James Rhodes during studies at MIT. Howard and Maria Stark die in a car crash in 1991, leaving Tony to inherit the multinational Stark Industries, his father’s technology and weapon manufacturing company. Tony was not an attentive CEO, with most of the day-to-day operations being controlled by Obadiah Stane but he did establish contracts with the US military. He also develops an advanced Artificial Intelligence system to assist with household management he names JARVIS. Following kidnapping by a guerrilla fighting force who brand themselves as the Ten Rings, Tony designs and constructs the Iron Man armoured suit along with new power generation technology and stops all weapons production by Stark Industries. As Iron Man, he then proceeded to intervene in several conflicts featuring Ten Rings members when finding out about them on TV. Although approached by SHIELD to work more closely with (covert) US defence, Tony publicly declares his identity as Iron Man and does not pass the psychological tests to join the Avengers initiative (though he does some consulting for them). Despite disagreement with James Rhodes and armed conflict with Obadiah on offensive versus defensive technology, Tony continues to focus on production of defensive armour. Tony also develops a romantic relationship with his personal assistant, Pepper Potts, and eventually makes her CEO of Stark Industries. As his celebrity status draws critical global attention (including from disenfranchised Ivan Vanko) Tony struggles to cope with the strain. In later events, he is drafted into the Avengers’ defence of New York against alien invaders and embarks on a suicide mission which he narrowly survives. He later suffers from anxiety attacks and implied PTSD.

–spoiler break for those who haven’t seen Civil War on DVD yet!–

Where is the dignity in suicide?

“Woodcut illustration of the suicide of Seneca and the attempted suicide of his wife Pompeia Paulina – Penn Provenance Project” by kladcat – Woodcut illustration of the suicide of Seneca and the attempted suicide of his wife Pompeia Paulina. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons 

The Campaign for Dignity in Dying is gathering momentum. It has many well known advocates, including prominent actors and authors who promote the cause of physician-assisted suicide.  Lord Falconer’s Assisted dying bill is soon to be discussed by a Lord’s committee, and polls indicate that the right to end your own life when sufferring from terminal illness is supported by many of the public. I disagree with this, not because I think terminally ill individuals should be forced to live with sufferring, but because I feel this is detrimental to how we recognise individuals’ dignity and worth  in our society.

What is Physician Assisted Suicide?

Suicide needs very little definition, it is the act of ending one’s own life. Theoretically, this is an act of complete free will and has a history of religious condemnation. Much of the debate around ‘dignity in death’ stems from the challenge presented by degenerative illness. In most degenerative illnesses, individuals will reach a point where they lose their capacity to act, though they may not have lost their intellectual capacity to make and express a free choice. It is for this reason that families and individuals are campaigning for ‘the patient’s right to choose’ the place and time of their death by de-criminalising the act of a physician allowing their patients access to fatal drugs, and in the case of patients in an advanced stage of degenerative illness, the involvement of a physician or family member in the administration of the fatal drug.

In most countries around the world, access to definitively fatal substances is highly regulated, and they can only be accessed by medical professionals. Yet the long standing ethical practices of the medical profession, to first do no harm, as well as the legal dangers posed to the individual physician mandate against their involvement in cases where patients ask them for help to die. In addition, if the physician is the person to actually insert the needle or push the button there is very little to legally distinguish between medicine and murder.

Yet there is an argument that when a patient is certain to die, or can only survive with the minimal of life quality (as in individuals only alive due to life support machines with no hope of recovery), that such an action is compassionate. In such cases it is only the medical professional, with access to appropriate substances, who can enable a pain free death with the least amount of sufferring. It is also implied that it is only thanks to techniques of contemporary medicine that such a prolonged life span enduring degenerative disease is possible, and therefore the responsibility for any non-intervention or withdrawal of care leading to death also lies with the medical practitioner.

Rights and Duties

Do we have a right to choose? The debate over assisted suicide is based on a deep underlying assumption that we do, yet this is problematic not only on religious but also secular grounds. First there is the matter of scale, if we ought to have the right to choose the time and place of our death in the case of degenerative disease, then we should recognise that death is inevitable and therefore such choices ought to be valid outside of those circumstances. On religious grounds such decisions are a rejection of life and thus sinful or likely to provoke sufferring. In a secular vein, decisions taken to end ones own life when young and healthy are categorised as abnormalities, as expressions of sickness themselves.

A further conflict lies in the very idea of individual rights and the relationship between the individual and the body. It is a quirk of Western legal thought that the body and mind are understood as separate things. Although the embodied person may have rights, those rights do not include ownership of another body (which would be slavery) or of one’s own body (in the sense of exchange, so to sell body parts or the use of one’s body is also often illegal).

Finally, the concept of rights identifies the individual as a separate creature, detached from ties to others. The rights of the individual are often held as paramount over the obligations, duties or other responsibilities between that individual and others. The concept of the individual as a being apart from their social ties is a foundation of rational legal thought, but it omits our emotional interconnectedness as human beings as well as our role in enabling the capacities of others. Although suicide may appear to be an expression of free choice, most individuals see suicide as a last resort, where all alternatives for meaningful life are denied them. Perhaps we should be doing more to explore these alternatives.

The Individual Citizen

We live in a society dominated by thinking that concentrates on a model of the individual. Assisted suicide may alleviate the pain of the patient, but how does it affect their family, friends, neighbours or co-workers? Aside from the concerns of the family this is a debate not often explored, primarily because we already segregate the sick from the healthy in contemporary society. Sickness prevents participation in work, often requiring residential care in a hospital or other institution. Built environments primarily cater to the healthy and able-bodied individual, further excluding those sufferring from illness from full participation in society. Might this be a part of why these individuals feel they simply cannot experience a worthy or dignified life as their illnesses progress?

Dignity and sufferring

While the aim of the dignity in dying movement implies restoring control to patients and allowing them to experience less pain and sufferring, the model of physician assisted suicide has already been tested. In research conducted on Oregon’s legalisation of physician assisted suicide, it has been noted that individuals’ sufferring and requests for assisted suicide were based not on the pain experienced by the illness, but rather as a consequence of social exclusion.

It’s not that I disagree with the need for terminally ill patients to experience death with dignity, but I do think that lethal injections, access to drugs or the rights of the patient is not the main issue at stake here. What potential we offer the sick or the sufferring to engage with a meaningful life is at stake. How should we amend our laws and regulations to support people sufferring from illness in a society dominated by a drive for economic productivity that pursues segregation between the productive and the unproductive?