So we're all feeling vulnerable right
in through here. We're worried about our
jobs, we're stuck inside. We're worried about the people we care about. There's a deep
vulnerability, not just in the U.S., not
just in Australia, but across the world.
But I want to talk for a moment about a
different kind of vulnerability - what I
want to call moral vulnerability. That's
when you owe something in situations
where it's difficult for you to pay.
Probably the classic case here is the
Nazis. In the case of Nazism people were
called to greater moral obligations than
they would normally have in an everyday
environment. We have moral obligations
here most of which are not making us
vulnerable except for a number of
essential workers. Those folks are
very vulnerable exposing themselves to
the virus without really being able to move away except if
they're going to feel guilty and feel as
though they're not meeting their
obligations. But aside from the moral
obligations we have now, from the moral
vulnerability that some of us have now, there's still another lesson to be
drawn from morality and from
vulnerability, and that's this: right now
we're all obliged to stay home, except for the essential workers,
we're obliged to maintain social
distance. Why is that? It's because of two
things: because we recognise that our
everyday behaviour can have effects on
others, that's one; but we also recognise
that if our everyday behaviour has
effects on others, if it can make other's
lives much more difficult, if it can make
lives their lives more dangerous, we're
obliged to do something about that.
That's to say that everyday behaviour can
affect others, and can affect others in
very deleterious ways, and that puts an
obligation on us. But once we go there,
once we recognise that, and we are
recognising, at least most of us in the
case of the virus, once we recognise that,
that opens out onto a wider moral
territory. Because in a lot of our everyday
behaviours we can affect others in
profound ways both for better and for
worse. And what the virus has done is
brought that possibility to think about
it to us. So think about this. And when we
buy everyday items at the store,
sometimes we pack them in plastic. That
plastic can go into the sea. I think
there's apparently a island of plastic
the size of Texas out there that we're
contributing to which is going to
be deleterious for the environment.
When we drive or when we fly, we're
creating carbon emissions. When we tour
in a place that, let's say is
a nice beach in a third-world country,
are we sometimes contributing to
destroying the culture of that country?
When we buy an iPhone are we
contributing to the exploitation of
workers around the world. Our everyday
behaviour has effects on others and that
everyday behaviour that has effects on
others is something we don't often think
about but we're starting to think about
it at least in regard to the coronavirus.
And so what we need to recognise
as we move forward, as we move beyond the
immediacy of this crisis, is that we
occupy an ethical web, and I use the term
ethical web to mean a web of
obligations to one another in which we
recognise the effects that we have on
one another and begin to try to mitigate
so at least some of the worst of those,
and perhaps even contribute to making
the world better in our everyday actions.
It's not that we can do everything.
we're not gonna be sure. We're not
gonna ever be in a situation in which we
can say all of the effects of my
behaviours are fine.
None of them cause difficulties for the
environment, for other people, for
non-human animals. But what we can do is begin to reflect on the effects that our
actions have and ask ourselves, what can
I do,
how can I work to make things
just a little bit better in the effects
that I have, than I'm doing now. If we can
do that then we can move the world
individually, step-by-step, toward a
better, more caring, more communal place
than we have found it for many years.
