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Will progress be left to unfold helter skelter?

by Simon Longstaff

I still recall the reactions of colleagues in Cambridge when I told them that I was returning to Australia to work with a small group of people who had established an ethics centre in Sydney at the end of the 1980s.

The most common response was to smirk (in the polite but lethal way that only the British have mastered) at the very idea that Australians might be interested in applied ethics. Their scepticism was, in some senses, easy to understand. At that time Australia was encountering a period of infamy linked to the rapacity and fall of its once lauded entrepreneurs. Indeed, Australia's international reputation was, for a time, defined as much by the antics of Bond, Skase and Connell as by any prowess on the sporting field. Even the normally introspective gaze of the New York Stock Exchange had been widened to include Australia in a joke that went like this:

Question: What have you got with eight Aussie entrepreneurs up to their necks in sand?

Answer: Not enough sand!

By 1991 the level of mistrust had reached a level sufficient to prompt the distinguished British actor and director Steven Berkoff to warn that visiting artists should arrange to be paid before they came to Australia as you couldn't assume that debts would be paid in the Antipodes.

It was against this background that my former colleagues choked back their disbelief at the thought that anyone could make a future addressing ethical questions in Australia. And, to be perfectly honest, it did seem a daunting task at the time.

As Meredith Ryan has made clear, in his potted history of St James Ethics Centre, published in this issue of City Ethics, the fledgling Ethics Centre had very few means to ensure survival – let alone a window of opportunity to build something sustainable.

A decade later, the same financial problems dog the Centre and nip at the heels of its future. For example, the Centre still does not have a permanent home. There is still no capital to be invested in the future. And we still operate right on the margin of sustainability – with only two months operating funds in reserve.

Yet, for all this, St James Ethics Centre has developed into an organisation that is widely respected throughout Australia and increasingly, in a wider international environment. The reasons for this are, to my mind, quite clear. First, the Centre was founded by people who had a simple but powerful set of guiding principles:

• The Ethics Centre should be an independent organisation; open to all people of good will – irrespective of their background. That is, it should be as inclusive as possible.
• The Ethics Centre should be non-judgemental; working with people to help them explore ethical issues from their own starting point.
• The Ethics Centre should be future-oriented; recognising that the pace of profound and rapid change was quickening and that the community would soon need assistance to work through the myriad implications arising with this process.

The second reason for the Centre's somewhat improbable growth is not to be found in itself but, instead, within the many people with whom it has had contact. I believe that there is a deep hunger to explore questions about how to live a good life in a good society.

Although people arrive at such questions from a variety of starting points and with quite different perspectives in mind, they travel a common path. I sense that people have an almost innate sense that the world they live in could and should be better. Yet, too many people lack even the basic language needed to express how they feel. Worse still, many still feel embarrassed when talk turns to the ethical dimension of life. It's as if permission has to be given to discuss what has become literally (for some) undiscussable.

I have been privileged to participate in hundreds of conversations where people have shrugged off a conventional sense of what might be said to speak, instead, the things that they feel must be said. I think of this as a privilege because very few of us are exposed to another's deepest convictions or see them struggle with their sense of what it is that they ought to do. Our aim has been to build an organisation that stimulates this kind of deep reflection; by individuals and where possible, by society as a whole.

Having said this, I wouldn't wish to make any bold claims about the success of the Ethics Centre to date. We are barely known outside fairly limited circles and our influence is limited. But this is not the point. I'm a firm believer that there are some things worth doing – even if you ultimately fail. Encouraging mindfulness about the way we live is one of those projects that I believe to be inherently worthwhile.

However, I also believe that the success or failure of our project could have serious implications for the society in which we live. It is almost trite to say that the forces of change are gathering momentum. Technological developments in areas such as genetic engineering, biotechnology (more generally) the convergence of communications and information technology have the capacity to change the face of the world in which we live.

To my mind, the great unanswered question is whether or not these developments will be managed within an explicit framework of values and principles or will progress be left to unfold helter skelter. Will we proceed to change our world simply because we can, or because we feel that we ought to do so?

Such concerns are not solely those of St James Ethics Centre. There are many individuals and organisations that are concerned about such issues. Indeed, it is part of our role to encourage as many people as possible to share in the task of addressing such matters.

However, with a decade of operations under our belt I believe that the Centre still has an especially important contribution to make. At one level this will be to continue to stimulate reflection about the kind of world we want to create. At another, it is to deny one of the great evils of our times – unbridled cynicism and the despair that flows for the false belief that we can't make a difference.

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