# Transcript

Peter:

John, I feel a bit Socratic in that sense, because I wonder how can we know when we’re right, how can we know when we’re wrong?

John:

Well I guess that’s what the study of ethics is about, is to try and sort that out. But the trouble is when you get ethicists working on a problem they will give you all kinds of options that are right according to your final vocabulary, the particular logic you’re using and what you include in your arguments, such as emotions or not.

Peter:

So I’m just thinking I’d like to come back on that because I tend to think that you try and learn from your experience, and yet the world we’re living in is changing and it’s changing, and it never seems to come back to a benchmark where you can think ah, I know where I am again, it’s always moving on. So experience isn’t necessarily a useful measure, but what’s the guide?

John:

Well I guess the fundamentalists have it there don’t they, that they would believe in a particular text and a particular authority interpreting that text, and that would be their guide.

Peter:

But if you’re not a fundamentalist and you haven’t got such a text and you’re looking for a new text for the new world we live in, then you have to go by gut feeling, and gut feelings are so immeasurable, well that’s what I feel anyway.

John:

Well I’d go along with that, and I guess, I mean we had an email exchange that one of the things that does guide us of course is tradition, and tradition that we get from our parents in many cases, or from our education. But also there are things that rub off by bumping into people in all sorts of activities. Just going to the shops as a child tells you that you pay for things before you take them away. So for me what seals it is tradition.

Peter:

Yes and for me, right now, tradition doesn’t seem to be working, and it’s life in a pinball machine where you’re bouncing off chance meetings or coincidence, and it’s very scary.

John:

Yeah it is. I don’t know whether anybody else has got any observations to make about how they secure their feelings about what the right thing to do is.

Judith:

Well I guess that there isn’t a right and wrong, that right and wrong shifts and it also depends on reflective dialogue, and it depends on the perspective of the person observing your actions.

John:

So no help there then.

Peter:

Well it gets a bit spooky when you think well right and wrong aren’t going to be my guide points here. It’s expediency or integrity or being able to look yourself in the mirror in the morning.

Frank:

But there are certain things that you as a human will, certain qualities that you will value in life, that will be a good, that you yourself will assign the words kind of good to, that make up what we’ve termed as your final vocabulary. So some people might see great promiscuity as being something to aspire to, some people might see a modest life with a single loved woman, some people might think that all they really want from their life is a job, but you can only really find that if you look inside yourself and go for it.

Renee:

I guess this is where some people use religion or turn to religion to decide what’s right and wrong for them, and have other people make the decisions rather than have to make it themselves, or look for different points of reference.

Peter:

Just to be neutral about this, right now for instance would you sell your house or would you wait until the market’s settled down?

Frank:

I won’t, I just bought my house a year ago and that itself has caused me some concern because I bought it with my girlfriend who I’ve known for three years. So that’s kind of affected my mindset about the relationship and the possession of the house. But now it’s kind of well actually what is more important, the relationship or making a swift buck, or weathering out the financial markets or anything? I mean I think you need to take a view on what is important in your life and the ownership of a house and making money on the market is not to me.

Peter:

Now I mention it because it’s one of those, this is a situation we’re currently facing, a bit like 9/11 to me, although not quite so dramatic, where the world is not going to be the same. So the guidelines you used to think oh well I know what a reasonable situation is, maybe it’s not going to be like that any more.

John:

I mean that question you ask it seems to demand a very personal response from people. It does depend upon their relationships with others, it does depend upon what their particular financial situation is, and it does depend on where they live. I was just reminded that I lived in Belgium for a while and on the whole people didn’t own the houses. I don’t know whether it’s still the same but they rented so it wouldn’t have been an issue.

Peter:

Well no, maybe it’s not a generally useful issue, but I’m talking about the situations where the world tomorrow may not be the same as it was in the past, and so you can’t rely necessarily on your past experience, and you can’t, you feel you’ve got to go with the gush of it into a new world. And I must admit as you get older and think of past change that becomes intimidating.

Renee:

I can identify with that, with what you’re saying Peter, because I’ve been away from Australia for seven years and just came back, and it seems that my country has changed incredibly. We’ve got a new Prime Minister, housing is a big issue, prices of things, so you’re right, if you stay in one place things change, or if you go away and come back to another place things change. So I guess change is part of being human and part of why learning is important.

Frank:

Absolutely, but there are still some central things by which you evaluate your life and your effect on other people, and the basis behind your choices, just because the world that you’re making the choices in has changed, doesn’t mean that the fundamental reasons that you make your choices, the fundamental reasons behind your choices, there’s no reason why they should change. So you’ll analyse the effect on your money, on your personal life, on other people around you, and you’ll make your choice based on those things. And they won’t change will they?

Peter:

And they may not, but for instance if your decisions affect others, and you’re in a situation where you’ve got to decide for others, then it becomes not a personal risk but a collective risk, and that’s more difficult when you don’t know if you can rely on - who was it that said, “You can expect the world tomorrow to be much the same as it was today”?

Judith:

Doesn’t all this depend on using your own best judgement, and in a way that’s working by your own moral code. That’s not to presuppose that your own moral code doesn’t shift and change as outside influences change.

John:

I’m wondering whether now’s the time to move on. Nobody was going to it seems add to that. What we’re saying is that there aren’t any absolute guides and, but people do find comfort and solace in religion, and that’s perhaps the best source if you want to turn to it. The best source of security if you want to turn to it, but of course that requires a faith that perhaps some of us struggle to have. Peter says the consolation of philosophy, I’m not sure about that, I always think philosophy actually just gives you more questions to answer, and perhaps that’s what’s happens. It gives you more questions to answer and you’re so busy doing that that perhaps you haven’t got time to worry about the other things, would seem to be partly what Socrates was about. But I think he made a bit of a living out of his pupils didn’t he? So I’m not sure whether he was in it for the money or the philosophy.