A phenomenon I have never understood and will never understand is the destructive herd mentality in group decision-making. Yes, I know there is peer pressure and ass-kissing and strong motivation to go along with the crowd, but when an organization is considering something mind-blowingly stupid, including actions that should set off every ethics alarm within 20 miles, why is it that nobody, not a single person, steps up and says, “What??? Are you all insane? You can’t do this, and here’s why: it’s stupid! It’s obviously stupid. Think about it for ten seconds, and you’ll know it’s stupid, and will be a disaster for everyone.”
But nobody says it. So we get the Titanic without enough life boats, and Pickett’s Charge, and Lawn Darts and a sequel to “The Exorcist” featuring James Earl Jones dressed as a giant locust. On a slightly less epic scale, you get this mattress ad, by the Kurl-On company in India :
The figure in the ad represents Malala Yousafzai , the heroic young Pakistani woman who, as a girl, wrote an anonymous blog for the BBC exposing her life as a schoolgirl trying to grow up and get an education under Taliban rule. She was awarded Pakistan’s first National Peace Award for Youth in recognition of her courage and activism; she was also shot in the head by the Taliban and put in a coma. You can see this portrayed in the upper left hand corner of the charming ad. Malala recovered, however, and is still speaking out. She is an icon and a hero.
But to the Kurl-On company, her inspiring story is just a convenient hook to sell mattresses. She “bounced back,” you see.
What’s unethical about the ad? What isn’t? It expropriates a young woman’s tragedy, trivializes it, and exploits it for commercial purposes. It is disrespectful of someone who has earned respect, reducing Malala and her ordeal, as well as the ideals she represents, to a silly cartoon and a tortured and tasteless analogy between recovering from a gunshot-induced coma and waking up refreshed in the morning. It also is gratuitously insulting to India’s neighbor Pakistan: wars have been declared over less.
Following the inevitable uproar, the company came to its senses and issued an apology, also noting that they are conducting an internal investigation to determine why, when Oglivie India pitched the campaign (there are other installments, not quite as bad, but close) their execs didn’t fire the company on the spot. Good question.
If it’s any consolation, far worse things than bad mattress ads have occurred when group-think shuts the ethics alarms down.
Read more at http://www.ryot.org/incredibly-tasteless-ad-uses-malalas-shooting-sell-something-use-every-day/683661#lpkBmGUW2IbyiIt7.99
_____________________
Pointer, Source, and Graphic: RYOT
Malala Yousafzai is a worldwide heroine who might be the highest-profile education activist ever.
As a pre-teen, she wrote an anonymous blog for the BBC that showed the world what it’s like to live as a schoolgirl under the Taliban’s rule. Malala’s speaking out to make sure not just all girls, but every kid in the world gets the right to an education.
For her activism, Malala was awarded Pakistan’s first National Peace Award for Youth.
Another thing she got for her activism: shot in the head by the Taliban while riding the bus home from school. Malala spent days comatose and in critical condition. But the courageous teen defied all odds by making a full recovery and refusing to quit fighting for her beliefs.
Read more at http://www.ryot.org/incredibly-tasteless-ad-uses-malalas-shooting-sell-something-use-every-day/683661#lpkBmGUW2IbyiIt7.99
Malala Yousafzai is a worldwide heroine who might be the highest-profile education activist ever.
As a pre-teen, she wrote an anonymous blog for the BBC that showed the world what it’s like to live as a schoolgirl under the Taliban’s rule. Malala’s speaking out to make sure not just all girls, but every kid in the world gets the right to an education.
For her activism, Malala was awarded Pakistan’s first National Peace Award for Youth.
Another thing she got for her activism: shot in the head by the Taliban while riding the bus home from school. Malala spent days comatose and in critical condition. But the courageous teen defied all odds by making a full recovery and refusing to quit fighting for her beliefs.
Read more at http://www.ryot.org/incredibly-tasteless-ad-uses-malalas-shooting-sell-something-use-every-day/683661#lpkBmGUW2IbyiIt7.99
Ethics Alarms 
“If it’s any consolation, far worse things than bad mattress ads have occurred when group-think shuts the ethics alarms down.” Forgive me, Jack, but isn’t that a form of the “it’s not the worst thing” rationalization? This ad is in such poor taste (to put it mildly) that we need not compare it to other things to be repelled by it.
Ah, you fell into my evil trap!
“It’s not the worst thing” is never an excuse or justification, but it certainly can be consolation. “Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band–the Movie” lost millions of dollars. Pickett’s Charge killed thousands. All that happened when the mattress company’s alarms didn’t go off is that they embarrassed themselves—I doubt that their victim knows or particularly cares. The phenomenon of group think ruins countries and destroys live, bankrupts businesses—as hard lessons go, this one is relatively painless. So as long as it isn’t used to shrug off the error and to avoid learning a vital lesson, no, “it could have been worse” is a warning, not a rationalization.
Let me elaborate a bit, because its a valuable concept: “it could have been worse” is also a useful antidote to consequentialism. When someone is trying to argue that a badly made decision, or an unethical one, like driving drunk, is demonstrably harmless because the consequences weren’t devastating, say, a dent in the car, “it could have been worse—much worse” makes a legitimate point. (The quote is from “Jurassic Park,” after which things DO get much worse…)
I take your point, and stand corrected, fiend though you are for conspiring to ensnare me.
I feel bad. As I wrote the post, I actually paused to ponder, “I wonder who will pounce on this to accuse me of employing my least favorite rationalization?”
There were, in fact, enough lifeboats on the Titanic to hold everyone. The lifeboat problem was that too few people had been trained to use them efficiently.
Is that right? Even steerage? I just read that the architect has originally planned more boats, and and had been talked out of it, leading to speculation that this is why he went down with the ship.
Tom’s data is almost always good…but here is the information I’m familiar with: ( http://www.titanicfacts.net/titanic-lifeboats.html)
64 – the number of lifeboats the Titanic was capable of carrying (a total well over the ships maximum capacity of 3547 people).
48 – the number of lifeboats originally planned for Titanic by the chief designer Alexander Carlisle, 3 on each davit; the number was reduced to make the decks look less cluttered.
20 – the number of lifeboats actually carried aboard – 2 x wooden cutters (capacity 40 people each); 14 x 30 ft wooden lifeboats (capacity 65 people each); 4 x folding or ‘collapsible’ lifeboats (capacity 47 people each). Remarkably, this was technically legal; the law at that time based the number of lifeboats required on the gross register tonnage of a ship, not her passenger capacity.
1,178 – the total capacity, in numbers of people, of the lifeboats carried by the Titanic.
33 – the percentage of the ships total passengers and crew that the lifeboats could accommodate
80 – the time taken to launch all 16 lifeboats, in minutes.
10 – the average time it took a crew to launch a lifeboat.
16 – the number of lifeboats that succeeded in launching.
28 – the number of people the first lifeboat actually had on board (capacity was 65 people) – it is believed that this low number was due to passengers being reluctant to leave the ship, as initially they did not consider themselves to be in imminent danger.
472 – the number of lifeboat spaces that went unused.
“The partly filled lifeboat standing by about 100 yards away never came back. Why on Earth they never came back is a mystery. How could any human being fail to heed those cries.” Jack B Thayer, Titanic Survivor.
2 – the number of lifeboats that saved others from the water after launching (there was a general fear that a return toward the sinking ship would result in lifeboats being overwhelmed by desperate victims and capsizing, and of the risk of a downward suction caused by the sinking Titanic).
9 – the number of people plucked from the water after the lifeboats launched (3 of whom died shortly afterward).
It is worth noting that one of the reasons for equipping the ship with so few lifeboats was that they were not seen, primarily, as lifesaving equipment. The Titanic sinking was not seen as a likely scenario, but severe damage was. Thus, the lifeboats might be needed to ferry passengers to other ships that would come to Titanic’s aid in response to emergency summons. Just two trips per boat, and they’d have just about everyone off. The necessity of having lifeboat capacity for everyone on board was seen very clearly after the Titanic sank, but not near so much prior to the event. It’s hugely unfortunate way of learning lessons that has occurred all too often in human history.
This is accurate. Being a Titanic nerd in the 2nd grade, I can attest to the math showing that there was insufficient capacity. Even accounting for locking foreign speaking and assumed-ill-disciplined crew in their cabins, there wasn’t enough space to save the English speaking passengers and crew.
I wonder if there was a blameblakeart in 1912 to advance the theory that the Titanic was sunk by a torpedo fired by a Corporate submarine an flying German colors?
was that too cynical?
Jack, the math has been done many times, and it always comes out the same: There was room in the life boats—even if filled to capacity—for only about half of the people on board. In the event, many were not filled to capacity (Lifeboat #1, with a capacity of 40 persons, was launched with only 12 aboard—seven of them crew). Tom is correct, though, in noting that the crew was poorly trained in the use of the lifeboat davits, which lead to frequent and long delays in the launching of the boats.
convensequentialism
the consequences of living in a coven?
Here’s the problem: spellcheck keeps trying to change the word to “conventionalism”—