Very wan week for comments for some reason; volume was way down, though the quality remained high as always, and several new commenters emerged.
Maybe you can make-up for the last six days with a rollicking Open Forum. There is an amazing amount of ethically troubling stuff going on out there.
Finally—back on schedule!
The past week was an unusually lively one, both ethics news-wise and in the comments amphitheater, though my own attentions were more divided than usual. And AS usual, when I believe Ethics Alarms has been particularly useful and interesting, it lost subscribers.
This trend has puzzled and annoyed me for years. Well, the runaways can bite me. Their loss.
If no one discusses here the “Let’s silence Joe Rogan!” story of last week, when two ex-hippy iconic artists decided to use their economic power to try to censor someone whom they disagreed with—that’s what being “progressive” means today, somehow.
On days like this I am especially grateful for both the Ethics Alarms Open Forums and the verve and seriousness with which readers here participate in them.
I thought of the substitute teacher theme because of a story circulating on social media, so it must be true. A substitute teacher (I always felt sorry for them, didn’t you?) claimed on Tik-Tok that she had been fired by one school because she refused to “meow” back to a girl in the class who, she was told by the students, “identified” as a kitten. The teacher laughed, made a joke about a litter box, and the girl/kitten complained. I assume that the story is fake and intended to make a point that hardly needs to be made again, but the fact that we can’t be 100% certain it’s fake is the real ethics issue here. How did we allow people so extreme and irrational to have so much influence over the culture that we would even be in doubt? Can this get worse? Can it be reversed?
But heck, I might have dreamed the whole thing anyway in my fevered state. Never mind. I’m going back to bed; I just sneezed on the screen.
Write about whatever you want, as long as it involves ethics, and I promise I won’t argue with you, thus bruising your delicate ego and sending you away in trauma.
But someone else might….
Good luck!
Ah, yes…once again we have the weekly feature where all of you slightly right-of-center, occasionally libertarian clones can agree with each other,
Do keep it civil: that’s an echo I particularly encourage.
Make it a good one.
In case you missed it, an esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter caught a major error here, allowing me to fix it. Phlinn alerted me that the EA post about the Guardian cutting off a “poll” because it was favoring “cancelled” author J.K. Rowling for her opposition to tans-activist cant was “fake news,” as indeed it was. After his analysis proved correct, I retracted the post, and also put up a separate announcement of the retraction with the link.
Phlinn is an Ethics Hero, and also allowed Ethics Alarms to retrieve a small shred or respectability out of this mess: none of the other sites and news sources that reported the mistaken version of the Guardian “poll” has corrected the misinformation or retracted their stories. This is a sterling example of how the commentariat here is a full partner in making this ethics blog what it is.
I can’t wait to see what ethical gifts you ethics angels leave under our metaphorical tree!
Hit it, Andy!
It’s the most ethical time of the year!
With the generous giving
As people start living like everyone’s dear
It’s the most ethical time of the year!
It’s the Gold-Goldenest Rule time of all
When the ethical virtues call us to assert news
That Hope is on call!
It’s the Do Unto-est season of all…
There’s epiphanies coming
And carols for humming
Reminding us how to be kind
There’ll be joyful surprises
As Man realizes the good will a Christmas can find…
It’s the most ethical time of the year
With Emanuel Kanting
And wishes for granting
When loved ones are near
It’s the most ethical time of the year!
There is absolutely no excuse, none, for readers to not engage in an epic ethics donnybrook in this week’s open forum. What else are you going to do? Watch young men begin their slow descent into premature dementia from successive concussions as thousands cheer? Watch the “Get Back” Beatles documentary? OK, that’s actually a good idea (I watched Part 1 last night), but that still won’t take up the whole day…
For some reason, I’m dreading this one…
Ethics Alarms 