Consenting adults and personal freedom

Our liberal society and our conception of personal freedom leads us to believe that anything is permissible so long as it is between consenting adults.

Trudeau's famous saying in the '60s of "government have no business in the bedroom of the nation" legitimized consenting adult behavior in privacy as outside of the business of others and therefore government.

Rather than providing a conduct of behavior, our laws are now mainly involved in the protection of children, minorities, and parties who cannot properly give or withhold consent.

What examples do you have that involve behavior or things that should be legitimately banned even among consenting adults?

One example is that what is agreeable between two consenting adults may have implications to other adults whose permissions were not asked for or granted.  

An employer cannot hire someone at less than minimum wage even if the worker agrees to work for less than minimum wage because it affects other jobseekers who wants to be protected by the minimum wage legislation.  

Individual citizens cannot agree to break a society's laws just because they disagree with the law legitimized by the majority of society.

Or maybe the actions of two consenting adults have what environmentalist call externalities, implications on future generations who cannot participate in the consent process.  We cannot agree to pollute a lake that unborn generations have to clean up later on and yet have no consenting participation for this decision.

What about prostitution or variations there off?  

What about exploitation ?

Is an exchange among consenting adults always a "fair exchange" ?

Of course, anything we do have affect on others.  It is impossible to do something without some affect on others around us.  

So does it mean that we always have more adult consent to sort after other than the immediate parties involved?  

This will make a mockery of the concept of personal freedom if there is nothing we can do that does not affect others and our "freedom" is always at the mercy of other people's "consent"

Perhaps there is a way we can draw the line on our personal freedom versus how our action affect others.  Where do we draw this line?

Maybe we do not need to get the consent of the grocery clerk every time we see a grocery sale because we can assume that it is not at the sacrifice of their job for us to get the sale.  But what if it is?  Should we still take the sale and keep the clerk's job as not related to the sale offered?

How do we identify who should be considered as stake holders in any transaction?

Does prostitution involve the consent of only the prostitute and the customer?  What about the customer's spouse? What about the neighbors where the prostitute carry on his/her business? The landlord who rented the facilities? The employer of the customer who wants to project a decent corporate citizen image? The community organization that the customer belong to who do not want any scandal to discredit the organization?

We are having our Ideas Cafe discussion this Wednesday and we will see whether we are actually as "free" as we think we are.

Why should life or societies be fair? What is driving fairness?

We had an interesting discussion about fairness last night at the New Westminster Ideas Cafe.

Is fairness subjective and relative to the observer?  It would seem that way given the example from Shula about the perspective of the driver versus the pedestrian and how each think the other should behave.  The interesting point is that when the driver gets out of the car to walk and the pedestrian gets into the car to drive, it does not take long for them to change their perspective to their new identities.

This rapid change in view point brings the two perspectives in consideration and remind us how much we change when we change our perspectives.

Fairness then involve understanding the two or more sides of the situation and the compromises that inevitably is required for these sides to coexist.

Even with these perspectives, and the understanding of these perspectives,  there can still be several points of compromise that can be reasonably "fair" positions.  These can be arrived at from different considerations such as waiting time of the pedestrian versus the driver, safety of the pedestrian, stop and go of the vehicle etc.

Fairness is therefore a concept that is superior to equal treatment in one dimension only but tries to encompass other considerations to arrive at an overall equitable situation for all parties.

RJ mentioned that the courts do not want to address "fairness" but strive for equality under the law.  The legal system therefore is our attempt to strive for fairness but we will have to settle for equality in particular matters.

Why do we esteem fairness as a desirable trait for our society? Perhaps against our evolutionary self interest to give up some of our benefits to share with others in the name of fairness?

One possibility is that we all want to live and be part of a social group that is fair. Partly because we may be on the other side of this fairness evaluation someday and therefore investing in fairness today by sharing may benefit us later on.  The other part is that self interest is a lonely pursuit and against our social nature to be accepted and valued by others of our social group.

Shula reminded us that we are unfair when it comes to treatment of our children versus other children.  We all want the best there is for our children.  We still teach them to share with other children but we treat our children better.

This unfair treatment extends to other social boundaries beyond our families to our immediate neighbourhood, our city, our province, our country etc.  There is always an unfair bias to our social group and this fairness line gradually shifts as our social group definition gets bigger.

Therefore, it seems that we have these two competing considerations of self interest versus group interest.

We like to be part of a stable social group but that stability is promoted at the expense of some of our self interest.

This compromise of self interest versus group interest continues on to interest of the social group we are currently in versus the social group that is immediately outside of our current group.

For people living outside of the Vancouver area, is it fair to have the province spend money on the Winter Olympics ?

I am sure that they would rather have money spent in their area but they would also like to be in a province that had raised its image because of the Olympics.

Is it fair to have paid sick leave when some people are sick more often than others? Abuses aside, it is much easier to say yes if the sick person happens to be a close friend or relative than a stranger.

Again, we have made progress in understanding fairness but only to find that there is much more to be discovered!

Political correctness

We had an interesting discussion yesterday and today about political correctness.  What is it?  Who sets it?

Wikipedia attribute the origins of political correctness (p.c. in short) with the feminist movement in the 70s.  We have all witness the changing of language such as chairman to chairwoman, to chairperson, and now to chair.

Language frames our thinking and terms carry other meanings besides the main intended one.  Sometimes, terms also carry negative baggage from old attitudes that needs to be changed and new terms facilitate that.

Shula said that changing terms is only superficial, it is the thinking that needs to change.

Mano said that the last 50 to 100 years have seen more social change than the centuries before it and p.c. represents the transitional stage before our attitudes and value systems settle into a new equilibrium.  As an example he cites how woman chose their married names from the husband's family name to keeping their own maiden name, to hyphenated name, to new word consisting part of each family name, and maybe to something else.  Like the change from chairman to chair, p.c. represents the state of social acceptance of each new step.

Eventually, society reaches a point where an acceptable term or attitude is reached and our attention is diverted to some other area that draws our attention.

P.c. is also used by the conservatives to complain about not being able to talk about some of the things permissible in the past for fear of offending sensibilities of parts of society. Using the term p.c. sarcastically is the conservatives way of attacking the change.

So p.c. is used by the weak in society to promote a new attitude and value system.  If this idea takes hold and there is enough support, the proponents can claim that it is the new main stream and label those not conforming as politically incorrect.

It takes courage to initially promote a new idea and convince others that they should adopt this.  At a certain point when there is enough support for this and the movement becomes mainstream, a bandwagon effect happens.

The people who join later are more like bandwagon followers than courageous early adopters. It is now the people who oppose this movement that needs courage to speak against it and risk being run over by the band wagon (and mob).

Dan mentioned that he behaves differently within the various social group that he participate in.  There are unspoken controversial topics for each group and for harmony, these topics are avoided.  This is not p.c., just the way we socialize and get along with the people around us.

However, as the group size grows to societies, the term p.c. seems to apply to these controversial issues.

How do we know when p.c. have gone too far?

Comedians and satirists are always ready to make fun of p.c.

Eventually, the rise of a new social concept relies on the sympathy and support of the masses.  The privileged have to be convinced that they should give up power to those who are underprivileged up till then.

Whether it is an appeal to their sense of justice, fairness, or that the society as a whole will be better off with the new attitude,  the privileged class complies and p.c. is now mainstream and no longer demand attention.

What about issues that was starting to be politically correct but did not manage to change social attitudes later on?  Somehow I cannot think of an example just this minute.

Let me know when you think of one!