The Importance of Ethics and Values
A people that values its privileges about its principles soon loses both.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ethics and values are very often linked to philosophical thinking, and the decisions we make as individuals and as a society as to what we believe constitutes right and wrong and what is good or bad. The philosophical questioning arises because what is good for one person may result in bad consequences for someone else. Ethics and values are indelibly entwined with the idea of morality, or rather whether our behavior is good or bad. Morals regulate the behavior of an individual in a social setting and construct the framework of what behavior is necessary and acceptable in order to provide the opportunity for social harmony. Morals, therefore, provide a code of practice regarding the ethics and values that are important for social cohesion.
Ethics and values, whether good or bad, are at the core of human behavior; we all possess instincts regarding morality and are born with a sense of right and wrong judgments regarding our interaction with society as a whole. For example, values regarding fairness are universal and stand apart from notions of culture, religious expression, or politics. Morality and the adjoining ethical and value codes by which we live are therefore essential to the Temperatism ideology. Temperatism is not a religious movement, but it is founded in morality and as a result is built on a foundation that states morality is important in political, social, and economic spheres. Our actions within these systems cannot and should not be amoral. Ethics and values are therefore important, not just in the sense of creating signposts regarding what behaviors are acceptable or not acceptable, but to ensure that everything that we do in the pursuit of Doing Good is aligned to an agreed ethical and value-based morality. There has to be a sense of “rightness” to the actions that individuals, organizations, and government do in the pursuit of Doing Good.
If mistakes are made and bad things happen in the pursuit of Doing Good, it will be morality and the accompanying ethics and values policies that will provide the map as to whether an organization or individual deserves punishment or support. It is true that very often in the pursuit of Doing Good, bad things do happen. Our action does not always align with the intention with which we set out. “I didn’t mean that to happen” is a common refrain from those dealing with the fallout of a bad policy or business decision, it is not just an excuse, but is a common reaction where action has resulted in something that was not intended. This of course does not excuse recklessness or negligence when evaluating Doing Good. It will be the moral compass that will guide the judgment where things have gone wrong.
The key to Temperatism as an ideology is that it is people centered and therefore its core value is that people are valuable and have value beyond something that can be measured purely financially, and second that together humanity has the ability to do great things. Schopenhauer (1841) describes the incentives for humans to act as egoism, compassion, and malice, highlighting that only compassion drives morally good actions. Although I agree that people can act out of malice and egoism depending on the circumstances, I would also maintain that there are very few people who lack compassion. Even the most hard-hearted individual feels the need to act in the face of tragedy. This issue is that we have become indoctrinated that people who are in poverty are without as a fault of their own, draining compassion from the conversation. Watching an episode of Netflix’s Dirty Money regarding Scott Tucker who exploited the poor through his loan company, it was impossible to not feel compassion toward him when talking about the death of his brother, and his loss. Although his greed led to his circumstance, he was still deserving of compassion. Taking a virtue ethics perspective Temperatism suggests that “man is intrinsically good, or at least is aiming for good” (Vranceanu 2014). This perhaps contrasts with the “dog eat dog” competitive approach to capitalism that embraces ruthless pursuit of profit and individual gain. Vranceanu (2014) refers to the approach of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas in stating that “making profit is good insofar as the person must exercise good judgement to achieve it.” Within this framework is the concept that people somehow deserve or do not deserve positive economic outcomes as a result of their perceived effort or worth. The good judgment to make a profit isn’t the same as doing good, as the litany of hucksters and charlatans throughout history will testify. Instead, Temperatism approaches humanity as having an intrinsic worth as a result of their humanity. The purpose of having Doing Good as the purpose of the economic, social, and political agenda at the center of the ideology is the belief that all humans are of equal value and should be afforded a minimum standard of Basic Goods and provision to enable them to release their potential, develop their ability, and live a life of purpose. Since people are believed to be valuable Temperatism doesn’t claim to have all the answers in regard to solving the problems that humanity faces, but it does claim that together humanity, with all its ingenuity, inventiveness, and talent can together resolve the issues and problems that have plagued our society. The fact that we haven’t done this yet is not because we can’t or that it is impossible, rather it is because we have so far failed to reach our potential and that is in no small part because of our readiness to believe the worst about ourselves.
Philosophical Debates on Ethics and Values Can’t Be Avoided
Ethics and values are philosophical and evolutionary in nature, and it is wrong and impossible to try to set in stone what values and ethics individuals must hold and pursue in order to be a Temperatist beyond a core value of what makes Temperatism the ideology it is. Ethical issues will always be an issue for the reason that they throw up what is right and what is wrong, what is moral, and what is immoral. Furthermore, as society develops so too does our understanding of what is ethical and unethical. Before the abolition movement, very few would have considered the morality of slavery and yet with 20:20 vision of hindsight the abuses inflicted can be viewed as abhorrent. The truth is that life doesn’t stand still and that definitions of what constitutes Good and Bad don’t stay the same. Even things that we take for granted as being truth can gradually change in a way that at first are not noticeable and then suddenly come to the point where it isn’t necessarily a crisis but things don’t seem to be as clear cut as they used to. In 2018 the Trump administration faced backlash over the “kids in cages” imagery that resulted from a zero tolerance approach to immigration. For some Trump supporters, zero tolerance to immigrants crossing the southern border of the United States was absolutely the right thing to do. However, the unintended consequence of separating young children from their parents wasn’t what was intended by their support of the policy. In the UK, internship has long been established as a method of gaining work experience and yet in the summer of 2012 the morality of businesses recruiting and indeed their methods of recruiting interns has come under the spotlight. Fairness in regard to interns’ work being unpaid or the fact that most internships rely upon a privileged network of who knows whom tied up the question in ethics and values. It is important to note that sometimes people do intend particular consequences, and that some people are truly evil. However, I think it is probably fair to say the majority of people set off with good intentions and as the saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Capitalism didn’t emerge into a society where morals and ethics were ignored, today consumers often make ethical choices and purchasing decision based upon their own moral compass. Kollen (2015) states that “the designation of the principles of, for example, treating every employee equally, would then derive from compassion and from the motivation to act justly.” Ethical standards and moral principles do provide a guide for individual and organizational behavior based upon social norms. However, as Reiter (2016) points out, “it is delusional to think that the laissez faire system would work (i.e., provide social welfare through self-interested behaviour) without some adherence to a moral code.” Doing good actions demonstrate an alignment to an individual expressing emotions, which are positively aligned to their beliefs resulting in moral decision making. American economist Milton Friedman discussed the need for “corporate social responsibility which assumes that profit maximization take place within a set of meaningful rules and boundaries set by public governance” (Mayer 2007). In 2008, the credit crunch demonstrated that organizations, especially the big financial institutions, have stopped considering their social responsibilities, avoided accountability, and misled the authorities and the public about their dealings. Letting the market decide and a laissez faire approach essentially removed ethics and morality from the center of human enterprise. Financial capitalism has no purpose beyond the creation of wealth for its shareholders and owners. Morality is sidelined, even in regard to the building of the enterprises’ interaction with employees and customers, as the organization pursues the end game of more profit. The transactional nature of capitalism leaves no room for morality regarding whether the trickle-down effect is good or bad, beyond the immediate priority of the profit agenda. The dominance of the financial sector in the last decade has further distanced capitalism from the society in which it operates. Those who produce goods are interwoven with the communities in which their workforce lives and the customers to whom they sell their goods. Financial capitalism has reduced human society to a set of numbers on a spreadsheet, separated from the human factors that go toward the creation of those numbers. Numbers make it harder to maintain a moral code. In war, it is easy to deploy a number of troops on a map or count the collateral damage without counting the true cost of the actions being taken. But every decision has an impact on the well-being of others. It is only when you see the body count that you get a full sense of the inhumanity of a situation. The same is true of financial capitalism. Moving numbers around on a spreadsheet to increase the bottom-line profit removes those involved from the true human and social cost of their actions.
Most changes in ethics and values that happen around us we don’t notice and change management is rarely confined to glossy and costly programs and social revolutions but rather on managing a series of little adjustments that occur over a long period of time. Building an ideology that is values driven in regard to the concept of Doing Good means relying on the capacity of people and the wider society to be able to flex and adapt as part of their development if the ideology is to keep up. What is right and proper today won’t be right and proper, with all certainty, in the future. Two hundred years ago, the ideas regarding sanitation and access to clean water were not regarded as an absolute necessity because it was only during Victorian times that the impact of waterborne diseases was fully understood and appreciated. Today the lack of sanitation and access to clean water for large parts of the world population is inexcusable and unethical.
Some things are more obvious when you have been absent from them for a while. Changes in people, especially children, are more noticeable to people who don’t see them daily, for example. But it is not possible to absent yourself from a system in which you live and work to see what changes, to see whether the ideas and thoughts regarding morality, ethics, and values still stand up to scrutiny. But it is still necessary that Temperatism be not viewed as a static ideology but something that is able to adapt to the changes that occur in society.
If, as it is hoped, Temperatism does succeed in improving the wealth and advancement of human society as a whole and there is an increase in the harmony with which we live with nature in regard to developing ways in which to reduce our impact on the environment, then ideas about what constitutes a Basic Good such as Health or Leisure will change dramatically. Today, Basic Good is simply ensuring that we tackle the extremes of poverty and exploitation that should not exist, not only in our own society but also across the world. It is shocking that in 21st-century Britain we have child poverty and families who are going hungry. The need to introduce food distribution schemes in a “wealthy” country such as the UK while at the same time throwing away over 7.2 million tons of mostly edible food and drink worth £12bn is immoral.
But setting standards in regard to how much is enough food or drink or attempting to define “too much” becomes fraught with the danger of trying to impose equality in an area which is temporal at best. Standards could be set at a level deemed as not quite enough to encourage people to go out and earn money to buy their own food, or a choice could be made that is just enough to survive on, like the food aid programs. If generosity abounds and people are given more than enough to encourage the pursuit of abundance the flip side is that it could drive immoral behavior among beneficiaries and end civilization, as we know it. As with charitable giving, there is an argument that there is an obligation to provide food that feeds family today; alternatively public funds should pay for the means with which the family can provide their own food. The overarching problem is, how such a scheme would be financed and whether it is built upon the pretext of a loan scheme or publicly funded from taxation. The issues, of course, with ethics and values are that each individual will have their own opinion as to what is right or wrong.
Temperatism doesn’t seek to avoid these questions but instead encourages governments, society, organizations, and individuals to begin asking these questions of themselves and, most importantly, to take steps to find a resolution. In regard to the Basic Good in the area of Health, having food to sustain life, preventing the death of the 25,000 people who die of hunger every day, and avoiding individuals missing meals are arguably essential and a rational conclusion in the context of Doing Good. Achieving the eradication of hunger becomes an outcome that is desirable under Temperatism. However, the way that this goal can be achieved while still balancing the other Basic Goods and in consideration of our stewardship of the planet becomes a consideration for those whose personality and talent leads them to find purpose in its pursuit, as well as working in partnership with those organizations that have the capability and skill to pursue this area of Doing Good. The truth is that there is no one right answer to solving world hunger, but equally the truth is that we cannot morally accept things as they are. Activism and responsibility, rather than acceptance becomes part of the moral code.
Arguably Temperatism is a proponent of diversity, especially in regard to gender, disability, and race; certainly in regard to a Doing Good agenda, there is a sense of protectionism and a sense of fairness or equity if not outright equality that underlies the ideology. Take, for example, the situation faced by career women who have reached a stage in their life where they want to have a family. Today, Capitalists argue against extended maternity rights, or indeed paternity rights, because why should organizations be made to pay to keep a woman’s position open and also find a way to cover the work that the women is unable to do while on maternity leave. In a society where the profit agenda rules, there is no argument other than that of equality and fairness, which we have already discovered isn’t a priority for capitalism. Under Temperatism the question of why should the organization pay changes direction to be one of why wouldn’t the organization support an employee’s choice in regard to family life? Research has shown that employees expect to be able to live their own values within the work environment and that they need to feel an alignment between organizational and personal identity if they are to remain engaged and productive.
Where the profit motive is replaced with a Doing Good motive then creating an environment where an individual’s Basic Good of Personality shapes their choices regarding their family life and the health and well-being of their family moves up the agenda and priorities of both the individual and the organization. Of course for smaller businesses, supporting female employees in pursuing a right to family life may be more than their cash flow in an organization allows and therefore partnership with the government in supporting such an agenda would need to be considered.
The weak business arguments that the “Diversity” agenda currently offers would with Temperatism be replaced with a moral argument of Doing Good. For example, the closure of Remploy factories in 2013 occurred with a capitalist attitude regarding cost, rather than a consideration of the wider implications of the Basic Good that the factories were delivering in regard to providing work for disabled workers with complex care needs. For minorities who face discrimination, their right to Basic Good changes the agenda from that of prevention of discrimination that stops them from achieving their potential to a positive agenda focusing on releasing their potential. This may seem like a small difference, or semantics, but the subtlety of the change must not be underestimated in regard to the impact of appreciative qualities in human interaction versus preventive actions.
When the agenda changes to Doing Good, there is a shift in the method by which judgment and decision is made. Pursuing a course of appreciative inquiry in decision making changes the atmosphere from one that is discriminatory and negative to one that focuses on what is good as well as Doing Good. To put this in context consider the field of personal development. In modern organizations, individuals are often asked to fill in personal development plans. When reviewing our skills, knowledge, and behavioral development needs, all too often the focus is on what we are not good at, our areas of weakness. Discrimination and racism work in the same way. We view people based on what they are not, they are not white, they are not able bodied, and they are not the same as us. Therefore, how we view that person is diminished, less than, not as good as, and we create an environment where discrimination and persecution thrive. An appreciative approach focuses on our strengths, what we are and what we can be. It examines us in all our glory, not to build us into egotistical maniacs but to focus us on what we are really good at, what value we can add, and what makes us who we are. Temperatism, in driving a Doing Good agenda, changes the focus from what is not to what can be and that change can only contribute to positive reinforcement of the diversity agenda.
Of course a challenge to the idea of Doing Good comes in the form of moral dilemmas. How can Temperatism and the idea of Basic Good operate when entering into the area of morality that can be argued to be both Good and Bad? Take, for example, abortion. If, as a core value, Temperatism states people are valuable and have value prochoice cannot logically fall under the Doing Good paradigm and access to abortion should be denied. Every individual will have their own ideas about abortion and it boils down to the same ethical arguments that already exist in regard to when does a fetus become a person. However, the most important part of the argument boils down to whether the rights of the fetus trump the rights of the mother. Certainly in cases where continuing with the pregnancy could endanger the mother’s life, the dilemma is more stark, and the case of Savita Halappanavar, who died of blood poisoning after the hospital failed to offer a termination and early signs of an infection being missed, led to a Yes vote in the 2018 Irish referendum to allow abortion. Freedom of speech and discrimination faces the same whose rights subsides in regard to one person having the right to say what they like, versus the right of someone not to be discriminated against. There is no universal truth, though each of us will argue that our truth is right. But in reality it is only opinion and societal norms that accompany the answers to this dilemma and others like it. Complexities arise when there is no right answer to which good is most beneficial to society, but a decision needs to be made and action needs to be taken. Historically, there are many examples of actions taken because one side, or rather the side that held power at the time, believed that their Good was “right” and the result was suffering and hurt for those who were “wrong.”
Consider, for example, reformation in the UK. Protestants may have seen the actions taken during this period as beneficial in regard to freeing the UK from the dominion of the Catholic Church. But the act of following Protestantism had oppression at its foundation. Catholics were persecuted not just in the immediate period of reformation but on an ongoing basis, especially in Ireland, where Catholics were prevented from owning land and holding public office. It is still the case that the UK Monarch cannot be Catholic or marry a Catholic. Another example is in regard to the case of establishing Israel in the aftermath of the Second World War. After the persecution of the Jewish people by Hitler in Europe, the establishment of the Israeli state in its historic homeland was intended to provide security for the displaced Jewish race. But the process of doing so meant forceful removal of the existing population from their land and their homes, the result of which is the continuing violence in the Middle East and the human rights abuses concerning the Palestinian people who have lost their land and homes on the West Bank, and the restrictions on work and travel they face as a result of Israeli security concerns. Society, organizations, government, and individuals will always be faced with competing claims for which opinion, idea, or decision is most likely to achieve the goal of Doing Good. In the examples given of the reformation and Israel, it is obvious with the luxury of hindsight to say that these actions were oppressive, but at the time the intention was one section of society intent on Doing Good based on what they thought was right.
The object of Temperatism as a people-centered ideology is not to determine absolutes in regard to what Good looks like, but create an environment where the pursuit of Doing Good is the only agenda. Oppression cannot and can never be part of Doing Good. If there are competing claims on what Good is then dialogue and compromise must be sought. In 2018 there were conflicting claims in Australia in regard to giving same-sex couples the right to marry. Those who are Christians believe that their right to religious freedom is being overridden since the Bible states that marriage is between a man and a woman. Same-sex couples argue that they should have a right to marry. Each side can produce coherent arguments for and against their position, but the dispute becomes complicated by politics, ideology, tradition, societal norms, emotion, and the pursuit of rights. To find resolution to such arguments without one side feeling their rights have been trampled over requires compromise on both sides. For those against the redefinition of marriage the argument is less about whether marriage should be kept as a holy union between a man and a woman, but rather that the right to marriage might be used as a stick with which to pursue an anti-Christian agenda. The divide is based on a fear that individuals and institutions that have a traditional belief in what constitutes marriage will find themselves on the wrong side of equality law. Those who believe in a more universal interpretation of marriage fear discrimination and want their rights protected and that being prevented from having the right to marry particular individuals or having their marriage service conducted by a particular institution continues the discrimination that they already experience.
Again the complexities can overshadow the simplicity of the solution, and power agendas can move the argument from Doing Good to which side is more right than the other. Neither side has a right to oppress the other, but respect for each other’s beliefs and needs can and should be the foundation for a compromise where everyone can live with the outcome, even if they are not pleased with it. Capitalism has taught us that in order to win someone must lose. Temperatism teaches us that Doing Good allows everyone to win. They might not win big, but since we are innovative, inventive, and creative, people will find a novel solution that means all sides can find agreement if they are focused on Doing Good.
It could be argued, as proponents of capitalists do, that the pursuit of profit and shareholder return is Doing Good. Vranceanu (2014) argues “that the goal of increasing economic profit is fully consistent with the corporation doing good for society.” The issue that profit for profits sake raises, of course is profit for what purpose? Profit is not a bad thing in moderation but it should only ever be pursued in the context of what profit will be used for, not as an end in itself, as is the case in current society. Temperatism isn’t seeking to oppress organizations or the market, but to find a solution that means that the pursuit of profit and profit itself is used for the purpose of Doing Good. It is also worth noting that Vranceanu (2014) goes on to say “there is little justification for corporations to transfer the whole economic profit to shareholders. Economic agents entitled to receive the economic profit are precisely those who create this profit.”
Setting absolutes around morality within Temperatism, such as the value placed upon the life of each individual, is different from universalism, which assumes that each circumstance and situation demands the same understanding of right and wrong. For an employee working in an organization in the Western world, the idea of Basic Good will differ from what Basic Good means to someone in a third world country. This doesn’t diminish the value of moral decision making in Temperatism or remove the goal of reducing the gap between the rich and the poor, but instead allows Doing Good and Basic Goods to be situational and delivered within the context within which decisions are made. Moral absolutes with Temperatism are to do with core values, such as the removal of a profit first agenda, the need to pursue an agenda of Doing Good, and proportionality in regard to wealth redistribution.
Debate about what Doing Good is becomes not Doing Good if it descends into conflict, politicking, and immobilization. Discussion is encouraged and needed if we are to encourage creativity in solving problems, but “Doing” is a verb and therefore requires action to be taken. Not “Doing” is as bad as not Doing Good. What can be determined in such a situation is that mistakes will be made and on occasion, bad will be done in the pursuit of Doing Good. It would be impossibly naïve to think that it wouldn’t happen. Temperatism isn’t about perfection, but it is about humanity trying to be the best that we can be. Failure will be part of the process, things will go wrong, and on some occasions more harm than good will be achieved. However, hope remains because Temperatism is a people-centered ideology; therefore, Doing Good means that we don’t simply blame or castigate attempts to get it right, instead we acknowledge our failures, take responsibility for our part, learn from our mistakes, and, in the pursuit of Doing Good, seek to put things right.
Equality
Equality in regard to democratic liberal traditions is important in an ideology that is people centered. It is not enough for politicians to say they serve the people if their actions service only a small elite or self-interest and it is not acceptable for those with power to impose and coerce those who lack power to obey a course of action that only benefits those who are in power at the expense of Basic Good for others. In society none of us are truly equal. Our lives are a product of where we are born, our parents, educations and opportunities available to us. We cannot, as socialism attempted, try to hold ownership of property and decision making as a common collective; Temperatism isn’t attempting to make everyone the same, instead it rejoices in the diversity of humanity and promotes the market insofar as it is a mechanism and system which can be constructed to pursue the very best of what humanity can achieve and a means by which wealth can be created for the purpose of Doing Good. But Temperatism does infer responsibility on those who are born into positions of privilege or wealth to take a greater share of responsibility of Doing Good in regard to wealth redistribution. Those who have more must therefore do more Doing Good.
The possession of more not only transcends purely material resources and wealth, but also applies to areas such as knowledge, creativity, and talent. Intellectual property rights are a case in point. The current system quite rightly protects individuals that have invested time and resource on research and the development of ideas that competitors could exploit for commercial gain without the risk. But the profit motive has distorted the protection of ideas beyond what is reasonable. The current legal battle between smartphone and tablet manufacturers demonstrates most clearly how knowledge, creativity, and talent resources can be prevented from Doing Good. The financial resource that is being spent by the manufacturers, worldwide, on the dispute to protect intellectual property is not about protecting ideas but about preventing competition and maintaining dominance over “market share.” The dispute has descended into a fight that is at the expense of investing in more research and development. This stagnates creativity and robs the world of potential that could be achieved. Again Temperatism challenges the pursuit of protectionism over intellectual property to what purpose? If it is to ensure that a return on investment can be made so that further research and development can be conducted then it could be argued that protecting the property rights of an organization or an individual is Doing Good in regard to promoting the development of ideas, but if it is because of how much profit can be made from an idea and preventing other organizations from competing then again the question for what purpose needs to be explored.
In areas such as medical research there is a great deal to be said for Doing Good by providing government and philanthropic sponsorship for research into drugs and medicines that can immediately reduce the suffering or increase health in regard to diseases that are preventable. The work of the World Health Organization on disease control for smallpox and polio demonstrates the possibilities of a worldwide effort to eradicate preventable diseases that cause suffering to millions. Advances have been made in securing support from pharmaceutical companies to provide medicines cheaply but organizations that have intellectual rights on particular medical cures can prevent that knowledge from being made accessible if it doesn’t meet their profit margin criteria. In addition, research into possible medical advances is abandoned if the areas of research aren’t considered to offer a significantly large enough profit margin for investors. However, with a Temperatist agenda, Doing Good in regard to research and knowledge will remove pure profit constraints to ensure that a wider social context becomes the purpose behind intellectual pursuit.
Which brings the narrative onto the subject of military and warfare. War in any culture is not “Good,” killing other people is not to be promoted as a Temperatist ideal, but like all moral and ethical debates there are times when war is either necessary or can be justified, not in the sense of politicians producing dodgy dossiers but in regard to Doing Good. One of the Basic Goods is, after all, that of security and sometimes military action is necessary to protect security. It is hard to decipher how wars that have been fought over the last one hundred years can be justified as Doing Good or, rather a moral war. The World Wars, against Germany, were in balance justified and certainly were important in regard to protecting the Basic Good of Security. However, the means by which it was fought make the pursuit of Doing Good messy. In many ways the ideology of Temperatist considers people from a virtue ethics perspective, that man is intrinsically good, and for the most part people aim to do good things. The picture of business as a ruthless juggernaut run by brutes is, for the majority of businesspeople, unfair. Even the abuse of bankers, estate agents, and lawyers is unfair in the context of meeting one, who like all of us is just trying to make a living. In reality the competing ideologies all seek the same thing, to make the condition of human kind better. The disagreement is on what “better” looks like and how we get there.
In more recent times the “coalitions’” involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria presents a moral dilemma that would take more than this book to examine, as there are many arguments for and against these conflicts (or invasions?) in regard to Doing Good. What Temperatism does offer in regard to the ethics of war is that of the removal of the acquisitiveness of capitalism that justifies aggression in the pursuit of profitable “plunder.” Modern warfare has changed considerably and “collateral damage” is no longer as acceptable as it was during the World Wars in the last century, but the truth is, it is still the vulnerable that suffer when war occurs. As a people-centered ideology Temperatism must in essence be an antiwar ideology, but Temperatism is also pragmatic and flexible in recognizing that it is always possible that there will be circumstances where war is justifiable in the pursuit of Doing Good.
Humanizing Business
Temperatism as an ideology and a movement of course faces a huge challenge to convert the social, economic, and political ideas and idealism into reality. Changing a social, economic, and political structure is not the same as changing the mind of an individual through argument and prose. In exploring the question of the morality of war, there is the challenge as to whether Temperatism is an ideology worth fighting for. Moral consensus is required if social change based on ethics and values is to be created. Underpinning ideas about what is an acceptable level of equality is based on the understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Also moral thinking enables us to identify cause and effect of our actions beyond simple systems and processes toward an understanding of our behavior and actions and the social consequences of these. Can dominant power players, such as those who dominate the capitalist neoliberal power structures today, really be persuaded to the ethical and moral positioning and arguments for Doing Good pursued by the Temperatist agenda?
How business is conducted is a center piece of Doing Good, it is reshaping the expectation that financial gains trump social performance, and the degradation of virtuosity in order to promote a sole focus on shareholder performance that is creating the issues we see in society today. Wang et al. (2016) state that
A moralized, virtuous corporation . . . is one that “understands” that the pursuit of excellence is ultimately a moral pursuit and hence seeks to encourage it . . . humanizing business is an approach of understanding business and business ethics by focusing on the individuals in business their moral capacity as well as constraint.
Conducting business ethically and morally therefore is a process that is aided by the morals of the people in the business, which speaks to the need for change to happen socially as well as organizationally. Promoting the idea that we are better than “this” isn’t a new paradigm in society but one we should demand of ourselves as we pursue economic activities, personally and collectively. We can’t change the world immediately, but we can change ourselves, through self-regulation and a decision to do good for ourselves.
I believe that, like most social, political, and economic change, only time will tell whether Temperatism is possible. Thatcherism and Reaganomics were responsible for the birthing of the Fast Capitalism that the Western world is being subjected to today. It did not happen outside the context of the time and place in which they occurred. The 1970s were a difficult time socially, economically, and politically. In the UK, the 1970s was a time of weak and ineffective government and the unions had gone from being a force of good to a parody of left wing militancy that alienated the wider population through general strikes that were interrupting the lives of and harming the common man. As well as domestic trouble, the oil crisis threatened modern living standards and developed a fear driven from lack of control over our own destiny. The emergence of a different way of doing things was inevitable. This book is not the first book written in recent times in regard to the need to do things differently and the importance of questioning and challenging the dominance of capitalism. Morality and inequality are being debated and discussed not only in the coffee houses of academic institutes, but over the dinner tables of the middle classes and on the TV sofas of popular news and political programs. The success or failure of Temperatism lies in whether its belief that people are valuable and have value and that Doing Good is an agenda worth following is something that calls to our inner self as well as our rational thought. There are plenty of organizations in the world today that are changing the way that they do business, who are already pursuing a purpose of Doing Good, not just in regard to delivering sustainable business and green agendas but in regard to understanding that People really do matter and that it is the creativity and inventiveness of the People in the organization that can contribute most to sustainable performance. Many organizations already invest profit for purpose locally, nationally, and internationally and many have principles that are based on equality in regard to wealth distribution.
Politically and socially morality, ethics, and values are back on the agenda, but at the moment the journey toward change is being hijacked by popularist demands to damn the elite and civil protest. If rational thinking survives and truth prevails, there is hope that the output of the disruption being experienced at the time of writing will lead to the demand for the social shift needed. If “the People” decide, on balance, that the arguments and debate offered in this book make Temperatism an attractive alternative to the current capitalist system then they will provide the moral and ethical energy to demand a new social construction of market, government, and society. But as with all change, the biggest change begins with the individual. If each individual chooses that Doing Good should be their top priority and pursue that priority with everything they have to offer in regard to their talent, skills, and knowledge then change is possible. Empires rise and fall and even those we think are going to last forever will eventually fade, whether this book will be the catalyst for the fall of the Empire of capitalism we will only know with the benefit of hindsight.