Abuses of power - including avoidance of responsibility/decency

In today’s news is an article on the inhuman evil of behavioural insights experts who deliberately and knowingly exacerbated the imbalance of power in letters sent to RoboDebt victims - and all recipients of those letters were victims. 

The article talks about powerlessness and blindness to empathy. 

I would sum those up as inhumanity - and I consider it should also mention lack of professionalism. 

The Engineers Australia Code of Ethics talks about social and environmental responsibility, and the reasonable expectations of society are that all people would apply those. 

We don’t want people using their skills to build crematoria for genocide any more - at least, the decent people amongst us don’t want that. 

We don’t want people using their skills to destroy the climate and thus our chances of existing. 

We don’t want people degrading life into economic servitude and a soul and heart crushing struggle for survival. 

Of course, for us to get what we want, we need to exercise both moral judgement (and those who claim moral judgement as a cover for bigotry are reacting emotionally rather than capably exercising considered judgement, are wrong, and suffer from amathia) and courage - the sort of judgement and courage that would say:     no, we don't want to keep using those pathological “behavioural insights experts”;     no, we don't want to let media outlets keep lying;     no, we don't want to keep refusing to share decision making with those affected;     no, we don't want to keep pretending the climate crisis isn’t real;     no, we don't want to allow radicalisation of bigots;     but yes, we do want to find ways of standing up to abuses of power and subverting evil,     yes, we do want everyday people holding the powerful to account,     and     yes, we do want political party branches holding elected MPs to account.

It’s up to us. 

 

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.