Being Good
Ethics of Climate Change
The 100-Year Life
The China Model
Films and Visions
100
This compound threat to ethics makes us give up hope for making real choices about the outcome of our actions and lives.
What are futility and determinism?
100
According to James Garvey, there is one variable which seems to have the most to do with the extent of climate change. It is also the one we can have the most effect on. It’s not sunspots or carbon-uptake capacity nor the rate of glacial melting.
What is US?
100
An old tale tells the story of this nymph who discovers her husband Palemon fast asleep and snoring, having just committed an unfaithful act. In her fury she places a curse upon him: as long as he is awake he will breathe, as soon as he sleeps he will die. From that time on Palemon spends every moment in frantic activity, never resting.
Who is Ondine?
100
For western society, this difficult political system is seen by most as the best possible political regime and is seen as a necessary condition for the best possible regime, anywhere in the world.
What is electoral democracy?
100
In Under the Dome, Chinese broadcaster Chia Jin travels to compare Beijng’s air pollution and geography with this other huge city with a geography like Beijing’s and also with a long history of pollution.
What is Los Angeles?
200
According to Blackburn, this deadly phrase describes the aftermath of a grim event when people, without a lawgiver, would have no law, and that without absolute commands to govern them, people would be free to do what they please.
What is the death of God?
200
THIS FRENCH PHILOSOPHER OBSERVED THAT NO SNOWFLAKE IN AN AVALANCHE EVER FEELS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE AVALANCHE.
Who is Voltaire?
200
According to Gratton and Scott, if you live 100 years, save around 10 per cent of your income and want to retire on 50 per cent of your final salary, then you will be able to retire in this decade of your life.
What are your eighties?
200
When Daniel Bell refers to “the China Model,” he describes a system of government which contains which three elements or layers?
What are democracy at the bottom, experimentation in the middle, and meritocracy at the top?
200
In “Courage to Believe,” Jennifer Cheng and Dr. Charles Lee, discovered that thousands of practitioners of Falun Gong in China suffered a much worse fate than imprisonment.
What is organ harvesting?
300
Among different theories of ethics, Blackburn describes this 8-syllable theory in which consequences matter and identifies the greatest good with the happiness of the greatest number of people.
What is utilitarianism?
300
ACCORDING TO GARVEY, THIS IS A CAPTIVATING DILEMMA WHEREIN EACH PERSON DOES WHAT IS INDIVIDUALLY RATIONAL BUT THEY WIND UP UNDERMINING WHAT’S BEST FOR EVERYONE.
What is the Prisoner's Dilemma?
300
Intangible assets such as friendships, health, and purpose differ from tangible assets such as money and land, but, as a result of usage and neglect, these assets can be subject to exactly the same problem.
What is depreciation?
300
Bell discusses three models of democratic meritocracy: (1) a model that combines democracy and meritocracy at the level of the voter; (2) a horizontal model that combines democracy and meritocracy at the level of central political institutions; and (3) a vertical model with political meritocracy at the level of the central government and democracy at the local level. But he champions this model as the best of the three.
What is the vertical model?
300
In their Cowspiracy documentary investigation of the causes of climate disruption, producers Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn make the astounding claim that this percentage of the Earth’s surface is dedicated, directly or indirectly, to raising livestock.
What is 45%?
400
This is the ethical principle that the maxim of your action is right only if you can will that it become a universal law, and that people should be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means to an end.
What is the categorical imperative?
400
THIS IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARD FOR STEWARDSHIP OF THE ENVIRONMENT WHICH ASPIRES TO LEAVE THE WORLD FIT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS TO ENJOY
What is sustainability?
400
According to The 100-Year Life, when we visit [families in ] Asia, particularly India, we are struck by something we rarely see in the West.
What are children, parents and grandparents living together?
400
According to Daniel Bell, this political system would be difficult but not impossible to export to other countries as a model form of government.
What is the China Model? What is vertical democratic meritocracy?
400
In their documentary, WHAT THE HEALTH, Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn investigate changes in lifestyle that produce better health, and they conclude that one single change is most powerful for health.
What is a vegan diet?
500
As described in Blackburn’s Introduction to Being Good, this phrase refers to an environment of ideas about how to live, what we find acceptable or unacceptable, admirable or contemptible, inside which we grade and evaluate, claim and justify our preferences.
What is an ethical climate?
500
Garvey discusses right and wrong in a warming world with the example of five cowboys grazing their cows on land they have in common. What phrase describes the sad outcome when each cowboy tries to make the most of it?
What is the tragedy of the commons?
500
Like communities and friendship groups, the majority of educational institutions are ‘age stratified’, putting distinct age groups in each course: school, undergraduate, postgraduate or ‘mature student’. The result is age homogeneity, as classes are. made up of people in a very narrow age band. Inevitably, this increases boundaries between the ages, creates greater distinctiveness between age groups, and encourages these undesirable developments.
What are increasing boundaries between the ages, creating greater distinctiveness between age groups, and encouraging stereotyping and prejudice?
500
According to Bell, this political system is beset by four kinds of tyranny: the tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of the minority, the tyranny of the voting community, and the tyranny of competitive individualists.
What is electoral democracy?
500
This is a large corporation that makes its own rockets, plans to send people in orbit around the moon next year, and plans to send thousands of people to Mars in the future. This corporation is run by the same person who operates Tesla Motors.
What is SPACEX?
M
e
n
u