The Ethics of All We Do: From Pedagogy to Life

 I have always been fascinated with ethics. I don’t think it was always so; certainly in undergrad I approached ethics in some sort of Kantian Utilitarian way based on what I was reading from Introduction to Philosophy (ah good old PHLA01Y). That built up more when I started studying or focusing on a tactile analysis for my undergraduate thesis. Now all the interactions I was reading about and encountering in the Victorian literature I was immersed in were under a microscope of sorts. When I went to grad school ethics became even more important- definitely when I started researching and writing my dissertation where Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology made the ethics of intersubjectivity something I could not ignore. And yet, ethics, that sort of haunting mechanism has in some ways always been there from even before post-secondary.

For those who know me, I speak about my grandfather a lot as a real formative influence on who I am as a person. He taught me the importance of kindness and the value of hard work in whatever shape that would become. For me that hard work became a sort of deeply embedded work ethic that I cannot extricate myself from even when I know I should sometimes. My grandfather’s voice is again a lasting guide to how I live my life- as ethically as possible.

Today is Saturday and I usually take Saturday’s off from everything except for brunching with friends, or going to a movie, or reading a good book, or watching a documentary on Netflix. Saturday is a distancing time I need in order to work with a refreshed perspective in the upcoming week. But I did not do that today. It is 3pm and I have been working on something I promised someone else since 9am. I just finished and I do have at least another hour of sunlight to enjoy my day and yet I can’t because this post about ethics has been bubbling inside me all week. I did not take today off because my personal and professional ethics said I should do what I said I would do. The downside of this is that I know that come tomorrow when I need to focus on the manuscript I am editing I probably won’t be as refreshed or present as I need to be. Ethics is important, but if done right, it can also be very necessarily restricting.

I had tickets to see Akhenaten at the Cineplex today. I had tickets to see Koyaanisqatsi at Hot Docs last week. I didn’t go to either, because ethics. Two great Philip Glass events for one of the biggest Philip Glass fans in the world and I didn’t go. Part of me is sad, but part me is glad that I stuck to my professional and personal ethics to do the things that needed to be done- even if that meant missing Philip Glass. Ethics isn’t easy. I know that some of you will say, but you know YOLO and such, and yes you are so very right, and yes trust me that part of me is alive and well too. But I think there is a certain part of me that knew that I couldn’t be true to who I am if I went and left what needed to be done undone.

Ethics is another reason I love Ruskin so much. In his great work “The Ethics of the Dust” he speaks to the stern code of morals of crystals. He also said “nether limbs nor brain are ever to be strained to their utmost; that is not the way in which the greatest quantity of work is to be got out of them: they are never to be worked furiously, but with tranquility and constancy” and this is a pretty good motto for how to run life. In the middle of the week when I couldn’t sleep I read the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethical Research. At 2am. Yes nerd, but yes ethics.

 At the beginning of the week @BooksYarnLogic posted something on Facebook that read “You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in” and it really resonated with me. There is a lot about where I grew up, especially from an environmental, and Indigenous, and language rights stand point that was so not ethical. My grandfather laid the foundations for me to be responsible for being more ethical than what surrounded me growing up. He nurtured the tree that is now me- so far removed from that space geographically, mentally, and ethically.

It’s sometimes the smallest of things that make the biggest differences. I take that into account in my pedagogy, in my work, in my research, in my friendships,  and even in the poetry I (don’t often) write (anymore). I missed the opera today, but I may have made someone else happy because they could now continue working on something they had scheduled time to do, and if they didn't do it today it would mean they would not get to spend time with their family that was planned. You know butterfly effect. Ethics isn’t easy, but it’s important. And now I get to go for a walk. Have a good Saturday!