Care and Relationships

By Stephen Downes
Nov 27, 2021
Transcript of Care and Relationships

Unedited audio transcript from Google Recorder

Hi again, and welcome back to ethics analytics and the duty of care on Stephen Downs. We're in module six, which is titled the duty of care. So, as you can tell, it's kind of a core module. For this course, for a few presentations. In this presentation is on the concept of care and relationships.

And it's an interesting one for me, because as you may know, or you may not know my own history in the field of online, learning has a lot to do with connections. I'm associated with connectivism and I talk a lot about the idea of knowledge being generated through the creation of an adjustment of connections either in either in the brain between neural cells or in society between people.

So there's obviously an overlap here here between the concept of connection and the concept of relationships. Now, when I talk about it, I talk about connections as being defined by a change of state, and one entity resulting in a change of state in another entity. So it's kind of a one off, right?

Relationships are different relationships involved, the creation of an ongoing series of connections. And as a result, what we might call a bond or a deeper connection or something between that two entities and question and the ethics of care, the entities in question are always people. Although you know, we could ask quite relevantly here, does your robot care?

Does your AI algorithm care? And just as importantly, do you care for it? Or do you care for them depending on pronouns and depending on how you see your robot companion, but asking ahead of ourselves. So, what I want to do in this presentation is look at the concept of relationships, from the perspective of the ethics of care.

So, we begin with look at the concept of personal responsibility, which this is in the efforts of care to a large degree, a reaction against Harold, Glaswell's succinct, definition of politics from 1936 is essentially who gets what when, and how and these days might you might also say where especially in the days of home shopping and instead we could think of care as a way of dividing up responsibilities, who is caring, who is responsible for caring for what where when and how but I think it's a bit more than that.

This is just the political perspective, but the main point here is personal responsibility or individual responsibility isn't sufficient. According to Toronto for democracy and isn't sufficient. Therefore, for an ethic or an ethics of care, Toronto, continues accounts of responsibility stress. It's ties to the freedom of the subject, to act, and the consequences of such action of assigning blame for past judgments and actions.

And we can see that right in the accounts of consequentialism that we've already looked at or even the accounts of social justice that we've looked at. It's not so much that it's backward looking, although that's part of it but a lot of it has to do with assigning responsibility or blame some of the focus.

Here is very much on the negative outcomes and preventing the negative outcomes. And I think there's a certain perspective on the world that that has us looking at these negative outcomes trying to continues. Feminists have begun to develop a model, that is forward, looking and accounts for how to make change rather than simply to assign blame.

I'm making change is a lot harder. It's a lot more problematic. You're dealing with opposition and criticism and we're looking now, for example, in the United States, at the pushback to things like critical race theory and efforts to make changes in society as a whole. So that, you know, social institutions such as schools, police, health care, etc, are more equitable and there is a pushback to that.

That's a bit different from assigning responsibility for the failures. Although there's certainly has been an element of that when you're police department, kills a black, man and unarmed black man and does it from apparently racist motives, there's going to be a question of responsibility and blame and quite rightly, so, but it's more than just personal responsibilities more than just individualism.

That is at the core of an ethics of care. And that's what we're getting at here. We could say, indeed that interdependence is a condition. It's it's a fact about reality rather than the result of a social contract or the result of an ideal. Again, it's just you look at the world.

You look at yourself and you realize, just by looking at it that we are interdependent and are we we can cash out, different ways of describing that and thinking of different ways. Things are entered dependent just to dry out that idea. I've put in a diagram here of the interdependence of the energy system.

The water system, the transport system, telecommunications and emergency services, right? And and you can see all of these things are interdependent, and it wouldn't make sense to talk about the management and administration of energy without talking about the management in administration of water. Because the two or so incidentally connected, and that flows through the economy, we've been seeing this during the current pandemic with respect to the supply chain issues.

We've had some breakdowns in the supply chain as a result. A lot of things that we need on a date of a day to day basis to maintain ordinary infrastructure and services are to available. And so there are shortages, being beginning to develop. Now that doesn't need to be bad, you know?

I mean, we don't need us experience, severe shortages to realize here, the interdependence of all of these different factors in our economy. You know, the conditions of a person working in a Hong Kong, the health of a person piling, a ship in the self-pacific, the labor conditions of a person working unloading the docs in Vancouver, the ability of a truck driver to get gas to drive the content across the country.

And then the the only, the availability of staff to work in the store. Where you buy the shirt? All of these are connected. Part of connectivism is a all of these connected and all of these connections represent knowledge. And we've talked about that quite a bit in, you know, in the connectivist perspective.

But all of these also have a bearing on the ethics of our practices and that's what feminist ethics of care. Bring to the table to recognize the inevitable. Interdependency essential to the existence of reliance and vulnerable beings as category. Say an angster say, I'm quoting here dilebella casa. Interdependency is not a contract, nor a moral ideal, it is a condition.

As I said care is therefore necessary to the continuation of life for many living beings in more than human entanglements. Not forced on them by a moral order and not necessarily a rewarding obligation. It's just a fact. This inner interdependence is just a fact and I think, you know, if you are, I've talked a lot about that from a neural perspective as well.

I've said things, like, if you open up brains and you look at what you've got, you know, all the good and blood and such you don't find sentences and pictures or models. You find neurons connected with each other sending signals to each other. That's the fact of neurophysiology. And a lot of you know, discussion about learning teaching thinking consciousness is about how we interpret that fact.

And, and what we're saying here is that this fact has not just a knowledge dimension, but also an ethical dimension. Now, what is the ethics of a neural? I think that's an interesting question. There's a question that doesn't make sense so much talking about the ethics of a human neuron.

But when we're talking about the ethics of a computer, neuron, as in an AI system. Now different considerations come into play because unlucky human neuron, which is basically, we have to use it as designed we actually create computer neurons and we can affect fact design.

Nodding says the living other is more important than any theory. This is the central idea in an ethic of care. It is pre theoretical rooted in natural caring. Now we kind of need to to pull out some of that, right? Because there again different ways of interpreting what we mean by say natural caring because I don't think no I could be wrong here.

What I don't think nodding is giving us a naturalist theory of ethics here in the sense of nature is such in such a way. Therefore it is good right? What I think that she's saying here points more to the concreteness and the particularness of any particular interaction. Any particular relation with another person and and what she's saying is when you're related with another person that relation is more important than theory, that it's more immediate, it's more central.

And when you're in action with someone else, you are not. Typically go evaluating that interaction on the basis of a theory. You're not running a mental calculation in your head, or how much can I get out of this? Or how much, if how much happiness will be me? Produced if I say such and such a thing?

Or, or even? What is the virtue of my interaction with this person? Not quite saying it like that. Right? So I think a natural caring, I think natural should be understood more in the terms of customary habitual ordinary common. As opposed to, this is the state of nature that we must follow at least that's my feeling.

People might interpret nodding's differently. Knottings might interpret nodding differently. And again, who am I to explain her own thought to her? Anyhow, it does lead to the idea of what's called diminishment and diminishment is the set of factors basically, that interfere with that care. So as nothing says, when she either chooses or is forced to act in a way that rejects her internal call to care, people in organizations can deliberately or carelessly contribute to the dimish, diminishment of others, ethical ideas, the ethical ideal.

In this case, being the ethics of care by teaching people not to care or by placing them and conditions that prevent them from being able to care, a couple of things happening here, right? First of all, the idea of that a person has this internal call to care, whatever that is.

But also the idea that this capacity to respond, to form this relationship to provide care or being in a caring relationship can be and is impacted by other elements in society. It's not simply that we're related to the person that we're carrying for. It's also that we're related to a whole bunch of other people and other things which impact on our relationship, our relationship with the person being cared for does not exist in a vacuum, but that relationship.

And again, the fact of all of these other relationships is more important, has more bearing on the ethical interpretation of the relationship than any theory. You know, you know, and institution, diminishing your capacity to care. That reality isn't something that is subject necessarily to a theoretical analysis, in terms of say consequentialism or social contractor or whatever.

Some people might say, well it is subject to and I'm analysis by critical theory. But the theory of critical theory is less important than the fact on the ground to use that expression of the relationship between you and that other person. You and your employer you and the people around you.

And again, that goes back all the way back to Carol Gilligan and the idea of where the ethics of care begins from. In the first place, she says, it starts from the premise that as humans, we are inherently relational response of being and the human condition is one of connectedness or interdependence.

So rather than being based on, you know, a rational argumentative calculation, sort of logic. Morality is grounded, she says and a psychological logic reflecting the ways in which we experience ourselves in relation to others. I we're going to want to cash that out. I'm not going to want to take the cognitive psychologist line here of beliefs desires, etc, etc.

But I am going to want to take the experience line here, right? Our existence, as as being is characterized by experiences and among these experiences are the experience of ourselves in relation to others. And again, for each of us, that's more of a fact than an inference, you know, we can get all cycle or philosophical and asking what about the reality of other people out there?

What about the reality of their mental state? But what's more immediate to us, is our experience of ourselves in these relationships? And that's where the origins of morality arise, they arise in human relationships as they give rise to concerns about injustice and carelessness, right? Similarly, nodding is saying the same sort of thing.

Caring is quote, rooted in receptivity relatedness. And monthsiveness and describes that as a more basic and preferable approach to ethics, This is common across the writing of ethics of care. You won't see calculation. You won't see argumentation, you won't really see appeal to overarching theory and, and despite some of the language that's used.

You don't really see appeal to theories of human nature or theories of nature as it is. In other words, I think it would be a mistake to call ethics of care. A naturalist moral theory, It's based in what might be called. A fact, a state of nature kind of, you know, I mean this six and one half dozen of the other here and I am trying should be between the two.

But again, I think it's the felt or perceived or expressed relationship. That's more important than a general description of what the state of nature is what the nature of individual people are etc. You know, there's nature and there's nature. There's nature as the scientists sees that or the pseudo scientist sees it as, you know, sets of laws of nature and abstractions and categories and natural kinds, and all of that.

And then there's nature as we experience. Yeah, dirt and grease or as pink says, you know. It's salty and sweaty. Yes, I just quoted pink. So, given that we, we can draw on account of how empathy, and receptivity fail. Now, empathy, and receptivity here, those were referred to specific things, but I'm generalizing this a bit and, and I would characterize this slide as describing more.

Generally how relationships are, yeah, relationships fail, you know, the, the relationship between doctor and patient, teacher and student etc. So we we can look at these. I'll start from the, the left hand side there. The understanding of the other person might be impacted by conforming labeling or categorization. On the other hand, it might be pretty, you know, impacted by projection or codon quote mind reading.

Both of these are cases of us imposing, some kind of order or state of affairs or understanding of what their mental state must be. And therefore what their needs must be based on, you know, labeling based on mind, reading, whatever. So there's that as well on the vertical axis, here we have empathetic receptivity, emotional contagion.

And if I had to interpret that which I do, I call that something like becoming. So wrapped up in the emotions of the relationship that I lose sight of the relationship itself, you know? It's it's the way a person can be overwhelmed by tragedy for example and thus be able to not be able to respond in a caring helping way to the victims of that traumatity tragedy.

Any other hand we have basically the opposite of that you know the loss of empathic responsiveness and loss of responsiveness generally at all gossip, empty talk changing the subject here, it's cases. Where you're, you're just simply not impacted by whatever is happening on the other side and your relationship with them becomes you know kind of proforma kind of well, empty, right, where you know, you just don't stay on topic.

You don't talk about anything meaningful or significant, you know. There really is. No emotional engagement with the other person. So, these will go back here. And and we look at the ways that we can diminish our moral capacity, we come back here, and and these are for mechanisms for the diminishment of that moral capacity, visa the relationships.

You know, the ways in which are relations with the others as a source of ethical importance are diminished by actions that we can take or maybe more accurately the overall attitude or tone of the actions that we that we take. The relationship and teaching. And caring generally is a relationship that depends on both sides, right?

It's not enough. Just to say I am in a relationship, I care. The other person has to agree. Yes, we are in a relationship. Yes this is a relation, a caring relationship. I've put in the the image of a current movie, I care a lot and the the premise of that movie is that the person who quote cares a lot assumes trusteeship over elderly people and then proceeds to put them in institutions and relieve them of all of their wealth and possessions and obviously gets her come up and send the movie because otherwise, you know, it would be a pretty bad movie and people wouldn't go to see it.

But the the general idea is there, right? You can't just say that you care, right? So, we have notings, right? It is not enough to hear teachers clean the care because the student recognize that here she is cared for is the teacher thought by the students to be a caring teacher, it does not reside entirely in the attitude and intentions of the career.

We must act as about the effects on the cared for if a claims to care for B, but be denies at any cares. Then the relation between A and B is not one of caring. So it's a mutuality here. It's not it's not a symmetric care, doesn't simply flow like mana from the heavens, the connection needs to be there and again this is this is a deeper kind of relationship than you would get say in transactional, distance theory from more etc where y'all you're calling and responding calling and responding.

It's not a checks I'm kind of thing and a and I think we need to be clear about that by check some what I mean is this and computer science and information theory. The idea is you send the message, but you would like to know if the message was correctly.

Received so the the receiver takes the message performs that calculation creates what's called a check, some out of that. And sends that check some back. If that checksum matches your check, some then you understand it. Yes, the message was transferred correctly and has been received properly by the recipient.

It's pretty smart idea. And basically, that's to me what, you know, more is transactional distances, right? We're checking to make sure the teaching message. Was he received correctly? That's what testing is about, right? Testing isn't about a relationship between teacher and student. Testing is checking to see if what I sent was received in the students in the same way that I sent it.

You know, it's pretty mechanical mechanical kind of thing, but it's not a caring relation, it's not a relationship properly so called. So the inference here, is that the caring aspect, which we've talked about, you know, meeting the expressed needs of in this case, the student needs to be one such that if you ask the student, whether the teacher is, at the very least attempting to meet the express to needs.

Him has the teacher, heard them as the teacher taken steps to respond to them, has the teacher, maybe related back to them. What these needs are. If the student says, yes, then, caring, relationship exists. But, if I say no, then you can't say that. Caring relationship exists. Now, being careful here.

I know that I've just mechanized the process for right? And, you know, you know, I basically given an algorithm for how you might instantiate that in code. I'm I can imagine trying to build such a system with these checksums and balances and I think that probably more almost certainly more is required in the definition of what a caring relationship looks like.

But the question here that I would have is, is that description exhaustible in terms of other factors. In other words, can you describe it in terms of what was said, what was done and and and what was exchanged etc? I don't want to say in behaviors terms because that's not what I mean, right?

You know, we need to be able to consider mental states here as well but you know, we want to be careful. I would think not to me the caring relationship and irreducible in itself because then there's no real ways to tell whether one exists. So then needs to be a way that we can tell whether one exists at least I would think so.

But, you know, I'm a prickly analytic, who wants to look at things, and how we know things happen in all of that? But, you know, I mean, there is a sense here, even innings of, you know, being able to distinguish between a state, where a caring relationship exists and a state where one doesn't resist and presumably, we've talked about the strengths of these relationships and, and thereby, you know, bring it back into the sort of terms that we might use when we're talking in a connectivist.

Sort of way of what are the aspects of this caring relationship? Well for one thing for nodding, it's attentive, there's an engrossment happening here. You know, I'm not thinking about other things. I'm not paying attention to what my response will be before having finished listening to the other person.

There's nice little slide presentation. It's impressive that I link to that covers the different aspects of this. There's a It's a relation where that is receptive to the quote, what the cared for is feeling and trying to express, right? So it's not simply me. Imposing my understanding of what their needs are and then trying to respond to that.

I'm actually receptive to and listening to what they're trying to say to me, keeping in mind. They might be not very good at saying what they're trying to say to me and it's not mechanical it's not merely diagnostic and especially it's not measuring against some kind of ideal, right?

We're not going about no trying to detect a gaps, that, that we would then fill, you know, the, the needs of the other person aren't always based on gaps. They aren't always based on absences. You know, sometimes they are sometimes, you know what the career needs is water. Or the cared for needs this water.

They're thirsty, that's a gap. And we could measure that against an ideal of being fully stated. But the thing here is and what's important is that the need is created by the person saying I'm thirsty not by the gap or distance between there saturation with water and being fully saturated with water.

You see the difference and the other thing about the relationship and we could say a lot more about this is that the the existence of the need and the as it comes through, the relationship moves and motivates the carer. And, and in the next video, we're gonna talk a bit about that how this creates a duty or a requirement for the carer and isn't just something that, you know, could be observed, you know?

And again, we can draw the distinction here. Right. A person might say, you know, I'm just trying to think of something off the top of my head and it's a little bit hard but that's the fun of doing these live presentations. You know, the person myself I need chocolate.

Now generally that's not going to create this urgency on the part of the other person to make sure that they go out and get chocolate for the person. Now, there are, you know, again, no general rules, right? We can imagine conditions where it would hell. The person is dying and they just wanted to taste chocolate for one more time before they pass.

And so, they're looking up, nice, and I need chocolate. And yeah, that's going to move and motivate the carer. But if it's your 13 year old son, saying, I need chocolate for the 14th time that day. Not so much, although you might begin to wonder just what is this infatuation will chocolate that he has, but but still not the same sort of thing at all, is it?

And so that's a distinction between and this is, you know, that's a distinction between relationships that are just incidental and relationships that are caring relationships and that ties back in an important way. I think, to the way we've talked about connectivism, right? It creates you know it's a change in the state of one person.

In this case, an expressed need changing the state in the other person. It's not simply the fact that the messages sent, but it's the impact that the message has in the other person. And I want to create this urgency or motivation to respond. That's when it's an instance of a caring relation and, you know, you think about this, right?

You know, think about how would you construct something like that? And that's really hard to imagine, you know, how do you create a sense of urgency in motivation in a, in a, in a system? Shall we say that in some contexts has a real urgent need to respond but in another context for the very same message, does not have an urgent need to respond, you know.

I can't think of general algorithmic principles say that could possibly do the job. I don't think any such could exist the responsibilities that grow out of this. Urgency are what defined the nature of the caring. So they they grow out of the relationships as Toronto and their complex intertwining, which is the the deep exchange of messages back and forth.

And we can think of that on a practical level, a person sends a message to another person and we we look at the semantics of that message. What does that message say? We look at how that message is interpreted by the receiver. What do those words mean what do they stand for?

What kind of need is expressed right? But over time as you have a relation with another person, you develop not quite a private language, but almost like a short hand give you an example and anyone who's married will know something like this, right? If I see Andrea do this.

She wants to go. All right. And that may create more or less urgency on my part depending on the situation. And it might be a suggestion. It might be an indication that she seen. All she wants to see. It might be an indication that this is a bad spot, we really should be moving.

Any of those things, might be what she means. But the main point here is that as we have these hundreds thousands of back and forth communications over time, I become more and more able to recognize what she means by a particular gesture particular action. It's not an explicit code.

We have never sat down and said, you know, when you do this, that's what we mean. I'm although, you know, you see that on TV a lot, right? You know, you see them planning these things there. Yeah. If I do this, that means we need to go. And then, you know, later on for comic effect, right?

I've seen that on for, don't forget what I've seen that, maybe on friends, or something, or how I met your mother. It's just, it's a staple of comedy shows, but the way it really develops is implicitly toxically. Ineffably as a consequence of this longstanding, set of conversations back and forth and so that I think is what Toronto?

And others are getting a here. The having of this ongoing relationship means that there's a deeper intertwining between the understanding's of each other's intent. When they say something gesture, something indicate something or whatever. And what you need is this kind of interaction from trying to, again, some sort of relation either presence by a logical historical or institutional ties, or some other form of interaction exists, in order to create a relation and thus, a responsibility, huge important point.

And the important point is this, this is not magic. This is not mind reading or intuition or anything like that. It is we're turning to actual existing things that create this interaction in order to create the relation. I mean out of that relation flows that responsibility. But and now and we'll talk about this more, the relation becomes more than just a case of understanding what the other person is saying.

The fact of the relation creates the urgency on the part of the other person to respond. So it's more than just a semantical thing. It is also an emotional or motivational thing and out of that springs the ethics, right? The ethics is you responding to the motivational or urgent sort of factor of that relationship.

And and let's why we, we can talk about the ethic being diminished by external sources, right? You know, again me and my wife are party. My wife goes, but if somebody's in a conversation with me and actually holding my arm to keep my attention, not person is diminishing, my capacity to response in my wife.

And if it was a situation of some urgency where I felt, you know, an ethical need to respond to the needs of my wife, and that particular context then, my moral capacity would be diminished. These are all moral facts and these facts are more important than the moral theory that, you know, gives us some kind of abstract sense of what's right and wrong.

In fact, it doesn't even make sense. Does it to talk about social contract between me and my wife? It doesn't make sense to talk about a utilitarian characterization. Now, I'm using me and my wife as a proxy because that's a really relationship. I'm really aware of, right? But these kinds of relationships exist to more or less a degree between any pair or group of people.

In a society, doctor patient, teacher student, you know, garbage collector homeowner, there's an ethical relationship there based on your interactions over time and hopefully, more than just you, give them garbage, they take it away. You know, there is more than that. And that's kind of what being ethical is to is having these relationships actually create this urgency or motivation to act a person who is more ethical is more likely to feel these more appropriately.

I say more appropriately because you know go overboard or you can respond in two little away? I mean what's the sweet spot there? So to wrap up this then we could think of this in terms of something like a social connection model and iris marrying young offers one of responsibility that argues that all agents who contribute by their actions, to the structural process that produce injustice and will bracket the wording justice and use that as a proxy for a whole bunch of bad things have responsibilities to work to remedy those in justices.

And I think there's a point to that I commented yesterday about my response ability with respect to the shirt that I was wearing. And today I traced the the linkages between the working conditions of the person who created the shirt and the fact of me wearing it the connection there, the rears a kind of interactivity there.

And the question is to what degree design, create a sense of urgency or motivation to act on my part. And what should happen is, if I am able to perceive the expression, the expressed need with respect to injustice, working conditions, oppression, whatever. On the part of the people, making that shirt that connection coming back to me.

However that comes back to me, should motivate in me a response to do something about that, to work to remedy that. And that's a tougher thing to, to argue not because, you know, it's hard to argue that oppression should be remedied or in justice should be remedied, you know, a kind of thing, most people would, but you know, what were evaluating here is the, the responsibility and the responsibility is based on this feeling this motivation and I could say stuff, you know, the standard response.

So how do you detect that? How do you measure that? But I'm more interested in the how does that get created? Because, you know, a person making a shirt in a Hong Kong. Is that a real distance from me and my connection with that person is very tenuous at best to be a little bit humorous.

It's, it's just a thin thread, okay? That was bad. If I actually went to Hong Kong and went to a factory and found that the working conditions really were oppressive and injustices were happening. Then that would probably motivate me more to do something about it.

And I think that what we would like is for my motivation to be the same in other case, but the fact of the matter is, and I've pretty sure this is recognized, but ethics of care. Theorists. Is that the two things are going to, they're going to impact me differently, the good.

They're going to motivate me to respond differently simply because it's a more tenuous relation. And that's where we draw some of these secondary responsibilities to try to increase the degree of relationality between ourselves and the people who produce the things that we use. So that we have a more direct sense of what their lives are.

Like and one more thing before I wrap up with this section the idea here also that in our response you know in perhaps more traditional moral theory, our response would be something like well I'm just not going to buy the shirt then which sounds great. But then you have to look at the wider conditions.

The wider contacts, if I stop buying this shirt and everybody stops buying this shirt. This person who was currently oppressed because even more oppressed because now she has no means of earning a living, which is our Google worse than a poor means of earning a living. And it also affects the people who depend on her, even if she's a child people may be well are almost certainly depending on her.

It affects the people who are involved in that supply chain between there. And here it has an impact on the relationship between Canada and Hong Kong. And therefore by implication China, you know, there are wider ripple effects, all of these contribute to the contacts here. So it might be you know, you take these things into account and you might want to do something like pay more for the shirt or you know or you might want to support local shirt industries and try to find something else for people on Hong Kong to do there aren't going to be any simple answers and that's why it would be irresponsible to simply impose a solution.

That's why it's important to listen to what that person said which means establishing more of a direct connection between them and finding out what they express as their needs in that context. They just might need shorter working hours who knows right? Who can I how can I predict right?

You know or something? You know in some cases it's just recognition for their work. So, you know, instead of sweeping grant narratives addressing these in justices, it really is case of working from injustice to injustice, person to person. And just, as an aside, the same is true in learning, right?

We can draw a direct parallel between the person in Hong Kong making my shirt and the student in my class who also happens to live in Hong Kong taking my class, right? And they might be taking my class in the context of some oppressive conditions. Maybe they've been forced to take my class.

Sorry about that if you were, by the way, whatever, right? And again, the same sort of discussion has to happen here. I'm not going to have a sweeping theory of improving social justice of online courses. Even if I believe in improving a social justice of online courses, because what matters is this direct relationship between myself and that student.

Finally, just to wrap up a loose end. It's not just Hong Kong, right? I've just picked Hong Kong as an example, because it's a place that's distant and it's a place where some of my shirts are made, but I could be using examples any sort of example. Any interactive relationship that I have with people energy production, weapons sales, water exports, great fruit production.

All of these things are things that affect me in one way or another, right? I don't sell weapons but I work for governments. That's supporting industries. I do so. I mean, I be foolish to deny it. I'm just disconnected from that and it really is a matter of, you know, you know, all of these connections are part of the overall social justice impact that you have on the world.

And you know, it's always a case of picking and choosing which ones you're going to focus on and that's part of your job as an ethical agent. That's what you need to do. And and again and I'll say it again in the future, right? That's indeed, even something that is, is felt rather than decided and this is why sometimes we have discussions about your responsibility to those more closely related to you than your responsibility for responsibilities to those more distantly related to you.

But even how you define these and even how you create these are the results of your own actions and not static and unchangeable. But you know, they're all subject to, you know, this interpretation as to how important they are, how relevant they are, why you should focus your attention on this thing, rather than that thing.

I noticed, for example, in the the nonprofit NGO community, typified by people like say Beth Cantor, no criticism of Beth Cantor's intended. Here, there's a lot of focus on Cambodia and I sort of, I sort of sit down. I wonder what why Cambodia wouldn't, what made Cambodia so important to them.

You know, and though me of course, I want to throw a calculation into it and say well Malawi is a much poorer country where the interested in Bali, right? And of course, are all kinds of reasons why Cambodia and not Malawi and I'm not making any criticisms here and it would be inappropriate for me to just throw in this calculation and make that definitive of the decision.

But it's important to recognize as carers. Those of us who are carers that we are making these decisions or decisions is the one wrong word. We are making these calls, we are emphasizing some of these relationships more than others and considering some of these more morally significant than others.

Now in the ethics of care, we're most likely to respond to conditions of oppression and injustice etc, but in the practical world African, I sent that. But in in our lived experience, that's better, other factors above and beyond the severity of the injustice and depression are also, what play proximity is one personal relationship is one.

Nationality could be one, depends on who you are, where you live, etc, and these all flavor and color your sense of moral responsibility to the people you're connected with. So, you know it's easy to say, you know, injustice creates in the person or responsibility, but that's the kind of broads sweep, moral theory, thinking that I think the ethics of care is responding directly again.

Just it depends on a lot of things and what really matters is the immediate connection you have with the other person and what the other person is saying and what response that brings up near and that's what to me. The social connection model is about with respect to ethics.

Okay, that's it 10 hour on something that I thought would be a half hour presentation. Oh well that's life. And so I'll be back with more on the the essence of the duty and the wider community. Until then, I'm Steven Downs. This is ethics analytics in the duty of care, module six, and I'll see you soon very soon.

Okay.

Force:yes