Everyday Ethics

The recent film Blood Diamond is a harrowing story of struggle, loss, and redemption set against the backdrop of civil war in Sierra Leone.  Rebel fighters, determined to bring their nation to prosperity by controlling its recently emergent diamond industry, terrorize the population of Sierra Leone through excessive violence and heartless bloodletting.  The film is chilling, but also quite powerful.  It also raises an interesting moral question.  Does the history of the goods that I purchase matter morally?

This is a complicated question that we cannot hope to answer definitively here.  What we can do, however, is sketch the terrain regarding what sorts of questions are relevant to whether or not our purchases make a moral difference.  We can also use this example to remind the reader that ethics really is a part of our everyday lives, both in the things we buy, and in the movies that we watch.  So our goal will be largely expository, and we will focus on the task of clarification rather than resolution.

One compelling question about the morality of what we purchase is whether we should regard ourselves as responsible for actions that we do not commit ourselves, but that we encourage or support through our actions.  Buying a diamond is not itself an obviously immoral action.  But if the diamond industry that we are supporting is directly responsible for violence and murder, perhaps we should not support this sort of activity through our purchases.  Clarifying the moral significance of what we buy will require that we determine whether, and if so to what extent, we are responsible for actions that we support but do not commit.

We might ask why it makes sense to think we are responsible for the actions of other people at all.  This question should be familiar to anyone who has ever seen, or participated in, a debate between the alleged “social justice proponent” and the “hard-core capitalist.”  Social justice guy takes for granted that wealthy nations are responsible for injustice in the developing world, while capitalism guy says this is obviously false.  Capitalist guy will claim that whatever happens in Sierra Leone, it’s Sierra Leoneans who are doing it, not him.  Social justice guy responds that by creating a market for blood diamonds, we are effectively killing people ourselves.  What we really need is an argument for one of these positions.

Another significant question involving the morality of what we purchase is what the best course of action might be when we don’t know a particular item’s history.  Just because some diamonds are blood diamonds, that doesn’t mean this diamond is one.  But it could be, and even if it is not, doesn’t my purchasing any diamonds encourage the further pursuit of blood diamonds?  The same could be said of such seemingly mild items as coffee or soybeans.  Even if I buy “fair trade” coffee, aren’t I also supporting coffee that is not “fair trade?”  In the face of uncertainty, we might be better off avoiding morally suspect items.  On the other hand, if we don’t know that a specific item is morally suspect, perhaps we are off the hook.

All of these questions have a familiar philosophical flavor to them.  The first concerns the scope and limits of moral responsibility, while the other is about the best course of action in the face of moral uncertainty.  What is probably less familiar is the extent to which these really are everyday ethical questions.  Most of us make a handful of purchases every week, or even every day, that carry some degree of moral weight.  However one might think the above questions are best answered, by thinking critically about the morality of what we are buying, we can begin thinking about ethics not as something we study in a classroom, but as something we practice in the world.

About the Author

Elijah Weber is a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He holds a Master's degree in philosophy from Colorado State University, and Bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy from Chapman Univerity. He currently lives in Bowling Green, Ohio with his wife Laura, his newborn son Brandon, and his feline life-partner Monte.