Skip to main content

Ontology: are humans valuable?

 

One of the first tenets we learn in the social sciences is the value of human beings. An ethnographer learns not to call the people they interview "subjects" but participants. When we find someone who introduces us to a subculture or a helpful participant, we call them an "informant". These distinctions may seem redundant, after all, they may mean the same thing to other scientists.  However, in the qualitative sciences, the use of terms to describe someone is a conscious effort to affirm the agency of a person. They are contributors to a body of information you would never have had without them. The way they talk, walk, work and play reveals precious data for an ethnographer. 

However, even that expression of a "participant" appears to me unethical, after all, what I just expressed is that their value to me as a researcher is in providing me information for my research. This reductionistic description of a person is against my foundational ideas of ontology and epistemology. 

What is ontology though? Why is it important?

Ontology

If you had a liberal arts education you will know what ontology means in reference to the French Philosopher Descartes, who in an effort to define what he could depend upon for knowledge stripped back everything except his own existence, before building knowledge upon that foundation. His argument "Je pense donc je suis" ( I think, therefore I am) is one of the most famous phrases in philosophy, but what does it mean? It is described as the "Ontological Argument", which gives us the word ontology, meaning, the study of being, or existence.

Ontologically, what can we know about people? I believe at the basis of existence, humans are valuable and equal to one other in value. On that basis, I believe I can gain knowledge ( epistemology, or theory of knowing) about the world from persons. However I am also a critical realist and I believe people are flawed and subjective, so that knowledge I gain about the world I must analyse and reflect upon. I do this by exposing myself to the opposite idea or as many alternate views as I can to gain a subjective social geography of social "fact". Additionally my ontology includes a theistic framework, the basis of my belief that humans are valuable and equal is based in a belief that humans are made in the image of God. Each person carries this Imago Deio on their person regardless of their education, social status, wealth, race, ethnicity or spoken language.



Imago Deio

All this may seem very abstract and high-brow, but the basis of my belief that humans are valuable and equal means I need to consider them respectfully as having rights and agency in the world. I may not agree with the way they use this agency, but I can respect it.  Applying an ontological basis such as this is stretched in a few different ways, what if I believe another human being is behaving unethically? What if they themselves are not using their agency appropriately? 

Agency and Welfare

One of the first ways my theory of ontology can be tested is in a situation where I might believe some people are given agency which they use in a way which is damaging to society. What if someone uses their welfare money to buy something that hurts them and others? If I have the authority to construct and implement policy, I could decide to remove their agency altogether and prevent those harms.

 An example of social policy in which the agency of people was eroded to prevent their poor use of taxpayer funded welfare is the cashless benefit card issued to aboriginal Australians in a South Australian town. The population who were issued 90% of their welfare benefits on a cashless card were considered to be unable to exercise their agency appropriately. Many aboriginal Australians were spending their welfare money on alcohol, cigarettes, pokies, lotto, pornography and other potentially anti-social items. 

On the Department of Social Services (DSS) website it specifies that 

Cashless Debit Card participants are able to exit the program where they can demonstrate reasonable and responsible management of their affairs, including financial affairs. Applications to exit are considered on a case-by-case basis and take into account legislated criteria such as the interest of children, if the participant has been convicted of an offence or served a sentence of imprisonment at any time in the last 12 months, risk of homelessness, and health and safety of the participant and community (Department of Social Services, 2021).

The language seems to be reasonable, these people appear to be at risk of homelessness, becoming a criminal or returning to crime and endangering their community. They even use the word "participant" to describe the people with these cards. However, an ABC article from 2018 recounts evidence from a trial of the card as being anything but voluntary

Northern Territory Council of Social Service chief executive Deborah Di Natale said the council's members strongly opposed the scheme."The proposed cashless debit card unfairly targets Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," she said. "They have not engaged in meaningful consultation … there have been no hearings held in Aboriginal communities."(Heaney, Sat 2 Nov 2019)

The ends and the means

So do the benefits of these cards outweigh the erosion of the agency of people? The cards make it difficult for people even to purchase the alleged basics they purport to encourage such as groceries, petrol and clothing as many of the stores in the remote areas the people live do not like to take the cards. Incidentally, the cards have been rolled out in "... the Ceduna region (South Australia); the Goldfields and East Kimberley regions (Western Australia); the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay region; selected Cape York communities including Doomadgee (Queensland); and the Northern Territory." (Department of Social Services, 2021). 

This is a question that is difficult to answer, if our goals were to reduce alcohol related violence, smoking and crime, then the policy succeeded, for a time, however, the population has only complied with the intervention because they were left with no other choice. If our goals are for aboriginal Australians to develop indigenous leadership systems that aspire to a better life that is no longer centred around booze, cigarettes and scratchies, then we have failed, miserably.

Social policy that completely erodes the agency of aboriginal people in an effort to resolve their myriad social problems forgets that their introduction to the very vices they are enslaved to was by a generation of colonists who believed themselves superior to them. The cashless benefit card is also a failure of social policy because it fails to classify the problem correctly, and aims to solve it according to yet another imposed framework without any consultation with the population about what they believe would help to turn around the issues. 

There are alternative interventions to this aggressive approach, such as "We Yarn" a mental health communication framework designed in consultation with aboriginal communities. This framework enables local leadership to work on improving the social and emotional health of their community, and could be used to develop greater agency according to the aboriginal's own beliefs about themselves and those around them (Davies et al, 2020).  Aboriginal mental health approaches begin with establishing "eldership" within the community and helping them learn to communicate about the problems with their own ideology, language and culture.

These social interventions communicate the issue to elders within the community and develop a socially constructed language that explains the problem to the population. This negotiates the terms of describing the problem and aims to end the problem in a social way.

The Point

So why when talking about ontology have I just spent quite a few paragraphs discussing people who appear to misuse their agency? Because if we are "normals" in society, then even if we do receive some welfare ( and many families do) we have the right to spend those funds as we see fit. Ontologically we are equal to an aboriginal "participant" who has a mandatory cashless benefit card, so why do we have the right to drink ourselves to death tomorrow and they do not? It is because we believe that the erosion of their agency is acceptable, due to the outcomes it achieves. We believe the ends justify the means as long as we gain the desired outcome. The question is, if we are at peace with this decision, how many others will we accept against the will of other people?









References:

Davies, K., Read, D. M. Y., Booth, A., Turner, N., Gottschall, K., & Perkins, D. (2020). Connecting with social and emotional well‐being in rural Australia: An evaluation of ‘We‐Yarn’, an Aboriginal gatekeeper suicide prevention workshop. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 28(6), 579–587. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajr.12671


Heaney, C. (2019, November 2). Cashless welfare card could unfairly target thousands of Aboriginal people in the NT, Senate committee hears. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-01/cashless-welfare-card-committee-hearing-northern-territory/11662892


Department of Social Services, Australian Government. (2021, August 10). Cashless Debit Card | Department of Social Services, Australian Government. Department of Social Services. https://www.dss.gov.au/families-and-children/programmes-services/welfare-conditionality/cashless-debit-card-overview


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Persuasion

From rising COVID19 cases in construction to a mandatory vaccine requirement, the explosive strike and ensuing riots, it’s all escalated so quickly that it felt out of control. But could it have been prevented?  Although I am not endorsing the behaviour of a group that lists among its demands that the Australian government widely distribute ivermectin, vitamin C and zinc rather than vaccines, it’s helpful to look at the way the situation escalated, and why. It’s easy to separate ourselves from “them” and enjoy the moral higher ground and moral indignation of being part of the socially accepted, who are willing to comply with stay at home orders and be vaccinated. First, let’s look at what Premier Andrews demanded after allowing the COVID19 cases to rise in the construction industry for weeks before acting. “Construction workers state-wide will need to show evidence to their employer that they have had at least a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine by 11.59pm on the 23rd of Septembe...
1 comment
Read more

Stigma, or The Sneetches and the Vaccine Mandate

 Now the Star-Belly Sneetches  Had bellies with stars.  The Plain-Belly Sneetches Had none upon thars.   Those stars weren't so big. They were really so small.  You might think such a thing wouldn't matter at all.    (Dr Seuss, 1957) In Erving Goffman’s 1963 book Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity, the term stigma is explained.  “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to an attribute that is deeply discrediting, but it should be seen that a language of relationships, not attributes, is really needed” (Goffman, p, 13). What Goffman means by this is that stigma is not an automatic standard response from one person to another, but one determined by context. There is often an automatic stigma about certain indicators of “difference” in society. For instance, if we meet a person in a wheelchair, we may be tempted to treat them differently than others as an automatic response to their perceived inability to perform things ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Still Alice - A Review

  What is a person? What makes a person valuable? If we strip away our social, economic and civilised definitions, what is left? Who are you? What makes you, you? We live in an age where economically, persons are not particularly valuable. If we work and produce money to contribute to society through taxation or perhaps through some altruistic purposes, or through social and communal engagement, we can depend on a pretty good eulogy, from someone. But what if we cannot do those things?  The elderly in aged care are seen as a burden on families, the health system, and even society. We do not interact with the elderly in our siloed zones of school, work and socialising, unless one of our sectors is deliberately designed for them. An elderly person, unless known and loved by their families, loses their social value in a society where policy separates them from the rest of the world.  In their homes and segregated places, the process of ageing is in many ways humiliating. Bec...
Post a Comment
Read more