Society - LECTURE

(Raymond Williams)

It's about sharing, humanity and freedom.

"You can spend 10% of your time doing things to help out fellow members of society then you are contributing to society. You are contributing to the bettering of the world"

Socially and Ecologically Responsible Design

This is what the first things first manifesto is all about.

How do we determine what is socially responsible?

What you need is a framework of ethics.

Ethical Theories

• Subject Relativism - there are no universal moral norms of right and wrong, all people decide right and wrongs for themselves, everyone does their own thing. (Here you don't have the concept of society)
• Cultural Relativism - the ethical theory that what’s right or wrong based on he place or time. (It claims to have some link to some social organisation but doesn't)
• Divine Command Theory - good actions are aligned with the will of God, bad actions are contrary to the will of God, the holy book helps make the decisions, ethics can be found in the holy book. (There are different interpretations of the ethics, this where it is flawed)

Kantianism (Deontological Ethics) - Duty based ethics

To act ethically you need to follow these two things and if you are then you know you're acting in an ethical way.

1. Act only from moral rules that you can universalise (if everyone did it and it caused problems them it is not moral).
2. Act so that you always treat both yourself and other people as ends in themselves, and never only as a means to an end. (If you use people for your own benefit)

Utilitarianism - If something generally makes the world a better place hen it's probably the right thing.

Social Contract Theory - The idea that there is a social contract between everyone in society, like a bond and that bond prevents us acting like savages. To be civilised we need to help each other, and work together. Without this we have anarchy.

Figured out that the best campaigns are those that make people feel like they are doing something ethical.