Ethics Tools: Banishment

Seeing pictures of former employees walking with their personal effects (and trade secrets for future use?) boxes out of the revolving doors of the offices of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers a few weeks ago, I was somehow reminded of the common ethics tool used by employers and many other institutions, known variously as disappearing, gone, out the door, and in the ancient usage: banishment.

Now I admit this is a rather flimsy connection. The employees of these firms weren't really poofed or taken out of the Flickr photo. But there is a similarity, in that they had a job one day, but the next they didn't.

And to be fair to myself, I knew I was onto something when last week (that would be around October 8th) John McCain offered several remedies for the expanding financial crisis, among them one moral remedy. Which one? Getting rid of, disappearing, poofing... Greed, of course. To be exact, McCain said, ..."we should banish greed..."

This would be difficult. Yet, the tool of banishment is one we should consider bringing back into use. If not, we can make it stylish, yes, and in vogue.

I have already described one archaic ethics tool, the one where knighthoods are taken away(www.a2ethics.org/node/347). Unfortunately, only royalty get to rely on this tool of keeping the morally wayward in line. Banishment, however, has more democratic possibilities.

I should make a weak attempt to get you on the same page here. What is banishment? When it is exercised, say on you, it means that you have to leave your homeland and your many identities and move away...forever. When you are banished, you can never eat lunch in your town again. Your bridges are burned and can't be rebuilt. You can't go home for eternity. It's pretty extreme.

What are some good reasons for banishment? This is another hard one. Historically, banishment represented a political power used by emperors, tyrants and generally just the people who were on top, to get rid of the people who annoyed them. Some were threats to their power, others opposed them and still others were just bothersome and in the way.

As you can imagine, many philosophers, at least in the ancient world when banishment ruled, were routinely threatened with banishment. The emperors didn't like what these philosophers thought, because it was corrupting and may have made people think. Many of these philosophers had a way with words. The emperors also found these philosophers' skills in gaining fellow disciples very dangerous.

A few of the many banished that I can think of off the top of my head are: Cicero and Socrates. Cicero approached it all very pragmatically and got alot done: he wrote several of his most famous ethics works, such as On Obligations, during the boring hours of his banishment. And Socrates? Well, he was banished and he refused to leave Athens, his home. So, instead he drank the poisoned hemlock and died. And we have been arguing over Socrates and his decision ever since.

There's one more thing about banishment. Cicero was banished. But more than once. So, his banishment feels more like exile. And there is a difference which I am just thinking about as I write. Exile is also an ethics tool, but it is at once more temporary, in vogue and vastlessly overused. Exiles always get to imagine that they are going to return, just as Cicero got to return. Again and again.

Further, there are communities of exiles. They are everywhere today. So, what's the point of being exiled? It is not as in vogue as I claimed just a few sentences ago.

But banishment? It should be Robinson Crusoe on the island-like. Napoleon on St. Helena, farther away on the atol, not close by where cabals can meet on the coral to plot returns.

I would like to say that we should also be wary of the banishments of fairy tales. You know the ones where the prince is always banished for reasons that never seem political. But even so, the prince is always sorry, remorseful and contrite, and he has a self-interest in becoming unbanished. Why? Because he always falls in love with a woman who sings and is fond of exclaiming,"Oh,my!" and "Banish the thought!"

The moral of the fairy tale? Beware of people who want to banish thought.

The End