DukeEthicist: OccupyAnswers

Movement for the sake of Movement = No Answers.

"The challenge that Occupy Duke poses to the Duke Community is fundamentally an ethical question. We challenge all members of the Duke Community first to explore where the rampant economic and social inequity in our society comes from and then we challenge them to critically analyze the role that they as individuals and Duke as an institution plays in creating those inequities. The movement is, at its core, an ethical inquiry into the ways that our lives shape economic and social inequality. These are not easy questions to ask: they bring into question fundamental assumptions that we make about the world."

–Jacob Tobia, member of Occupy Duke

The preceding quotation was in response to the question “How is Occupy Duke an ethical movement?” After reading this reply, I felt the best way to paraphrase it was: “It is about inequality, so therefore, it just is.” Not feeling completely satisfied with the answer, I looked into various other resources to discover more about the movement and what it was all about. Yet, every single resource was about as vague as this reply. They said it was about fighting out against the 1 percent that control all of the economic and political power in this nation and making its distribution more equal. But how is this movement trying to do that? Finally, I came across the best answer in an interview printout on the table in front of their campsite. It stated in so many words: this movement has no leaders and is undefined. They are not particularly affiliated with any party, and have no clear goals.

This was shocking to see. Have none of these people learned how to properly critique something? I will take a moment to remind all who have forgotten that the best way to encourage improvement is to point out where someone needs to improve! It is as though a teacher hands back a paper and with a fat red F sprawled across it without telling the student where they went wrong. In this case, the Occupy Duke movement is boldly saying that our economic and political state is bad because it is rampant with inequality, without even beginning to outline how to stop it. Even if that big Wall Street businessman decides to compromise, they will have no solution to offer him. I find this quasi-hypocrisy very frustrating.

As far as the ethics of this movement goes, I feel that denying people information is, in itself, a bit unethical. The movement is asking people to stand behind an issue that many of them have yet to understand, simply because they fall into the category of 'the 99 percent.' It is a movement for the sake of movement, which is leading nowhere. (Perhaps I should make a more inclusive movement saying that dying is bad. I am sure I would have 100% support.)

Once Occupy Duke is able to pull itself together enough to actually effect some REAL change, I think that they will be ethically driven. If they can get the big companies on Wall Street to reinvest their excess money into more valuable, social change, then I will support the movement completely. For instance, Gene Isenberg, a CEO of NBR (an oil drilling company) was paid $100 million upon his retirement. Did he really need that extra bonus? Imagine how struggling families would have been helped had it been cut to $50 million. Imagine how many students would no longer be drowning in student loans. Imagine all of the vaccines that could have been administered! Only when Occupy Duke and all the other Occupy Together movements actually change issues like this can they be deemed worthy to wear the crown of ethics.