Ethical Issues 2015

By issue, I mean a social problem which people are mobilizing to solve. By issue, I mean something that is specific and can be understood in terms of certain people, institutions, and activities that can be made public and changed in order to solve the problem. An issue is specific, actionable, and public.

The Ethical Issues high on my list for 2015 are:

1. Politics. Extreme partisanship, big money, high inequality, religious violence, information technology are contributing to the loss of public space. What is the meaning and what should be the practice of politics, civil society, and citizenship today?
2. Equity in terms of wealth and equality. The tension between individual property and distributive justice.
3. Social strata: clan, class, and ethnicity. The struggle between tribalism and universal empathy. The continuing scourge of racism in the US and of tribalism throughout the world.
4. Education: The crisis in schooling in the US. The crisis in civilizations and their cultures. Human development and the meaning of learning and thinking.
5. Science and Technology. The dawning of a post human world? The future of artificial intelligence? Choices as to the evolution of the species?
6. Planet Earth: The changing human habitat through urbanization and industrialization. What should the earth and the city look like to sustain the human enterprise. Questions of climate, the oceans, energy, and new urbanism.

I believe that any treatment of ethics/politics today needs to deal with these issues in thought and action.