Australian School of Business Study

Warning: I'm practising my philosphy writing a bit here.

Yesterday, I participated in a study for the Australian School of Business. They select various students based on criteria such as major, age, gender, etc. and offer pay dependant on the length of the study. So yesterday I earned $15 for 31 minutes of work (it was counted as a 1 hour study).

The study overall examined how we make decisions, particularly when ethics are involved. But the reason I'm writing is because one question asked, "Obedience to authority and loyalty to a group are important qualities. Please argue why these are more important than caring for an individual and fairness." And I realised something I perhaps already knew, albeit in different words: I don't agree with the prompt itself. I value individual caring and fairness more highly than obedience to authority and loyalty to a group.

To be thorough, I should first state that I don't find lack of value in authority and loyalty. In fact, I think they are important values, and contribute to a lawful and comfortable society. Imagine we didn't respect our police force, or the government, or public workers, or any employed person for that matter - it would be anarchy. Mutual respect underpins civil routine. And imagine you couldn't expect loyalty from those you'd built up trust with - it would make any type of relationship very difficult.

My argument isn't to devalue loyalty and respect for authority, but that care for the individual and a standard for fairness, when leveled head-to-head former against the latter, are more important. If we can't care for one person, how can we expect to care for a planet? Or even one set of people? Is not a society the sum of its parts, if not only in the literal sense? Then attending to the individual only seems right in maintaining the whole. In terms of authority, if we cannot uphold fairness, what does authority practise? Is it still deserving of our respect, if it manages an inequitable system?

With all of that said, I'm simply trying to say that it's more important to me to care about a person individually than to adhere to a group of friends simply because they're a group of friends. If belonging to a group somehow denies you the privilege of attending to someone in need, whether that's someone you've met or haven't yet met, then it can't quite be called a group of "friends," I'd say. I'd like to keep my intentions always focused outwards, on enriching the lives of others, on lending a keen ear, on being the man God intended me to be. And that always means caring about the individual.

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