18^th Annual TWI Ethics Essay Contest

The World Around Us and My Personal Responsibility

18^th Annual Ethics Essay Contest Prompt

Pick a problem related to sustainability that you see affecting people and the world around us. Reflect on how it relates to TWI’s view of ethics by addressing each of the essay components in your writing.

• Illustrate your chosen problem, showing why it is a problem and for whom or what it is a problem.
• Select and describe what you feel is a meaningful solution to the problem you chose.
• Demonstrate you have considered the effects, both positive and negative, of your proposed solution.
• Describe your understanding of the impact your solution will have on those affected.
• Demonstrate you understand what impact your solution will have on the environment.
• What action(s) can you personally take BOTH now to support your solution, and in the future to support your solution? (personal action component will be weighted more)

You may answer these questions in any order that allows your essay to flow smoothly.

Essay Prompt Background

The Williams Institute believes that ethics is ultimately about people, relationships and personal responsibility for the ethical choices we make. That includes accounting for how our choices affect people and relationships.

Within the context of TWI’s view of ethics we want to explore ethical issues in the world around us, particularly, Sustainability. Sustainability is about the interconnected relationship between people and the world around us and how the choices we make impact those relationships, for good and bad. Social Sustainability is about meeting the needs of people and communities by being good stewards and being responsible in the management of resources we use.

True sustainability is said to have three major components: Environment, Society and Economy. Oftentimes within the field of sustainability the focus is placed on environmental or economic impacts. Sustainability without concern for people is not true sustainability and a “sustainable” solution that improves the quality of the environment may potentially have a negative impact on people. When considering the social aspects of sustainability, we consider: quality of life, access to resources (food, water, healthcare, education), interconnectedness, social justice.

Quality of Life:

Physical well-being; Mental/Emotional well-being; Ability to get around – transportation or mobility for impairments or elderly; Relationship – able to have healthy relationships (this may have implications based on expected gender-roles or laws… oftentimes arranged child marriages are discussed); Ability to Meet Basic Needs; Life Satisfaction

What social factors impact these things:

Social Justice

• Intergenerational Equity – fairness between groups that currently exist
• Intragenerational Equity – the current population is acting in a way that future generations will not be harmed by current actions
• Interconnectedness – this is a big one. It may mean in a really social way (like access to other people and connectivity to your community) or it may be more physical (access to public transportation to get across town to your doctor)

Issues we consider:

Trade-offs – think of it like a scale, when you one side gets heavier the other gets lighter. Also might call this opportunity costs.

Unintended Consequences – in helping in one area, another area has side effects (usually negative but sometimes positive)

Cascading Effects – you change one thing and it causes a chain reaction. An easy ecological example is: we killed all the wolves, which caused the deer population to explode, which caused the plant population to shrink (from the deer eating them), which caused landslides (the roots of the plants had previously helped hold the ground together), which ultimately hurt people and their homes.

TWI is proud to create this opportunity for students to think and write about what they feel to be an important ethical issue in this day and age.