ETHICS

Ethics

Introduction

Ethics and culture, understood in its various meanings, are factors that have often been circumvented by setting development strategies. Economies, despite its growth (apart from those which are now in crisis), fail to mitigate the alarming rates of poverty, unemployment and a growing system of exclusion, it has become inevitable to explore other terms.

If we assume that the development aims to promote the welfare of the population, derive strategies for Latin America and the Caribbean, the world's worst rates in the distribution of wealth, can and should be viewed as a violation of ethical principles that call for life, for the 'well being' (and not only by the well being), for equity and equal opportunities.

Taste is surely among the most vexing and beguiling of questions, in a league with sex and money. Only the most secure among us do not worry about taste some of the time. When we choose a picture for wall, or the paint for the wall itself, when we offer an opinion about a movie or a meal, one of the questions in mind is, what are we saying about ourselves? The Idea of taste as a metaphor for choice is a peculiarly modern. According to Stephen Bayley in this provocative book, which he calls a "suggestive essay" on the history and nature of taste? Taste often seems artificial, like assassination theories. Taste can be seen to explain everything. Only one thing about taste is certain: It changes. It would be comforting to think there are definable standards, that certain principles will always obtain, but of course, we know that is not true.. Architect Richard Rogers puts it interestingly: "Taste is the enemy of aesthetics. It can always be challenged and is always superseded." One era will embrace ornament, another it's opposite. Bayley points to London's Albert Memorial. It built in the 1860s-spires, gewgaws and all-in a style I've heard described as "Gothic-berserk." It was to honor Prince Albert, sponsor of the Great Exhibition of 1851, a venture designed "to improve public taste." A generation later, (Gao, 2002) the Viennese architect and pamphleteer, thought ornament itself was a crime, that it "inflicts serious injury on people's health." Loos developed a following, as Modernism demonstrates.

Theories of Taste

Self-selection" theory asserts that women who choose business careers have traits different from those typical of their gender (Dobbins and Platz, 1986; Donnell and Hall, 1980; Terborg, 1977). This proposition could account for observed differences ethical attitude or behavior of women in the general population compared to those in the work environment. A little closer to home, there are probably reasonable people who think the mini-mall that sits so forlornly in the hulking shadow of the Beverly Center a triumph of Postmodernism. Others will recognize it for the blight that it is. None of this will affect tastemeisters yet unborn who may point to it as an example of the emptiness of the 1980s, or perhaps as the misunderstood Chartres of a bygone ...