This chapter examines the current state of jazz in Australia through the lens of notable practitioners—Andrea Keller, Simon Barker, Gian Slater, Kristin Berardi, Phil Slater and Jamie Oehlers. Presented as a panel discussion, the participants explore the term ‘jazz’ as it is perceived both by audiences and the practitioners themselves, discuss the challenges of presenting original music in a country as isolated as Australia, and question whether there is an audible Australian jazz ‘dialect’.

What does it mean to be mentally healthy in old age? According to one account, it means to have a mind that is normal, or natural, for an elderly person. According to another, it is to enjoy the same substantive goods that characterize mental health at other ages – so that the mentally healthy ninety-year-old is just like the mentally healthy forty-year-old. Neither approach is plausible. This chapter offers an alternative “resourcist” account, which evaluates mental health in old age by asking what mental resources are most likely to help someone to live well as an elderly person. Living well involves both having good moments and of contributing to a good life story. What it means to be mentally healthy in old age then depends on what opportunities are granted by natural ageing and by social practices for elderly people to expand and conclude the stories of their lives.

In any attempt to “rethink” biodiversity governance, we need to consider that defining nature (and related concepts such as biodiversity, ecosystems, landscapes or green infrastructure) is not merely an objective scientific exercise. In reality, context-specific, subjective, normative and dynamic worldviews and values are at play in any definition of nature, whether explicitly or implicitly. Being aware of this pluralism is essential for avoiding “objective” definitional attitudes that risk disregarding and marginalizing the plurality of values and worldviews connected to different definitions of nature. In fact, paternalistic positions can create breeding grounds for fruitless dialogues between stakeholders, and thus pluralistic approaches help open up spaces for discussion.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE ABOUT PATRIOTISM

Most people think that patriotism is a virtue. That, at least, is what is suggested by a quick glance at the political world and the popular media in contemporary western societies. Politicians constitute an extreme case – I think that many of them would rather be called cowardly, selfish or corrupt than unpatriotic – but their case is odd only for its extremeness. In everyday life, it seems as though you are usually offering a compliment when you call someone a patriot, and as though patriotism is usually thought to be something that we should foster in our children and ourselves. Patriotism, in the popular imagination, may not quite rank alongside kindness, justice, honesty and the like, but it is a virtue nonetheless; it is a character trait that the ideal person would possess.

I think that this common view is mistaken. Patriotism is certainly not a virtue, and is probably a vice. In Chapter 2, I tried to show that friendship often involves a certain sort of loyalty in belief, which can bring the standards of good friendship into conflict with other important evaluative standards. The next two chapters argue that patriotism, too, involves loyalty in belief, but of a more pervasive and damaging kind.

We all have loyalties; think of some of yours. Probably, many of your loyalties are to other people: your friends, for example, and perhaps your colleagues, parents, children or romantic partner. You might also be loyal to certain institutions, like a university or a political party; or to your favorite brands or shops or restaurants; or to your pets, your country or your profession. Some of your loyalties, probably, are very important to you, playing a major role in your life and your self-conception; examples might be your loyalties to your spouse and children. Others, while having their place, probably do not seem quite so important: your loyalty to a local coffee shop, say, or your loyalty to your favorite football team.

If you are loyal to something, then you probably favor it, in one way or another, in your actions. You might promote its interests, treat it with respect or veneration, follow its orders, or act as its advocate. But loyalty is not just a matter of how you act; it is also a matter of how you think, and how you are motivated. If you are loyal to something, then thoughts of it may inflame your passions, it may be something towards which you feel warmth and affection, and you may be saddened by thoughts of its suffering or demise.

THE QUESTION

There are different things to which you can be loyal and different ways in which you can be loyal. The way you feel and act towards your spouse, for example, is probably quite different from the way you feel and act towards your favorite football team, even though both are manifestations of loyalty.

This chapter begins to formulate a definition of loyalty, looking at what it is that all loyalties have in common, and how loyalties can differ in object and type while still counting as loyalties.

As far as possible, I want to answer these questions without prejudging or second-guessing our everyday uses of the concept. In telling a story about the nature of loyalty, there is a temptation to try to guarantee that anything that really counts as a loyalty will be something valuable, or something that deserves our approval. But I do not think that we should begin from the assumption that loyalty is, or ought to be made to look like, something that answers to certain independent evaluative standards. The first goal is to reach a better understanding not of true or good or sensible or rationally defensible loyalty, but just of loyalty.

Loyalty is sometimes spoken of as a character trait, as when we say that a particular person is, as well as being brave and clever, loyal. We can also speak of loyalty as a principle or ideal.

INTRODUCTION

I have spent much of this book arguing that loyalty is not an important moral category. There are many different forms of loyalty, and their differences tend to be of more ethical interest than their similarities. For the purposes of moral philosophy, it is often important to treat different loyalties separately, and while some are of great value, others are positively undesirable. Loyalty, considered as a general proposition, is not a value or a virtue.

One reason to worry about this set of views is that in playing down the ethical significance of the notion of loyalty, we may also find ourselves playing down the ethical significance of the notion of disloyalty, and that would seem to be a serious mistake. Disloyalty appears to be a distinctive and profound kind of wrong, and the ideas with which it is associated – ideas of letting someone down, betrayal, abandonment, treason and treachery – are highly morally charged.

Suppose that you tell a friend something personal, something that you would not want shared with others, and later she blurts it out in company. It is one thing to express your displeasure by telling her that she was careless, thoughtless or inconsiderate.