How Do Developers Handle Moral Dilemmas?

DwightFagen asks: "I'm curious to know how developers in the Slashdot community handle situations in which they are given a project that rubs against their moral borders. I was recently hired as a Flash developer for a design and development company and am just beginning my second project. This particular assignment is to build the video portion of an online magazine. This magazine deals with various topics and is by no means a pornographic site (although some content may border on that), but it seems one of its key tenets is to be untethered by social moral values. Though I do not believe such things should in any way be censored or banned from the internet, I do not wish to actively support something I believe to be an exploitation of human beings. What would you in the Slashdot community do in such a situation? Have any of you dealt with something like this before?"

"For the sake of clarity, I'd like to mention that I'm all for the freedom of expression on the internet and that I do not in any way judge people based on the media they choose to consume.

If this were a clear cut case of pornography, my choice would be simple; but that is not the case. I do still hold myself to certain standards and believe in the value of integrity and I would also like to do work that my family and friends can be proud of (or at least work that I could show them). However, I would also like to keep my job and would not want to put my small company of very nice people in a difficult position (as the deadline is not so far off)."

Christ on a stick.

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not wish to actively support something I believe to be an exploitation of human beings.

Well, then. You just answered your own question, Clyde.

You believe it exploits. You don't want to support exploits. You're done.

Unless, of course, you want someone to tell you it isn't exploitation. Which I would probably do if you were my friend. Screw Jesus and Screw Andrea Dworkin, we all gotta eat somehow, not to mention get our plumbing cleaned out somehow.

So don't be such a hand-wringing Nellie. Do your job, bank your pay, shut your mouth, and keep a weather eye out for something better. That's what everyone does. All the time. Welcome to the NFL.

Re:What?

[freemywrld]

Great point there, zoeblade.

And now on to my advice to the questioner. A couple of years ago I accepted a job doing web work for a porn company. Now there are two mindsets that came crashing into conflict for me - that porn inherently is harmful to participants (namely, the women participants) and women in general (encouraging objectification, use as sexual objects, etc. etc.) versus the idea that those who get involved willingly and knowledgably accept and agree to what they are about to get paid for.
What did I do?

I did my job, and accepted that while I would certainly never choose to participate, at least all of the work that we produced was of (relatively) good taste, everyone was verified to be of legal age, and generally, everyone seemed to be having fun. So, I set aside my judgements and decided that everyone has a right to choose what they do in their life, what they consume, and what morals they uphold. I found that the work didn't bother me, and I never felt that my own morals where being compromised. Objectification is everywhere, in everything we do. If you can honestly say that you consume no product or service that exploits other humans in any way (sex appeal, sweatshops, whatever the case may be - exploitation comes in many forms), then maybe you can ride away from this project or your job on a high horse. Not to be harsh, but seriously, I really think you just need to relax a bit. The world is a crazy place, and some people are quite proud to bare their bodies for art, sex, or science.

Even better: Dostoevsky & Kierkegaard

[Ivan Matveich]

But while we're discussing Nietzsche, why not read his Genealology of Morals: [mala.bc.ca]

But let's go back: the problem with the other origin of the "good," of the good as the man of resentment has imagined it for himself, demands some conclusion. That lambs are annoyed at the great predatory birds is not a strange thing, and it provides no reason for holding anything against these large birds of prey, because they snatch away small lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves "These predatory birds are evil—and whoever is least like a predatory bird—and especially who is like its opposite, a lamb—shouldn't that animal be good?" there is nothing to find fault with in this setting up of an ideal, except for the fact that the birds of prey might look down with a little mockery and perhaps say to themselves "We are not at all annoyed with these good lambs—we even love them. Nothing is tastier than a tender lamb."

To demand that strength does not express itself as strength, that it must not consist of a will to overpower, a will to throw down, a will to rule, a thirst for enemies and opposition and triumph—that is as unreasonable as to demand that weakness express itself as strength. A quantum of force is just such a quantum of drive, will, action--indeed, it is nothing but these drives, willing, and actions in themselves—and it cannot appear as anything else except through the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified in it), which understands and misunderstands all action as conditioned by something which causes actions, by a "Subject."

In fact, in just the same way as people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter as an action, as the effect of a subject, which is called lightning, so popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of that strength, as if behind the strong person there is an indifferent substrate, which is free to manifest strength or not. But there is no such substrate, there is no "being" behind the doing, acting, becoming. "The doer" is merely invented after the fact—the act is everything. People basically duplicate the event: when they see lightning, well, that is an action of an action: they set up the same event first as the cause and then again as its effect.

Natural scientists are no better when they say "Force moves, force causes" and so on—our entire scientific knowledge, for all its coolness, its freedom from feelings, still remains exposed to the seductions of language and has not gotten rid of the changelings foisted on it, the "Subject" (the atom, for example, is such a changeling, like the Kantian "Thing in itself"): it's no wonder that the repressed, secretly smouldering feelings of rage and hate use this belief for themselves and, in fact, maintain a faith in nothing more strongly than in the idea that the strong are free to be weak and predatory birds are free to be lambs—and in so doing, they arrogate to themselves the right to blame the birds of prey for being birds of prey...

When the oppressed, the downtrodden, the conquered say to each other, with the vengeful cunning of the powerless, "Let us be different from evil people, namely, good! And that man is good who does not overpower, who hurts no one, who does not attack, who does not retaliate, who hands revenge over to God, who keeps himself hidden, as we do, who avoids all evil and demands little from life in general—like us, the patient, humble, and upright"—what that amounts to, coolly expressed and without bias, is essentially nothing more than "We weak people are merely weak. It's good if we do nothing, because we are not strong enough."

But this bitter state, this shrewdness of the lowest ranks, which even insects possess (for in great danger they stand as if they were dead in order not to do "too much"), has, thanks to the counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, dressed