Facing choices in life and work

Ethics are needed where we face choices and there’s no one but ourselves to see what we do. If there are rules to follow, the choice is between compliance and rebellion. That isn’t an ethical matter. It depends on fear of punishment versus desire for whatever lies outside the rules.

If you face shame or scandal if you’re caught, that isn’t an ethical decision either. Prudence or fear decide the outcome. But if you face nothing beyond your own thoughts about living as you wish to live, you’re confronting a purely ethical decision.

The decision to gossip and pass on a rumor that will embarrass someone; the choice to go easy on a task and cut yourself some slack; the time spent chatting around the water cooler; using office phone lines, computers or stationery for your private needs; all are ethical decisions. No one will know what you’ve done (or they’re doing it themselves and in no position to point the finger).

These small, everyday instances of ethical decisions–are no different from the decision to win a deal by misleading the buyer, cheating a little on an expense claim (everyone does it, right?), or dropping a few words into a meeting that you know will mean someone you dislike will find him or herself under suspicion.
Continued

Another thing lost in the mindless haste of the modern world is time to reach a proper understanding before taking action

In all the topics discussed on the subject of making our world a better place, one that rarely occurs is time: the necessity of giving yourself time to allow change and development to take place. Time is an essential component in any change involving human beings. Despite all the rush in today’s world, and the constant demands for the gratification of desires now, almost any progress people make in their lives takes far longer than they typically allow for.

One of the worst aspects of modern life is the constant hurry. Not only does it create stress and tension, it goes a long way to making people seem dumber than they are. If you want to get your brain going, slow down and give it some time and space to work.

Time to consider the facts fully

The first requirement is time to explore, to inquire into the facts, to think, to reflect and to internalize fresh ideas. Everyone has the experience of thinking they know something, only to find they’ve forgotten it after a few days. Our brains are not like bags we can stuff with facts and ideas and expect them to stay there. They’re more like boxes full of holes that let a great portion of whatever we put inside escape quickly. New thinking is “liquid” and easily runs out through the holes. Only by repeating the learning and thinking experience several times can we make what we are trying to remember “sticky” enough to stay behind. Continued

Fibbing easier through e-mail — “A U.S. study shows e-mail is much more conducive to telling falsehoods than using old-fashioned pen and paper. Moreover, people feel more justified in doing it.” Past research has also found that e-mails are more likely to engender lower levels of trust, negative attitudes and sending rude messages. One more reason to slow down and take your time before replying to those pesky electronic messages.

Writing about values improves relationships — “According to a study published in this month’s issue of Psychological Science, writing about values you hold dear can conjure feelings of love and connection that may help strengthen your social bonds and decrease defensiveness.”

Court rules lesbians are not just from Lesbos — “A Greek court has dismissed a request by residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women, according to a court ruling made public on Tuesday.” Continued

Is there no limit to academic foolishness?

I was amazed to read in The Guardian’s blogs that a Professor Joseph Ferrari from DePaul University in Chicago claims procrastination is a serious disease that needs to be recognized and treated by clinicians. He blames the ‘condition’ for everything from depression, low self-esteem, and insomnia, to “discouraging visits to the dentist or doctor,” and “more accidents at home involving unmended appliances.” (“Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow”)

Another academic, Professor Piers Steel from Calgary University has calculated, apparently, that: “the beeps notifying the arrival of email are . . . causing a 0.5 per cent drop in gross domestic product in the United States, costing the economy $70bn a year.” How he works this out is beyond me — and I suspect beyond any kind of logic or commonsense. (“Hi-tech is turning us all into time-wasters”). Continued

Maybe today’s financial crisis has an unexpected upside

That, at any rate, is the view of Terence Blacker, writing for Britain’s newpaper The Independent (“Reasons to be cheerful about the credit crunch”).

He cites a number of potential upsides: people realizing once again that a house is somewhere to live, not an investment opportunity or a source of never-ending income; less constant yakking about making money; a sense of disgust at some of the incomes of top executives; less indulgence in conspicuous spending; even a greater appreciation of what we all have today. Continued

Playing classical piano music to patients prior to surgery has unexpected benefits

In an article in The Guardian, Susan Tomes reports a study by an eye surgeon in Hawaii that found playing live classical piano music in the “preoperative holding area” produced a beneficial decrease in heart rate and other signs of anxiety once the patient was in the operating theater (“Going under the knife? Ask for a concerto first”).

There seems to be something about classical music — maybe the gentler tempo and strong melodic line of many pieces — that has a power to relax not offered by more up-beat, popular genres. I know that, when I was at university, I always studied to the sound of classical music in the background. I still much prefer to hear classical pieces if I’m feeling stressed.

Even when driving, I find that music that is too fast, aggressively rhythmic or loud adds to my anxiety and distracts me from what I’m doing. In heavy traffic, I have to turn it off. Continued

“What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.” — Leo Buscaglia

Maybe it’s finally time to rescue the concept of ‘the pursuit of happiness’ from the hands of the so-called self-help gurus. That’s the message in an article in Huffington Post by Roger Fransecky (”Happiness Is A Choice“).

Starting from considering the popularity of a Harvard course in positive psychology, the article explores the study of well-being — not the traditional topic of psychology, which has tended to be more interested in mental problems than how to enjoy life more. Continued

Another miscellany of the odd and interesting

Superstar CEOs aren’t

BusinessWeek recently reported a study showing that ‘ordinary CEOs’ who didn’t hit the headlines or get awards from various media out performed those who did — even though the superstar CEOs were given greater rewards by their organizations (”Superstar CEOs Don’t Equal Superstar Performance“). As the Wall Street Journal remarked, this may even been a useful indicator to investors that it’s time to seel the company’s stock, just like those other indicators of forthcoming corporate troubles: a huge HQ building with flagpoles and a landscaped entrance, and the purchase of private jets for executives.

Help for the obsessed

It was a good week for snippets from Canada’s Globe and Mail. The first of these offers Holiday help for the CrackBerry crowd: the addicts who can’t even get away from their ‘fix’ of electronic contact with their office during vacations. Amongst the suggestions: A theme park in England as a PDA-free zone to encourage parents to pay more attention to their children and less attention to their hand-held devices, complete with “PDA police” pointing parents to drop-off areas, where they could safely leave electronics for the day; and an ‘Isolation Vacation’ in Anguilla that bans visitors from all technology — no televisions or phones in the rooms, and confiscation of laptops and personal digital assistants upon arrival. Continued

Why do we get so hung up about consistency?

The US presidential campaign has thrown our obsession with consistency into sharp relief. Over and over again, the words ‘flip-flopping’ are brought into play as a form of attack. Past speeches and writings are combed for supposed — or even real — inconsistencies with what is being said today. Once found, these changes of opinion are waved over the candidate’s head like weapons. “Look, he once said this and now he’s saying this. He’s flip-flopping!”

If you stop to consider this, free from the synthetic excitement the media try to whip up, the only thing worth wondering about is the extent to which people’s opinions fail to change — even over long periods.

Times change. Contexts change. We learn new things, find new possibilities, ought to forget old grudges and hurts. Why shouldn’t our opinions change in line with the new realities?

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
~William Blake

Continued

People may be born with intelligence, but that may not mean they keep it

Balmain Working Mens’ Institute
photo: J Bar

In the debate about what makes a country or a society competitive in the world, it would be interesting to know how much a decline in educational standards counts for. We tend to assume that children are usually better educated than their parents, since standards are rising constantly. What if this is not so in a country — say in the US?

Clive Crook, writing in the Financial Times reports this fact and is clearly of the opinion that it should be more widely reported and discussed than it has been so far:

A startling and profoundly important fact about the US economy has received surprisingly little attention. The educational quality of the country’s workers is starting to decline – not just relatively (because other countries are catching up and moving ahead) but also, for the first time, in absolute terms. Over the coming years, baby-boomers departing from the labour force will have better educational qualifications than the younger workers replacing them. If the ultimate source of an economy’s ability to grow and prosper is its human capital, the US is in trouble . . .

Between 1940 and 2000, the educational standard of people entering the US labor market rose markedly. While fewer than 5 per cent of the population had at least a four-year college education at the start of this period, more than 30 per cent did so by the end.

When the educated Baby Boomers retire

However, the children of the post-war Baby Boomers now have fewer post-graduate degrees than their parents’ generation. What happened? Have they lost interest? Does a good degree count for less in getting a job?

Whatever the immediate reason, there has been no such decline, it appears, in countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada and Russia. In fact, in many other countries, the proportion of people aged 25-34 with at least a college education is now as high as, or higher than, in the US — and still climbing. When the US Baby Boomers leave the labor force, as they are already starting to do, a good proportion of the educational attainments of the country will leave with them. Continued