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

To be free is a choice, not a right

Portrait of John Surart Mill
via Wikipedia

This article by Richard Reeves on The Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ blog should be compulsory reading (“The value of a self-governed life”). John Stuart Mill was one of the most influential writers of his time, or the times since, and his exploration of the relationship between liberty and choice has probably never been bettered.

Despite all the protestations of commitment to liberty and freedom today, it has rarely been under greater threat, whether from those who wish to stamp their own religious or political views on the world at large; those who claim to be saving us from terrorism by removing our liberties to resist being saved in their chosen way; or those who see conformity as the best route to profit, and freedom as inefficient in economic terms.

For Mill, liberty was always a choice. As Reeves says:

Mill’s idea of liberty requires freedom of opinion, expression and lifestyle in order to produce the broadest possible palette of ways of life for us to choose from. The state should not impose a single view of the best way to live – for Mill, the idea of a centrally imposed national curriculum was horrifying. Equality before the law, and rights to fair trial were important precisely because they allowed people to live the way they chose, even if eccentric or even disgusting to the majority, so long as they did not actively harm others in so doing.

Continued

What happens when a word loses most of its meaning?

Here’s an intriguing thought from Andre, who writes the blog ‘Tools For Thought’ (“Questioning My Assumptions: Productivity as an Amoeba Word”).

He writes:

I’m over productivity. It’s outlived its usefulness as a focal point and framework for meaningful discussion.
 
Through overuse and misuse, productivity has become an amoeba word, a term whose meaning can morph to any usage the speaker or writer chooses by changing its frame of expectation. Productivity joins the ranks of words like “success,” “spirituality,” and “growth” to mean whatever the person using them decides they mean in the moment.

Continued

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea. . . especially if it’s the only one you have.”

Ideas are like wrench sets. If you have too small a set, you can be sure that you’ll never have the one you need when the lawn tractor breaks down. Obsessive people buy huge wrench sets with every possible size, imperial and metric, just in case. Smart ones buy an adjustable wrench or two.

Ideas are much the same. When you need one, it’s usually too late to take the time to find it. And, unlike that vast case of wrenches, your mind can’t hold that many ideas or random bits of information without forgetting most of them. You need the mental equivalent of an adjustable wrench.

That’s a concept: a way of looking at something that can be adjusted to provide the precise answer you need in specific circumstances. Human minds are bad at holding lots of disconnected ideas and bits of learning, but first-rate at recalling and using concepts. Continued

We’re always being told people resist and dislike change. Not so. What they hate is stupid, pointless changes that produce nothing useful.

Change has become a constant mantra. We’re always being told that “change is inevitable” or “change is necessary” and that “without change, there is only decay.” All true — up to a point. You would think people would have got used to change by now. Besides, there’s little doubt that some kinds of change are welcomed. Look at the thousands of people turning out for rallies in the American presidential election, excited and energized by the prospect of significant changes after eight years of President Bush.

So why is it also a truism that much change is resisted, whether it’s change at work, change in social attitudes, or personal changes affecting how we live?

The Financial Times tackles the topic in an article called “Change we can believe in”. As you would expect, their emphasis is on changes in the workplace, but you can easily apply the same principles to any other type of change that threatens to effect groups and individuals. Continued

It seems that thinking isn’t something that only happens inside your head

A recent article in The Boston Globe summarizes some of the current finding about the ways that our bodies and minds work together (“Don’t just stand there, think”). If these studies are correct, the relationship between what goes on inside the brain and what the rest of the body is doing may be far more important and complex than we imagined. That old image of the sage sitting in silent, unmoving contemplation might simply be wrong.

The English poet, Sir John Betjeman, explained that he went on long walks to work out his verses, which maybe explains why so many of his poems have the kind of rhythm you could march to. Edward Elgar bicycled through miles of countryside, seeking inspiration for his music. Now it seems that the intuitive link they found between bodily activity and mental processing is being proved by scientific experiments. Continued

What does it mean to be human in an age of electronic mob fashions?

I was intrigued by an article on Huffington Post, written by Andrea Learned (“Question External Expectations”), which questions why so many people seem blindly to do what they feel they should should over doing what they really want.

A good deal of the article is about the way the Internet is reshaping social contacts. To me, this is less important than the writer suggests. It’s easy to blame technology for things we maybe don’t want to face up to in ourselves: our sheep-like willingness to stick with the herd, rather than go it alone and state our views openly; our tendency towards finding it easier to let others do our thinking for us, rather than make the effort ourselves. Continued

I guess most of us have become used to the constant efforts by the media to induce mass hysteria over some minor topic. I had come to think of it as little more than marketing, on the basis that disaster stories always sell better than good news. Then I found this article by Robert Skidelsky and realized that such apocalyptic thinking has a very long history (“The apocalyptic mind”).

He says that, “classical apocalyptic thinking is certainly alive and well, especially in America, where it feeds on Protestant fundamentalism, and is mass-marketed with all the resources of modern media.” Even scientists are not immune, expressing probabilities as certainties and attacking dissent as some sort of heresy. Continued

It’s common for young people, especially young women, to claim that they “can’t do math.” Of course, it’s not true. It seems to be more a perception that math “isn’t cool” — or whatever the relevant expression is nowadays. It’s for nerds and geeks, like most intellectual pursuits. And while my guess is that this attitude is more prevalent in the US than most places, it seems to be common throughout much of the world.

That’s why this article in The Guardian “Comment is free” section intrigued me (“Geek + nerd = ?”). Ian Stewart, the writer, comments on the power of stereotypes to replace actual knowledge and how, once they are in place, they become hard to change. On the topic of geeks and nerds he writes:

The real problem, I suspect, is not confined to mathematics. The words “geek” and “nerd” were both coined in the USA, where they reflect a general tendency to despise all types of intellectual activity. Any interest other than television or sport is viewed as weird, be it collecting fossils or writing poetry. And when children encounter something difficult at school - such as mathematics - a natural defence mechanism comes into play. It is much easier to denigrate the topic, and make fun of the students who can handle it, than it is to admit to your own inadequacy.

I have to say that I view the thoughtless denigration of intellect in favor of ‘being practical’ with some alarm. Continued

Here’s an interesting thought: is contemporary politics more likely to be swayed by comedians than arguments? Does a vibrant democracy need showbiz pizazz more than sober thought and detailed arguments?

That’s the idea espoused by Ian Buruma in “Send in the clowns” in “Comment is free. . .” from the British newspaper, The Guardian.

Beginning with Beppo Grillo, one of Italy’s most famous comics and most influential political commentators, and Victor Trujillo, better known as Brozo the Clown in Mexico, whose TV program is a prime source of political information, Buruma turns to the US presidential election:

While staid TV pundits ask the usual vapid questions during presidential debates in the United States, candidates know that the really important thing is to get laughs on the comedy shows of David Letterman or Jay Leno. And, for several years, American liberals have looked to Jon Stewart, another comic talent, for critical political commentary.

The point to all this, Buruma claims is that:

In fact, democracy demands a degree of showmanship and pizazz; politicians need to appeal to the mass of voters, and not just to an elite, which can afford to ignore hoi polloi. To be utterly boring, holding forth for hours on end, regardless of entertainment value, is the privilege of autocrats. Only communist rulers could force millions of people to buy their complete works, filled with wooden ideas written in turgid prose.

So, should our politicians brush up their comedy skills? Should President Bush end news conferences with a song-and-dance routine? Should Gordon Brown renounce Prime Minister’s Question Time in favor of fifteen minutes of jokes and pratfalls (and would anyone notice the difference)?

What do you think?

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