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Previous Posts
Coding Ethics...
Internet activist and New York Times bestselling author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, Eli Pariser is concerned that information gatekeepers of the past (i.e. editors/reporters) have been replaced by algorithms that individually tailor information based upon a host of v
posted 2:49:15pm Jan. 22, 2012 |
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Can Ethical Companies Do Business With Unethical Leaders?
Coca-cola has been accused of "propping up a notorious Swaziland dictator" whose human rights abuses and bilking of the national wealth has long been criticized by human rights activists. According to Guardian UK reporter David Smith**, Swaziland's King Mswati III is Africa's last absolute monarch w
posted 3:49:39pm Jan. 02, 2012 |
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New Years Resolutions: Are We Lying to Ourselves?
I know it's become popular, but I've become suspect of using traditional goal-setting strategies and business process techniques to change personal habits and pursue a meaningful life. While I can admit that there's something invigorating--even exciting--about casting a new vision, writing that list
posted 10:51:42pm Jan. 01, 2012 |
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Is Craigslist Who We Really Are?
Raise your hand if you're familiar with Craigslist.org. Chances are, there's one that serves your community. And it's extremely handy for job listings, housing, dating, selling your old crap or buying new old crap.Really, it's ingenious. But why's it also so darn discouraging?
posted 9:15:55am Dec. 18, 2009 |
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How Do You Complain - Gracefully?
So, I'm of the ethos that if you don't like your meal, you send it back. It's how I was raised, and I don't have any sense of shame about that. When you pay for something, you should get your money's worth. HOWEVER, I also believe there's a polite way to do it, and a wrong way.Sometimes I don't
posted 1:29:56pm Dec. 17, 2009 |
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Joan Ball is a business professor at St. John’s University in New York and the author of Flirting with Faith: My Spiritual Journey from Atheism to a Faith-Filled Life.
posted July 3, 2009 at 6:50 am
For me, to be guided by the heart while constrained by the rational is the best approach. It is not always successful. Sometimes the heart gets suckered, and sometimes the rational is cold. My state is not static, and my response is not always the same faced with similar decisions. What is key is to not discount others, to see them as equally valid in my eyes as I am. This is not easy and we run into limits. Almost everyone has a hierarchy of importance, (self, family, friends, community, others.) When I give to a stranger, I make a decision to give some portion of what serves me to serve them. But, here is the rub, the altruistic or charitable impulse also serves the giver. We are a social species, and altruism is a survival trait. To become successful we rely on others: We are all in it together. This is often recognized most clearly from an intuitive, emotional aspect of mind more readily than from the rational. The two are not mutually exclusive, even though we tend to get the gut/emotional/intuitive (GEI) reaction first. This says that the GEI reaction is an older evolutionary one, which has obviously served us.
Nothing is simple though. The oldest, fight or flight reactions are excellent survival mechanisms, but these often need to be checked by higher GEI and rational faculties to become ethical. Responding immediately out of fear usually does not yield a good ethical response, but sometimes it does, (as in the soldier who throws himself on a grenade.) These things are not simple. Further research will probably yield some very interesting results.
posted July 3, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I would have guessed that true morality comes from the heart or feelings. Judgement, rigidity and imposition of one’s morals onto others I believe, comes from the mind. Choices to commit acts that would knowingly hurt others are divorced from our feeling centers.