Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

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The Possibility of Tolerance

March 4, 2015

I have a friend who is a walking enigma. He was born in India and looks like someone born in India. He was also born into a Catholic family (there is a lot of history in that area of western India that was settled by Portuguese many years ago). He’s also an electrical engineer who founded a company and then sold it.

Jim Pinto wrote articles about automation for me for 10 years. His writings now have broadened into a more general social commentary. His latest blog post is an impassioned plea for tolerance.

He says, “Tolerance is the appreciation of diversity and the ability to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards those whose opinions, practices, religion, culture differ from one’s own. Genuine tolerance is respect for the dignity of others. It focuses more on our common humanity than on our differences.”

The early Christians understood how to live in a diverse society. The apostle Paul once said that what happened to people outside his communities, his ekklesia groups, was God’s business, not his. He was concerned with building the faith and knowledge of those in the community and attracting new people into the faith.

But Christianity eventually became the official religion of the Roman empire, and then of many countries even until today. Many today don’t know what it is like to live in a diverse society. Everyone around them is the same race, color, religion. Sometimes they are intolerant of others simply through sheer ignorance and lack of experience.

I routinely interact with people whose origins are from most places around the world. They may reflect at least a half-dozen religions, not to mention all the varieties of Christian flavors.

Toleration does not mean bending my faith. It means, like Jim said, treating other human beings with dignity and respect. It is like Martin Luther King, Jr., said that his dream was that we’d all judge others by the strength of their characters, not the color of their skin.

Jesus related to Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, Romans. But he blasted things such as hypocrisy, self-righteousness–in other words, weakness of faith and character. He’s a good example.

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More on Lying, Fudging, Pressure on Media

February 12, 2015

I’m still in Orlando as I write this. Had an interesting conversation with a reader at lunch on Wednesday about the Brian Williams affair.

The first disclosure is that I am a member of “the media.” So, even though there are not as many marbles at stake in what I’ve done compared to TV news, the principles apply.

So, it seems that this TV anchor guy made a trip to Iraq to do some “on the spot” coverage. Usually these guys fly in, stay at the Hilton, get filmed at a safe spot where there is desert behind them, then immediately leave. In this case, Williams was actually flying somewhere in a helicopter was shot down. Somehow he became “confused” and thought that actually he was on that copter, not the trailing one where he actually was.

Second disclosure–I’ve never been in a battle. Came close to being a Navy pilot, but not close enough to claim anything. So, maybe the “spin doctors” who have been dredged up to blame psychological trauma for this lapse of memory are correct. But somehow I don’t believe it.

Pressure

In my little niche of media, a salesman would frequently come to me and beg, “Gary, if you could just run a friendly story about this company, they will buy an x-month advertising package with us.” I’d just say, “Let me talk to them and see if they have anything worthwhile to say.”

This might be worth $40,000. (By the way, they almost never bought. They were happy with free publicity.)

Imagine that you are the top salesperson or executive of the TV news operation. A dramatic story of being shot down would attract hundreds of thousands of viewers. That translates into higher advertising revenue. See where I’m going? Much of the media works that way.

So, what if Williams had that much pressure from somewhere. That is at least as credible a story as PTSD or something.

Dave suggested a scenario something like this at lunch. I thought, something to consider.

Even so, there had to be many people who knew the simple truth. Yet, the network perpetuated the story for years. Maybe it’s Williams, or maybe it’s someone else. There are still ethics involved.

it would have been just as unethical for me to promote a product just for advertising dollars to readers who depend on my for objective reporting as for NBC. It’s just as unethical when you decide to deceive someone.

I will not attempt to claim 100% ethics in every situation–that would, of course, be a lie. But I hope that I’m close to 100% and apologize when I’m not.

Jesus set the bar so high for us, that those of us who follow him had best get that 100% or know the reason why and ask forgiveness.

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Where Does Lying Get You

February 11, 2015

I am in Orlando at a conference. It all started with arriving over an hour late–so in my room at midnight Sunday. Meeting early Monday. Reception until after 10. Followed by another early morning and late night. Now 7 am breakfast meeting. That’s the glamorous life of a writer traveling to a resort area on business.

Speaking of the glamorous life, I have been reading a little (very little) about this Brian Williams performance art and drama. As I get the story, he reported that he was in a helicopter in Iraq that was shot down. Now they say he was in the helicopter trailing and never went down.

Confusion? Lying? We’ll never know.

But that incident started a train of thought. Supposing he did lie. Supposing you and I have ever lied about doing something. Embellished a resume. Tried to impress a prospective employer.

In the end, what do we gain.

We read in the Bible, let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Say what you need to say. Sgt. Joe Friday, “Just the facts, Ma’am.”

If we let who we are speak through what we do, what does that say about our character?

As a writer and teacher, I’m always aware of the trap I can fall into. I can make my career sound like some exotic journey into great competence or I can make it sound like a series of steps where I learn a little at every stop along the way.

I try to be careful, and I hope I succeed. Maybe more of us should remember who we wish to be and act in accordance.

Or maybe we want to be a liar????

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Diversity Is Good Celebrate Difference

January 19, 2015

Have you noticed how often on Facebook that there are many people who talk about being individualist and celebrate political comments of individuality, yet they are all the same? They conform to common thoughts and opinions. Pretty much dress alike, too, depending a little upon age.

I heard Dr. King speak once. He was a classmate of our campus chaplain at Ohio Northern University. Dr. Udy invited him, and he came and spoke. We were almost all white. We were almost all Republican–in an era where that was becoming a code-word for being against civil rights. But he spoke well.

And, I, too, shared that dream that all people would be accepted for their character, not for their race, gender, religion. It has been a long process. It’s been 50 years. We’re closer, but, as you can see from Facebook postings where evidently people feel free to spout off about anything, we’re still far away.

Here is yet another study that shows why you should promote diversity and legitimate sharing on your teams–whether at work, church, civic organizations. The article discussing it is called, Sensitivity, Women, Sharing: What Makes Teams Smart, by Orion Jones. This one dealt more with women, but it shares results with other earlier studies that include race and ethnic diversity along with gender.

When teams of professionals are composed of more women, share ideas in equal part, and are emotionally perceptive, they make better decisions and find better solutions to problems.

As part of an emerging science of effective teamwork, researchers at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University have been asking why some teams, like some individuals, are measurably smarter than others.

The smartest teams were distinguished by members which contributed more equally to the discussion, were better at reading complex emotional states in lab settings, and were composed of more women (possibly because women are better at identifying emotion).

I try to the best of my ability to treat all people the same. I give them a chance to prove whether I should continue to associate with them, trust them, or do business with them all on an individual basis. Let’s celebrate the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. by just quietly accepting others and quietly promoting diversity in our teams and groups.

 

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Nice People Do Finish First

January 15, 2015

“27 Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,
when it is in your power to do it.
28 Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come again,
tomorrow I will give it”—when you have it with you.
29 Do not plan harm against your neighbor
who lives trustingly beside you.
30 Do not quarrel with anyone without cause,
when no harm has been done to you.”
–Proverbs 3

It is said, “Nice guys finish last.”

I know people who call themselves Christian who are Darwinists. Oh, no, not the evolutionary scientist ones. The ones who subscribe to a late 19th Century philosophy derived from Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest–Social Darwinists.

There was one of those who worked with me for years. At least, he was the most blatant of the philosophy. These are people for whom life is a “zero-sum game.” There are winners and there are losers. And you know the winners by how much wealth they’ve accumulated, the size and location of their house(s), the size of their salary. Losers? Well, they should just get lost. Who cares about them?

Like narcissists (are they cousins?), many can be charming at times. But the in-your-face attitude often comes out.

Scientific evidence

Scientists have discovered ways to simulate all manner of situations on powerful computers. This article in Lifehacker reports on a computer simulation of a game called Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Researchers set up a “game” where the players get two cards (options) which are basically to cooperate or compete to win the game. Humans playing the game typically choose to compete.

This latest research set up a computer simulation of the game that could be iterated many times. The results–it is better for both players to cooperate rather than compete.

Biblical wisdom

I guess Biblical wisdom is really, er, wise.

While maintaining your core strength gained from God, treat your fellow humans nicely, with dignity and respect. In the end, you’ll win.

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Diversity Triumphs

December 1, 2014

It was once said that the most segregated hour in the United States was 10 am on Sunday morning. Very few churches have a diversity of people in their congregation. Even today.

Of course part of the reason is style of worship. But that is not the entire reason. The question is—do we reach out to only those like us? Or do we reach out at all?

One reason we still seem to have racial troubles some 50 years after Martin Luther King had a dream (mine, too) is that at a personal level too many of us just don’t like people who aren’t like us. Most white men around me hate powerful women. (Another latent problem.) They may get along with an individual black person, but black people as a whole are still regarded suspiciously. Oh, and the other way around.

Trust is a commodity on the endangered list in too many places. This lack of trust, maybe for good reason, is a cancer.

I look to Jesus for examples. He lived during his ministry in a predominately Jewish area. But there was diversity even within the tribe. He dealt easily with women—not a rabbi-like action. He socialized easily with all social strata of the Jews. He had no problems interacting with Romans and Greeks. His inner circle contained people of differing politics, geographies, backgrounds.

Paul reflects the teachings found in Deuteronomy 30 and Isaiah 40 ff where God talks about rulers ruling with justice and mercy. That is probably the way we should read Romans 13. (He just made a personal mistake about the future rulers of Rome.) If you read Paul carefully without pulling quotes out of context, he pleaded with his followers to seek unity amongst their diversity—and some of the ekklesia knew tremendous diversity.

Study after study reveals the benefits to an organization that accrue from diversity.

Why aren’t we trying?

An organization practicing diversity among its teams wins over time.

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Taking Care Over Our Priorities

November 18, 2014

I’m usually writing this about 6:30 am Eastern time, but I’m in the Los Angeles area today. 5:30 am, I’ve been up for an hour. It’ll be a long day.

Yesterday, I wrote about marketing. And whether (or how much) marketers try to influence our perceived needs–especially by ever-increasing devious means. There is advertising disguised as editorial. Product placements in media or entertainment. And on and on.

Just yesterday, Wal-Mart sent me five emails promoting Black Friday sales. FIVE. (I’m on their list because I occasionally have actual prints made of my digital photos.)

While thinking about this a few minutes ago, Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission was speaking about Christian responses to some of the most horrible things that humans are doing to other humans.

I just had to pray. Am I doing enough? Am I influencing enough to counter the now-global onslaught of advertising promoting not only consumption, but our misplaced priorities hidden behind the consumption.

There are good products. Products that enhance our lives and provide for enjoyment. But why do we buy them? Is it momentary impulse resulting in another piece of unused labor and material sitting on a shelf in the closet?

Let’s take care of our priorities first, then proceed into the market.

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Ethics and Marketing–An Oxymoron

November 17, 2014

Christmas. Ah, that time of joyful giving. Celebrating the birth of Jesus. Christmas Carols. Hot chocolate with whipped cream.

Oops, it wasn’t even Halloween yet, let alone Thanksgiving. The stores were full of Christmas stuff. It is still two weeks before “Black Friday” (the day that retail stores go from red to black, or loss to profit for the year) and my email box has Wal-Mart ads for the day.

Everyone knows that retail stores depend upon Christmas sales for the year’s profits. This has been known for 100 years.

This is obviously bad management. But, we get what we deserve, I guess.

Business managers turned to a new thing called “marketing” a long time ago. The job of marketing people was to entice people into the stores.

Then we got TV. And TV needed advertising for revenues. Marketers needed advertising to get their message to the people. Before TV, there were newspapers and magazines. Note: I’ve made a good living from the magazine business, and even today I’d like some advertising on my other Website to help pay the bills.

But marketers weren’t as successful as they would have liked. It wasn’t enough to just use superlatives to promote their stores and products (have you ever seen ads from the 1920s?). They turned to the findings of that new academic discipline called psychology to figure out how people work.

So now, we have turned to manipulation. Create a need where none existed before and then offer to fill it. Muscles not big enough? Breasts not big enough? Kids may not make it into Harvard? We’ve got a solution.

The current trend in magazine advertising is to write advertising that looks just like the editorial content of the magazine. The idea is to trick the reader into reading the ad. They may even think that the claims made in the ad are from the supposedly unbiased editors of the magazine. The more respected the editorial, the better the success with this form of advertising.

By the way, I hope you know that for many years, advertisers in women’s magazines have had a clause in their contracts that the magazine may not run an article that is in any way critical of makeup or other products including the way they test makeup. All articles in women’s magazines must be promotional of the types of products that will be advertised.

But even in business-to-business which is my market, marketers and publishers want things to be just as great and happy as possible. I have a friend who just left his magazine job and is trying to sell a subscription-based newsletter. “I don’t take advertising, so I can be honest,” he says.

Well, I hope I’m honest too. 😉

What’s the reason for this season (actually following Thanksgiving, which is also a good thing to celebrate)? Let’s keep this in mind. Don’t let marketers convince you that you need things you don’t. Keep your head. Buy presents, sure, but buy with intention not under the influence of artificially inflamed emotions.

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Be Assertive But Kind

October 14, 2014

Proverbs 11: 16b-17 draws two pairs of contrasts. But the pairs also contrast.

The first pair is timid and aggressive. To be timid is a negative attitude and stance toward life. You let things happen to you. To be aggressive (I don’t know Hebrew, but today we might well call it assertive) is to go out into the world making things happen

The other pair is kind and cruel. Kind, of course is the positive attitude and cruel is the negative.

So Proverbs, Wisdom teaching, tells us that we should be strong and go out and accomplish, but we should do it in such a way as to not trample down others doing it.

This sounds much like the teachings of Jesus, who took most of his teaching directly from Proverbs, who expected people to be strong, to be aggressive. But at the same time he taught that we should put others ahead of ourselves. We should think about the other person in the relationship or the situation. What’s in it for them–not what’s in it for us.

We have had cycles of preaching throughout the 2,000 years of Christendom that has told people, especially poor people, to be timid, meek, humble (in the sense of servitude, not the sense of strength yet putting others before us). That teaching has led to some horrible revolutions in the past. It’s a teaching ignored by the terrorists who call themselves part of Islam.

Is it an attitude we have? There are many today who believe in aggressive in its negative connotation and cruel, at least in attitude toward others. I’ve met several.

I pray we cultivate having a strong personality–one that’s so strong and confident that we can gladly put others before us.

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Extending Courtesy

October 6, 2014

Did someone just cut you off in traffic? Did someone just pause to let you in line (maybe traffic or at the grocery or something? When’s the last time that you held open a door for someone–especially someone struggling with bundles or small children?

I hit one of those opportunities this morning on my way to the airport. A truck was entering I-75 from one ramp as I was about to exit to the next street. I could have increased speed (by a lot) to cut in front of him. But I slowed down to let him enter and I exited behind him.

The thought came that the cost to me was only about 10 seconds. I was going to have about an hour before my flight boarded, no reason to rush.

Once, almost all truckers were courteous. These days, don’t expect it.

I see other examples of rudeness in my travels. There are many examples of courtesy, too. I was traveling a week ago last Friday when the contractor started a fire that evacuated the FAA tower in the Chicago area. People by and large were not irate. Many were courteous to their fellow sufferers.

A pause and a smile can make someone’s day. Look for the first opportunity to be courteous today. That sets the tone for the rest of your day. And you might even fool your neighbors into thinking you’re a nice person!

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