Shin Dong-hyuk was born in Kaechon internment camp #14 in North Korea. He grew up with no knowledge of the outside world. He never heard of things we take for granted, like money, love, or God.
He had no loyalty to his family, only to the guards who held reward and punishment in their hands. And he had no motivation to escape, until a fellow inmate told him that there was a different world on the other side of the prison fence. Even after escaping to South Korea, he struggled to understand and absorb the values that most of us accept as moral axioms.
The Jewish sages would have labeled Shin Dong-hyuk a tinok she’nishba, a child kidnapped and raised in a society of thieves. Even as an adult, such a person has no culpability for his actions, since he may never successfully uproot the values of criminality he absorbed growing up and replace them with the values of right and wrong. Because of his upbringing, he may suffer from terminal moral blindness.
The truth is, we are all born into the prisons of our respective environments, which can blind us to ideas and perspectives that reside beyond the comfort zone of intellectual familiarity.
This blindness takes one of two forms. The first is where we know we can’t see; at least then we can seek out others who possess vision and turn to them for guidance. Far more dangerous is where we believe that we see clearly when in fact our vision is impaired. Then we proceed with confidence, oblivious to the consequences of our blindness.
Moral vision requires us to expand our awareness of others by learning to recognize the social cues that govern human interaction. Without that awareness we cannot acquire empathy, which is critical to living a life of ethics.
The little niceties that are rapidly disappearing from society are more than arbitrary conventions. When you say please and thank you, when you use a correspondent’s name in an e-mail, when you silence your phone in meetings and in your place of worship, when you don’t keep others waiting unnecessarily, when you lower your voice in public, hold the elevator door, look others in the eye and smile, refrain from gossip, tuck in your chair, don’t roll your stops at stop signs, and really listen when others are speaking—all these simple acts of respect for those around you and for the society you live in serve as constant reminders that what you do matters, that your little actions make a big difference.
Even the smallest act of thoughtful awareness keeps you attuned to the nuances of speech and behavior that are integral to an ethical mindset. Etiquette is more than a code of social graces observed by the privileged classes; etiquette is the art of social ethics.
But we need to learn the right cues from the right people. Do you remember when your parent said to you, “If Pat jumped off the roof, would you do it, too?” Do you remember saying it to your own child? (If you haven’t yet, you probably will.)
There’s a lot of wisdom in that parental cliché … in almost every cliché, really. Clichés become clichés because their self-evident truth makes us repeat them again and again, which is unfortunate. Any truism that becomes part of the cultural landscape is eventually no longer noticed and, subsequently, becomes forgotten.
The invisibility of the overly familiar is just one trick our subconscious minds play to trip us up. Look back through the chapters of this book and notice how you answered the last question after each case study—the “what would you do?” question. Do you find that you more frequently agreed with the position you defended first versus the opposing position you tried to defend second? If so, it’s likely not a coincidence.
A decades-old psychology experiment asked subjects to compose a list of reasons for buying a video-cassette recorder, and then asked them to compose a list of reasons not to buy one. The researchers asked the same two questions to a second group, but in reverse order. In both cases, the subjects reported that they had more difficulty coming up with reasons to answer the second question after answering the first. They also reported that their answers to the first question influenced their buying decisions, both at the time of the survey and several weeks later.1
This demonstrates how quickly and easily we invest ourselves in any point of view, and how difficult it is to uproot attitudes and perspectives once we commit ourselves to them. It also explains why many news outlets consistently structure their reporting by leading with the information or perspective that supports their own editorial slant; they know that what audiences hear first will become more deeply implanted in their long-term memories, shaping their own attitudes and points of view.
If we want to acquire the even-handedness critical to an ethical mindset, we need to recognize the mechanistic workings of our minds and compensate for our natural and unconscious biases. Sometimes that requires us to choose which subjects we don’t talk about as much as which subjects we do.
The thoughtful reader may be wondering why so many obvious topics of ethical debate remain absent from this book. Abortion, climate change, gun control, taxation, the Me Too movement, and the endless assortment of peculiar practices found among the denizens of the political zoo—any or all of these would have provided easy and valuable fodder for ethical discourse.
The sad reality is that many of us lack the intellectual detachment to evaluate hot-button issues on their own merits without plunging into ideology or character assassination. In fact, our confidence that our cause is just—regardless of which side we are on—breeds intellectual arrogance and complacency, convincing us we don’t need to deeply research or reason through our own positions. This in turn leaves us haunted by the suspicion that we can’t defend our causes, which compels us to retreat from engaging in any kind of debate, civil or otherwise. Instead, we vilify our ideological opponents as justification for our unwillingness to consider their opinions.
This raises yet another ethical question: Is it better to speak out on hot-button issues, knowing that the likely effect will be to alienate large swaths of the populace; or is it better to simply avoid those topics and attempt to civilize the conversation first, in hope of creating a society of greater forbearance where more substantive topics can be raised and thoughtfully examined?
The absence of overly controversial topics should make my own conclusion clear. However, I did risk flirting with a few of those issues along the way, especially in the last section.
Only when we are able and willing to work through our most prickly problems will we have a real chance of solving them. My hope is that this book will contribute to moving the conversation in a more rational direction.
In 2003, MSNBC news anchor Brian Williams was attached to a convoy of Chinook helicopters in Iraq when a sandstorm forced the mission to abort. Once on the ground, word came that a different helicopter in the convoy had almost been shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Then the story began to change. In one version, Mr. Williams seemed to imply having witnessed the attack on the lead helicopter himself. In another, the grenade tore a hole in his helicopter but failed to detonate.
By 2013, he claimed to have feared for his life when his own chopper came under fire.
Then, in 2015, Brian Williams recounted how his helicopter had actually been shot down by an RPG, and how his team was rescued by the American 3rd Infantry.
Five days later, Mr. Williams went back on the air to apologize for his flight of fantasy.
Personally, I don’t believe that Brian Williams ever set out to deliberately distort the truth. It seems more likely that he just tweaked the narrative here and there to make it a little more dramatic. But after a dozen years of embellishment, the story of his chopper ride had turned into a work of fiction. Almost overnight, he went from being one of television’s most respected journalists to being a punchline.
Haven’t we all done the same thing—embellished the details of a moderately interesting story to make it more compelling? Aren’t some of our favorite movies “based on a true story” or, even more disingenuously, “inspired by true events”? Those small-print disclaimers may preempt charges of misrepresentation. But what is the far-reaching effect on our respect for the truth when the truth isn’t good enough to hold our interest?
This is the natural consequence of living in an age when anything has to be sensational if it’s going to get noticed at all. Exaggeration is really no different from lying. Truth doesn’t need our help to make it better. And if we blur the lines between reality and fakery even a little, soon we’ll forget that there are any lines at all.
It’s the blurring of lines that’s so dangerous. By relentlessly and insidiously expanding the gray areas of our lives, we begin to believe that there are no hard boundaries, that nothing is black and white. And once everything is negotiable, why should we search for absolutes? If every path is equally acceptable, why agonize over choosing this one or that? If everything is gray, why should we grapple to differentiate between one shade and another?
This is what King Solomon meant when he declared: Do not remove the boundaries of eternity, which were set in place by your fathers.
My mother told me that as a student at UC Berkeley in the 1950s (before the hippie revolution), whenever she and her friends went out on the town in San Francisco, she dressed in a suit, heels, hat, and gloves. San Francisco was “the city,” the cosmopolitan center of the west coast. One simply did not step onto its streets wearing anything other than one’s finest.
Those days are long gone, and not entirely for the better. Consider the underlying message of expectations, standards, and respect. Consider the impact even one person’s code of personal conduct has on the surrounding culture. This is the essence of civility which, observes Professor Stephen L. Carter, is the root of civilization.
Of course, moral sensitivities change over generations. But if we allow our core principles to erode, no matter how gradually, we eventually find ourselves untethered to any absolute boundaries of right and wrong, drifting inexorably toward the edge of the map, where there be monsters—the unslayable dragons of self-interest, self-indulgence, and self-righteousness that prey on even the most well-intentioned navigators who cross the seas of ethical conflict and deliberation.
The more unethical the society around us becomes, the more challenging it is for any of us to maintain our own standards of integrity. How can we expect a promising young athlete to refrain from using steroids when he can’t compete honestly with others who flout the rules? How can we expect a young journalist to exercise journalistic restraint when she can’t compete with sensationalism that replaces principled reportage? How can we expect our politicians to demonstrate authentic statesmanship when they need to negotiate a system of corruption and rampant partisanship to gain and hold public office? How can we expect young executives to see themselves as team players when those above them have attained their positions by stepping on colleagues in their climb toward the top?
Eventually, when the foundational rules that govern civil society have become forgotten, what hope is there for society to survive?
That’s why it’s critical to carefully consider the words we say and how we say them. That’s why it’s crucial how others see us and how we see ourselves. We need to accommodate the needs and expectations of those around us; but we have to balance that accommodation against our own needs and aspirations. We are simultaneously individuals and members of a society; our success balancing the perpetual tension between the two is what determines the measure of our ethical identity.
At the risk of trying to appear clever, I would like to propose that we view ETHICS as an acronym for six essential character traits that, collectively, produce an ethical mindset.
Empathy. What all four models of moral conduct have in common is a sensitivity for how individual actions affect the world we live in. Before we can begin to consider ourselves ethical, we need to feel the joy and pain, the hope and fear, the wants and dreams of our fellow human beings.
Trustworthiness. If we aren’t honest in both our speech and personal conduct, if we don’t comport ourselves with integrity, we will never earn the trust of those around us. Without trust, no relationship can flourish, and no community can survive.
Humility. According to scripture, Moses was both the greatest prophet of all times and the most humble man who ever lived. How can both be true? Because humility does not require us to deny our talents or successes. Rather, it requires us to see them as gifts, an outlook that fills us with a sense of duty, purpose, and moral responsibility.
Inquisitiveness. We should never allow ourselves to think that we know enough, that we understand enough, that we are wise enough. Seeking knowledge and understanding requires a mindset of curiosity and constant improvement. No matter how much we attain or accomplish, we can always be and do better.
Courage. It’s scary to do the right thing, to risk rebuke or even open hostility for holding others to account, for taking a stand against what’s expected or what’s popular. But as we learn from Edmund Burke: Evil flourishes when good people do nothing. And, as we learn from Hillel: If not now, when?
Self-discipline. Am I doing the hard work required to set standards for myself and strive to live up to them? Nothing worthwhile comes without determined effort, and building good character is foundational to building a strong business. We can’t expect others to set the bar higher than we are willing to set it for ourselves.
During the question and answer session following an ethics keynote, an attendee posed this hypothetical: While shopping in a department store, you witness a counter worker being verbally abused by a superior. Should you intervene?
I responded that every situation is different and that, as we have already observed, there is no quick-reference guide for making ethical decisions. The best we can do is cultivate ethical sensitivity so we are prepared to respond to situations as best we can.
That is all true, but after the fact I felt I had not served my questioner as well as I might have. No matter how abstract the scenario, ethics demands that we reject the false premise of a binary choice—either I confront the superior or I do nothing. Acting ethically often calls for a measure of creativity.
True story: Walking back to her car through a grocery store parking lot, a woman found her attention drawn to two high-end cars parked side by side facing opposite directions. Across the short space between their open windows, a man and a woman were shouting furiously at one another. In the back seat of one car, a girl of 7 or 8 years sat statue-like, as each of her obviously divorced parents insisted that it was the other’s turn to look after the daughter.
As the onlooker debated whether she should or could intervene, she spotted a police car nearby. She strode over and hastily explained the situation to the officer, who approached the ex-couple and told them they were illegally stopped and needed to move on.
Sometimes our own inability to make things better can leave us heartbroken. We may not be able to address the root problem, but we can still look for a way to interrupt an escalating situation enough to make things better—at least for a little while. Even the smallest intervention reminds us that we do not have to accept the role of helpless bystanders.
Let’s go back to our counter worker and her supervisor. Maybe she really does deserve rebuke. But does it have to be in front of the customers? Does she deserve to be publicly humiliated? We can certainly empathize with her distress and feel her desperate hope that someone will rescue her from her plight.
Imagine that you approach the counter with one of the following lines:
“Excuse me, I’m having trouble finding something in my size. Could I have assistance please?”
“Sorry to interrupt, but this young lady was extremely helpful when I came in yesterday and I didn’t have a chance to thank her properly.”
“Do you have a moment? I’m writing a magazine article on workplace conflict. Could I ask you a few questions, please?”
Is it dishonest to misrepresent yourself to spare a stranger unnecessary pain? That itself is part of the ethical equation. But an impromptu cocktail of caring, courage, and creativity will likely leave everyone feeling better. At least it will short-circuit an ugly exchange. At best, it will hit the reset button and turn events in a more palatable direction.
Ethics is not a code of compliance or a book of rules. Ethics is a mindset that emerges naturally from the awareness that all our actions matter, that the noblesse oblige of being human requires us to conduct ourselves with thoughtfulness, with decorum, with dignity, with courage, and with self-restraint. By acting ethically, we contribute to the creation of a better society and a better world. When we live in a better world, we can’t help but become better ourselves.
When we act ethically, those around us notice. When we do so repeatedly and consistently, we earn the admiration and respect of others, which inspires them to emulate us. Once that happens, then we will find ourselves on our way to restoring a truly civil society in which all of us, together, work to seek common ground, to solve our common problems, and to forge a community in which our differences are not cause for acrimony but the source of our greatest strength, our most profound pleasure, and our most enduring success.
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1 D.J. Koehler. 1991. “Explanation, Imagination, and Confidence in Judgment.” Psychological Bulletin 110, no. 3, pp. 499–519.