April 2010 Archive

The eruption of the volcano in Iceland brought chaos both in heaven and on earth.

The Air Safety governmental authorities had a dilemma as to if and when to authorize airplanes to fly again.

The airlines companies wanted a lift of the ban on flights as soon as possible. Travelers on the ground were desperate. More than 100,000 flights were suspended and hundreds of thousands of passengers were stranded. Freight exporters and importers were frantic, loosing millions a day. A prolonged suspension of flights could very well jeopardize the global economy. (Let’s remember that suspension of flights for three days after 9/11 brought some U.S. airline companies close to bankruptcy.)

Yet, it was clear to all that no one could afford the risk of just one airplane crash.

To further complicate matters, the scientific community did not have a consensus view of the risks.

It is extremely difficult to do a risk/benefit analysis in a life and death situation.  The fundamental question is how much risk is morally acceptable and who is entitled to make that determination?

We face risks all the time. A life totally absent of risk is impossible. In many situations, we determine when a risk is acceptable and when it is not.

We face in our professional and private lives risk taking situations. What are the possible elements to consider before making a decision? Let me mention three.

• Think long term.

We should ask ourselves how would we be thinking of the decision we are about to make in one year, in ten years? Sometimes an event or a circumstance seems to be a catastrophe when it happens but in reality it does not have negative long-tem consequences. In many cases we may not even remember it. However when the decision we are about to make has serious long-term consequences, we should then be very careful before making any decision. In the recent airline situation, even a major financial loss would most likely been recuperated in a few years time, but the loss of life is for ever and has far reaching consequences.

• Consider the interests of others.

We have to think not only of the consequence for ourselves but also for others. The question government officials should ask themselves before authorizing a plane to fly is whether they would make the same decision if they were passengers on that plane!

• Consider your values.

We should think about what is most important to us, what are the priorities in our lives? What decisions can we live with and conversely what would be most damaging to our conscience and well-being?

The Josephson Institute Center for Ethics lists 6 pillars of character. They are:  Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship.

As Roy Disney once said:

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

We all were shocked when on April 10^th 2010, a Russian airplane crashed in Western Russia, half a mile from the Smolenks airport, killing all its 97 passengers. On board were Mr. Kaczynski, the president of Poland, the Army Chief of Staff, the Navy Commander, the heads of the Air and Land forces as well as Church and other dignitaries.

The investigation into what caused the crash is still in progress. What we do know is that the plane attempted to land in spite of the air traffic controllers’ repeated instructions not to land because of very heavy fog.

Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland, thinks that the president or his entourage most likely pressured the pilot to land in spite of the warning from the air traffic controllers. A similar incident happened in the past when President Kaczynski ordered a pilot to land in spite of air traffic controllers’ instructions not to, again because of dense fog. The pilot refused and was later threatened by the President of having his pilot license revoked. He was, however, later decorated for having saved the lives of the president, the passengers and the crew.

Is there a lesson to be learned from this tragedy?  I think there is:

We all have to respect authority. Without authority the world would be in chaos. However there are circumstances when we have to make the ultimate decision based on our values such as respect of other people’s lives as well as our own. Many Nazi officers tried to defend their actions by claiming that they “were just obeying orders.”

The ultimate authority should be our conscience.

We are all captains of our own ship. Furthermore, we are not alone, others are riding with us. We are responsible for those that will be affected by the decision we make. Their present and future could be greatly influenced by the choices we make.

Ethics very often is about making the right choice and being responsible even when faced with the opposition from authority.

As the American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, author of “The Peril of Obedience” once said:

“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”

The Catholic Church has been under attack recently because of new revelation of sexual abuse committed by priests. Tom Heneghan, the Religion Editor at Reuter calls the recent sex abuse scandals in the Church, particularly the way the hierarchy at the highest level as handled reports of sexual abuse a moral bankruptcy.

The Catholic Church has more than 1.147 billion members and 400,000 priests. It is the world largest religion. There are evil men in all walks of life and that includes priests. Their abject behavior and crimes does not tarnish the lives and dedication of the overwhelming majority of Catholic priests.

None of us and no institution are “too big to fall” into moral bankruptcy. The question is what do we do about it once it happens? There is no Chapter 11 in moral bankruptcy. The individuals or institutions are not or should not be protected from creditors or victims.

Just as it is possible to come out of bankruptcy, it is also possible to come out of moral bankruptcy. (Some will call it redemption.) There are however some critical conditions for that to be possible. Let me name four that I think are essential.

1)       Acknowledgement that precludes, cover-ups, denials, blaming of others, or giving excuses.

2)       Apology that must include real empathy and true sorrow for the victims.

3)       Compensation and/or punishment.  We all have to be accountable for our faults and crimes. Being accountable also means bearing the penalty for the infractions.

4)       Prevention, making everything we possible can so that the offence is not repeated. That is most important in the case of sexual abuse. We as individual and as a society have to do all we possibly can to protect our children.

Once these conditions have been met, society should welcome back the “returning” (repentant) individual or institution in its fold.

What about compassion?

I was speaking with a friend and mother of young children this week that told me how shocked she was when she heard her minister say, from the pulpit, that we should have compassion for the perpetrators of such crimes.

Should we?

It is in interesting question. Do all human beings deserve our compassion no matter who they are and what they have done? Should we have had compassion for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein? Should we not rather have compassion for their victims?

I do not think that there are any moral guidelines to answer that question. The answer lies in the individual and personal beliefs of each one of us.

Compassion however does not mean absence of justice. Our Constitution precludes “cruel and unusual punishment” but does not exclude punishment.  Leonardo de Vinci once said:  “He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”

In our prison system we treat or at least we claim to treat our prisoners humanely. The same is true in the application of the death penalty. We, for instance use clean needles to inject the poison that will bring an end to the lives of the condemned. We have systems in place that tries to protect the dignity of the guilty and condemned. That is a form of compassion.

As Mark Twain once wrote:

“If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape?”

Phoebe Prince, a 15-year old Irish girl and student at the South Hadley High School in Massachusetts was found hanged last week after three months of bullying by fellow students. Nine of these students will face criminal charges some of which include statutory rape, criminal harassment and stalking. According to parents whose children attend South Hadley High, the school has had a history of bullying. Phoebe hanged herself to a stairwell with the scarf that her sister had given her for Christmas.

The issue of bullying is a major problem in our high schools. According to Bullying Statistics, 77 percent of students are bullied mentally, verbally and physically each year. In the U.S. more than 280,000 students are physically attacked in secondary school each month!

Dan Olweus the founder of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in his book What We Know and What We Can do, defines bullying as when a person:

“Is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself.”

Could the tragedy at South Hadley High been prevented? Most likely, yes, if more people had reported the incidences. Bulling rarely happens in private. Many witnessed the actions but said nothing. Some must have assumed that others would do so.

The slogan “if you see something, say something” should be applied whenever we are a witness to abuse or to something we believe is wrong.

It is our moral and ethical duty to report wrongdoing wherever we see it, whether in the street, at school or at work. Once we know, we lose our innocence, if we do not take action.

The same is true in the corporate setting. Recent corporate scandals have been exposed by so called whistleblowers. They had the courage to speak out and provided ultimately a valuable service to society. But why should we need whistleblowers? We all have the obligation to report what we think might be wrongdoing to either our supervisor, HR or even to the ethics officer, if the company has one.  The ethical culture of a company can be measured by its employee’s readiness to report wrongdoing.

As Martin Luther King Jr. once said:

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”