November 2011 Archive

Thanksgiving is the quintessential American Holiday. There are more Americans on the roads and in the air during the holiday then at any other time during the year. It is essentially a family holiday.

Thanksgiving was first celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621, in gratitude to God for the harvest and for having survived their first winter.

Thanksgiving has Biblical-Jewish roots. Robert J. Hutchinson author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible says that: “Thanksgiving is yet another legacy of the Biblical heritage that shaped American law and culture over the centuries. There is at least some evidence that the deeply pious Pilgrims, who believed the Old Testament law was binding on Gentiles as well as Jews, may have been partially inspired by the Jewish harvest festival of Succoth.”The Festival of Succoth which is celebrated around the same time is very much a time of gratitude to God for his many blessings.

Gratitude is a noble value in anyone’s character. We appreciate it in others and we somehow aspire to it for ourselves. Cicero, the Roman philosopher said that gratitude is “the mother of all virtues.”

John Tierney in his November 22^nd. NYT article entitled A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day writes: “Cultivating an attitude of gratitude has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety  and depression higher long-term satisfaction with life and a kinder behavior towards other, including romantic partners.”

Yet gratitude is not as highly valued in our society as it should be, particularly in our culture of entitlement. We much too often demand what we believe we “rightly deserve.” As Aldous Huxley once wrote: “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

But do we really deserve anything and on what criteria? Are we any “better” or more “deserving” than those less fortunate. Should we not rather consider everything we have, such as health, family, friend, and money as gifts?

Gratitude also should lead to generosity. There is a link between the emotion of gratitude and the act of giving. Professor Christian Miller of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. says that: “Being grateful tends to activate an altruistic state of mind.” Professor Sally Planalp, of the University of Utah and author of Communicating Emotion writes that gratitude serves as an “emotional commitment to reciprocate.”

As we enter the period of Holidays, let us remember what Edwin Arlington Robinson, the American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner once said:

“(There are) two kinds of gratitude:

The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give.”

The Penn State Sex Scandal is, for me, one of the most shocking events this year, not that we did not have plenty of other scandal this year, and we still have a month and a half to go! It is most shocking because it involved children.  This scandal is at its infancy. There are five investigations in process and we will soon learn the extent of this devastating story.

According to the 23-page Grand Jury report, Jerry Sandusky, assistant coach at Penn State, has been raping, assaulting and molesting minors male children, some as young as 10 years old, for a period of 15 years.

Mr. Sandusky has been arrested and is free on bail! Graham Spanier , the President of Penn State, and Paterno the Coach have both been fired. Mike  McQueary the assistant coach has been suspended “indefinitely.”  They all were aware of Mr. Sandusky’s  behavior and did nothing or not enough to stop him.

The alleged rape of a child and the molestation of 7 other children are not in the realm of ethics but of criminality.

From an ethical perspective what is most concerning is the failure to report what had been witnessed or known by a great number of people and for a very long time to the proper authorities. Apparently that complicity of silence and cover-up enabled the sexual predator to continue his criminal activities, undisturbed.

That failure to report is a total moral failure.

Some professionals such as the clergy, teachers, health care providers are required by law to report to the authorities, suspicion of abuse but most “ordinary” citizens in the U.S. are not obligated to do so.

We all have a natural reluctance to get involved in other people’s lives. Self-preservation and fear are probably to most influential motivators. Fear of losing our security, physical and financial. We may also fear a disruption of our comfortable lives.

Turning a blind eye is human but it is wrong.

Joe Nocera in his New York Time Op-Ed entitled “the Institutional Pass” makes an analogy between the cover-up at Penn State and the cover-up in the Catholic Church on the abuse of minors by Catholic priests for a great number of years. He thinks that Joe Paterno, who is known to be a “devout Catholic” should have learned from that disgraceful history.

I can think of another analogy: the Holocaust. There were millions of bystanders that knew what was happening to their neighbors yet very few spoke out of did anything about it. The Holocaust could not have happened without them.

The key word in such situation is responsibility. Once we know, we lose our innocence or any claim to ignorance. Once we know we are responsible. We are responsible to protect against potential harm our fellow man and woman and particularly children.

As the Torah says:

“Do not stand idly on your brother’s blood” (Leviticus 19:16)

Occupy Wall Street protest in New York and elsewhere is on its 8^th week. I am not sure whether we can call it a movement because the goals or even direction of its many participants seemed unclear. What is clear to me is that it is the expression of a general discontent with both the governments (Local, State and Federal), and with corporate America in general.

Some believe it is a very positive development. Jim Lukasewski, a friend and a crisis communication expert says in his blog post entitled: Occupy America: It’s Radical But It’s Necessary, Here’s the Plan that, “the incompetence, ignorance, and political paralysis of government, combined with the implacable gall of America’s Greed Team-real estate, banking, Wall Street, insurance, and the commercial credit industry-has created a fragile but powerful epiphanal moment when real change in America’s economic structure and destiny is possible. And there are people in the streets ready to take some action with some direction.”

Others have a more pessimistic view of the protest but do recognize the legitimacy of their complaints. Chris MacDonald of the University of Toronto’s Clarkson Center for Business Ethics in his article Wall Street Needs to be Fixed, Not Occupied, says: “Issues of corporate ethics are too important to leave to the Occupy Wall Street gang. The principles the group is fighting for are noble ones, but the tools they employ leave much to be desired. It’s up to the rest of us to use better tools.” He believes that although the values of the protesters are right the suggestions they have to implement those values are deeply misguided. He suggests we: “Think. Learn about the issues. Learn about corporate governance. Advocate reform. Organize. Get out the vote.” He concludes his article by saying: “If Occupying Wall Street is to have any real impact it won’t be by motivating a few hundred more people to camp out in the street.”

Protest is a legitimate right in democracies and it also has, in the past played a very important role in establishing democracies and in bringing very positive change to society. Revolutions often started with a massive public protest. With historical hindsight we can determine that some of the outcomes were very positive such as India’s liberation and independence that was initiated by Gandhi’s protest. Others were less than positive, such as the Russian Revolution that brought communism to Russia and much of Eastern Europe or the Iranian revolution that brought a repressing and threatening regime to power. The positive or negative effects of the Arab Spring are yet to be determined.

There are numerous ways to voice a protest but often that is not enough. Protest alone will not bring change.  Ase Grimsby, a Norwegian artist says that we should try to be creative and entrepreneurial in our protest.   She gives the example of KIVA, a micro-lending financial institution. Since its founding in 2005, KIVA has made $255 million worth of loans, (some as small as $25.00) to 659, 0000 individual entrepreneurs, 80% of whom are women. These loans allow them to start or expand a small business. Interestingly, the repayment rate is 98.90%!

There are many such creative examples of positive ways to combat social ills.

We all have a moral obligation to protest against injustice, poverty the repression of human rights and corruption.

As Henry Thoreau once said:

“Evil must be resisted and no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.”

Ruth Madoff, the wife of Bernie Madoff who is serving a 150-year jail sentence for a $65 billion Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of victims, told “60-Minutes” last Thursday that both she and Bernie attempted to commit suicide by taking pills on Christmas Eve.  Mrs. Madoff said:

“We took pills and woke up the next day. It was very impulsive and I am glad we woke up.”

Their son, Mark did succeed in ending his life when he hanged himself in his New York apartment last year on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest. He was married and had a two-year boy.

The issue of suicide is a very difficult and for many a painful one. We all know directly or indirectly someone who took his or her life.

Some psychologist believe that we all, at one point in our lives, contemplate it. I am not sure they are correct, but we can safely assume that many do.

Over one million people die by suicide every year according to the World Health Organization. It is the 6^thlargest cause of death in the U.S. According to the National Safety Council, is the leading cause of death among teenagers and adults under the age of 35.

Suicide has negative emotional and moral connotations. In Judaism and in Christianity, it is considered an offence to God because of the notion of the sanctity of life.

The circumstances that precipitate suicide vary. According to a 2008 survey of 16 States, approximately 30 % of suicides are due to intimate partner problem, 22% to physical health problems, 12 % to job problems and 12% to financial problems.

Studies have revealed that the impulse toward suicide is often short-lived, ambivalent and often influenced by mental illness.

In many cases, the person who decides to take away his or her life strongly believes that there are no other alternatives to resolving the situation he or she is in.  Yet, we know that very often there are alternatives that the person just does not see at the time.

Some libertarians argue that we have a right to suicide because it is an expression of our freedom, as a friend once told me “it is the liberty that deprives of all liberties.” The conventional debate between the “sanctity of life” against the “right to die” does not take in consideration the other important value of not causing harm to others. We may have the right to terminate our lives but with that right comes responsibility. The responsibility is not only to ourselves but also to others, particularly our family and loved ones who will profoundly suffer because this action.

Should we engage in the prevention of suicide? I would strongly argue that we should. Saving a life and preventing emotional and psychological harm to those who are left behind is a moral obligation.

Help is always available. Most people are willing to help. There are many websites of suicidal prevention such as the Suicide Prevention Lifeline -1-800- Talk (8255)

As the English novelist and essayist E.M. Foster, once said:

“The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.”