Our surprisingly ethical U.S. culture on display…
Aniruddh Khachaturi an is from Mumbai, India, and has been in the U.S. for the past two years, studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon. For some reason his observations about what surprises him about American culture are newsworthy, according to Investors Daily, as opposed to, say, anyone else. They are thought-provoking, however, especially this : he is impressed with the nation’s “strong ethics”:
“…everyone has a lot of integrity. If someone cannot submit their completed assignment in time, they will turn in the assignment incomplete rather than asking for answers at the last minute. People take pride in their hard work and usually do not cheat. This is different from students from India and China as well as back home in India, where everyone collaborates to the extent that it can be categorized as cheating.”
I happen to think he is right, and that this is probably the reaction of most foreigners who spend much time here. Compared to almost everywhere else on the planet, the population of the U.S. is more ethical, and the U.S. culture is more concerned with ethical values, as one should expect in the only nation expressly founded as the expression of ethical ideals.
Nonetheless, our culture has shown alarming signs of growing more tolerant and even accepting of unethical conduct, and that is worthy of more than merely academic concern. When a culture goes bad, and unethical practices become so much the norm that they are no longer regarded by the culture as unethical at all, the consequences are disastrous to human rights, the economy, justice, and society. As an example of this, one need look no further than Africa, a continent that should, by virtue of its abundant human and natural resources, be a center of world economy and influence. As any African will tell you (and as dozens of African professionals told me, when I spoke there at a conference), the reason for Africa’s ongoing instability and poverty is that corruption has become a way of life across the continent, so imbedded in all the cultures that nothing and nobody can root it out. A recent report on the sad state of affairs in Nigeria was but the latest proof of this tragedy of character. This an excerpt from commentary on the report in “The American Interest”:
“As corruption becomes ever more entrenched, average people are mired in poverty. Port Harcourt, smack in the middle of Nigeria’s oil-producing region, rots and burns and overflows with garbage. There are no schools, no jobs, no electricity, no health care. Acid rain falls from the sky; oil leaks into the water. Nigeria matters: falling output affects the global price of oil. Bad governance across the country has spawned numerous insurgencies and independence movements and created lawless areas where terrorists can live comfortably and recruit disaffected young men to join their ranks. ”Nigeria had all the makings of an uplifting tale: poor African nation blessed with enormous sudden wealth,” O’Neill continues. Corruption and poor governance and environmental destruction are devouring the country.”
The post concludes with the question, “Is Mr. Putin Paying attention?” I am more concerned with whether we are paying attention. The ethical health of the culture, like the physical health of a human being, can be measured in symptoms, and there are plenty of symptoms of a society where ethics alarms are falling into disuse and disrepair, while leaders and authorities shrug. The cumulative effect in time could be called, if it were a Hope and Crosby movie, “The Road to Nigeria,” except that it will not be a comedy.
For example, the approach of the new school year, we learn, has caused a dramatic increase in the number of public school teachers who are seeking “sugardaddies,”a.k.a. “johns” to keep them living comfortably on those low teacher salaries. SeekingArrangement.com, which is an unethical website that seeks to match up aspiring Anna Nicole Smiths with potential J. Howard Marshalls, reports that 0ver 40,000 teachers are using its services to find a man who is willing to provide, on average, $3000 a month in “financial assistance,“ a quid for which the quo should not take too much imagination to identify. That means, by my calculations, that hundreds of thousands of parents are unknowingly sending their children have to their minds cultivated and their values strengthened by teachers who are, in essence, practicing prostitution.
Even more alarming is this trend, flagged by the website The Daily Dot: women are selling their positive pregnancy test results on Craig’s List, for women who want to trick their boyfriends into marrying them by showing them a positive strip. And there are customers ready to buy. From the Daily Dot:
It is the author of the post about this new avenue of commerce that shows us how cultures rot. Audra Schroeder concludes her report by writing,
“Sort of torn on this issue. I’m all for women with a business plan, and the concept of a ratchet network intrigues me, but this might be taking the idea of “lean in” a little too far.”
Good point, Audra! It’s a real head-scratcher: Lie to the love of your life to get him to marry you, or not? Boy, that’s a close call.
There are two observations I would offer on this topic:
1. The fact that the U.S. seems unusually concerned with integrity and ethics to non-Americans shows how terrible the ethics of most of the world are, and
2. Nigeria is not as far away as it seems.
__________________________
Sources: Washington Examiner, The Daily Dot, The American Interest, Business Insider
Ethics Alarms 
“that this is probably the reaction of most foreigners who spend much time here.”
*******************
Not in my experience.
Western Europeans are usually correctly appalled / disgusted.
Western Europeans have nothing to teach us ethically.
By what, exactly? They appeared to find nothing wrong with Bill Clinton’s conduct, for example. Sexual harassment is the norm in Italy, Spain and France. Bribery is the international norm in Asia, Africa and much of Europe. What were they appalled at? Mark you, I’m not talking about debatable ethical gray areas, like capital punishment. Europeans are often appalled at free speech, which they think is unethical.
Bill Clinton is no worse than Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, or Dwight D. Eisenhower. So in that respect our Presidents’ ethics have not wavered in 200 years.
Thank you, Lanny Davis. Unless you can produce for me a record that any of those committed breaches of honesty and integrity sufficient to justify disbarment, engaged in fraud on a court under oath while President and lied directly to both the U.S. public and a grand jury, I’m not going to dignify that silly and false “everybody does it” historical fallacy devised as a talking point by Bill’s soulless enablers with the shooting-fish-in-a barrel rebuttal it screams out for.
Here’s the expected “you’re another” response from the anti-American ranks. If you’re a leftist supporter and your side takes a moral hit, just say “everyone does it” (Clinton style) and, if you wish, add an unsubstantiated charge that prominent Americans- past or present- have done likewise. A weakness of the Left is that they cannot bear being shown as ethically inferior to anyone, despite the fact that there are few others around who can match them in this failing; except when they are also murderous.
We could make a good case that America is still one of the most ethical countries around, at least among the general population. Britain certainly can’t claim that anymore. Our worst failing is that we’ve allowed the lowest rung of our society to achieve power over the rest of us. In the 1930s, decent people worried that organized crime would take over the country. Today, that nightmare is further along than Capone, the Syndicate or the Purple Gang could ever have dreamed.
My uncle worked in western Europe for much of the 90s when times were more prosperous and a dear friend lived there more recently when work was harder to find. Both had many difficulties finding people who worked with any kind of industry in many arenas. A European friend also had the unexpected exposure to service here when they married and moved here. They had not expected that from what they learned from media at both sides.
It may be a small thing, but mandatory wait-service tip, regardless of service seemed a symptom that is catching on here. I leave tips unless service is really bad, but I have never seen service as bad as the places where that percent is guaranteed.
I think many Americans have joined the bandwagon that it is actually unethical to make a fuss about someone else’s unethical behavior. It’s the whole “who are we to judge” mantra. As Americans we can sometimes be too understanding of unethical behavior in an attempt to show how caring, forgiving and gracious we are. However, in most of these cases, I don’t think it really has anything to do with being caring, forgiving and gracious. It’s more like some type of cognitive dissonance. In the end, everyone loses.
That was good for a laugh Jack.. Positive Pregnancy Tests for Sale?… Is that a cottage industry or a bedroom industry?
I am no fan of anything British or German, HOWEVER, we should all be grateful that this country was founded on and based on these two cultures (which have common Saxony roots)… A look to the South indicates how corrupt those countries founded by Brazil and Spain are. The French are equally corrupt, but with better manners, and Italy is so corrupt they have never trusted their government.
Looking to the East many in this country HAD admired Japanese ethics and work culture.. However, the continuing environmental disaster, AKA Fukushima Nuclear Site, reveals a culture of denial, which is inherently unethical and corrupt. This disaster didn’t occur 2 years ago, but decades ago when their accident analysis was reveal not to be bounding for seismic events. All their touted Quality Improvement Programs (QIP) amounted to nothing since the plant was licensed on fallacious Natural Disaster input on seismicity.
It is up to every American to maintain those ethical roots. And hopefully 80% will..lol
Aside from the tremendous social consequences unethical behavior has devastating personal consequences as well. Eventually the costs must be paid.
“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience stands He waiting, with exactness grinds He all.”
also known as Karma.
I’m not sure that a “find your mistress here” site is a credible source. Even if they’re telling the truth about the 40,000 number, and I doubt they are, that would only be the number of people claiming to be schoolteachers – I doubt they vet the truth of claims like that.
Plus, 40,000 is less than 1 percent of all female teachers in the USA, so even if true – and again, I have huge doubts – it really wouldn’t be correct to form generalizations based on that.
(I don’t know what’s unethical about being a prostitute, btw, as long as you conduct your business ethically. But being secretly a prostitute while being a schoolteacher is problematic even if being a prostitute is not – although frankly, I can think of many worse things for teachers to do.)
The Daily Dot article (your link to it is actually a link to the article about the schoolteachers, btw) doesn’t say how many such ads exist, but I suspect it’s not actually all that large a number.
In a nation as large as the USA – or a good deal smaller, even – you can always find someone being unethical.
You took the words out of my mouth, Ampersand. I immediately doubted the veracity of the 40,000 number, and also the truthiness of the number of people who claimed to be teachers. Thanks for putting it so well.
Why do you doubt the number? Why, that’s less than 1% of the total number of female teachers, by Barry’s estimate! And who knows what the others are hiding? This is a so-called profession without an official ethics code or principles of professional conduct, after all. And would 20,000 be that much different, from the standpoint of the post? I think the existence of the sugardaddy sites, and this isn’t the only one, is an indictment of the culture.
Concur.
What, you want me to say more? I can’t improve on what’s already been said, so won’t waste everyone’s time.
Link is fixed…I always appreciate the flagging.
In a world like ours, there is nowhere for the U.S. of A. to go but further downhill into a Death Valley mud flat of an ethics-free zone.
As much as I hate to admit it, all this attention I have been paying to ethics alarms for almost two years has had an opposite effect on me, desensitizing me to being alarmed at ethical breaches even as I have become more knowledgeable about the difference between ethical and unethical, and more discerning about ethical heroism, ethics dunce-hood, and ethical dilemmas. I feel like I have been battered into a clone of the robot on the old TV series Lost in Space – so fatigued from saying “Warning! Danger!” that now, all I feel like doing is echoing Dr. Smith: “Shut up, you ninny! We’re doomed – DOOMED, I tell you!”
What’s needed are a few Will Robinson type kids to strike a chord of sanity to a clearly insane situation. Lost In Space Ethics? I might want to consult Bill Mumy on that one!