selfishness

Exceptionalism and the United States of America’s Grand Ethical Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Today’s morning headlines were full of violence in Syria, Bahrain, Libya, and the threat of new conflict in Egypt, as popular uprisings against entrenched dictatorships continue to grow. As the U.S. tries to somehow avoid a lead role in the international intervention in Libya, the question looms regarding its responsibility to other nations whose people yearn to be free—or at least freer. As important as what America ultimately decides to do will be for the futures of these nations, the U.S. economy, and foreign relations, something far more important is at stake. These difficult choices once again challenge the United States to affirm or reject its ideals, the very essence of what has made America what it is.

We have come to these crossroads four times before. Continue reading →

CBS: Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Rehire Charlie Sheen?! What could CBS be thinking?

Barry Bonds goes on trial for perjury today. He is one of our society’s prime corrupters. Bonds cheated, lied, broke the law and helped drag major league baseball’s integrity  into the depths, all with the objectives of breaking records by players better and more honest than he, and becoming rich and famous. He accomplished all of these things, with no appreciable negative consequences; as of now, his career and life carry the lesson that cheating works, and anyone who lets things like rules, laws, or ethics stand in the way of success is a fool. Perhaps the trial will change that. I can dream.

Now CBS has stepped up to be a prime corporate ethics corrupter. Reportedly, it is negotiating with Charlie Sheen to get him back on the air, either in his now defunct show “Two and a Half Men,” or in something else. Continue reading →

It’s About Time! Dept.: Charlie Sheen, Ethics Uber-Dunce, Gets What He Deserves

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Charlie Sheen, The Amazing Human Ethics Train Wreck

Up until yesterday, the message CBS and Warner Bros. had been sending to the culture by its handling of the ongoing Charlie Sheen embarrassment was this: you can break laws, try to strangle your wife, publicly betray multiple spouses, neglect your children, dive drunk, use illegal drugs, generally behave like a spoiled, anti-social ass without showing  any remorse or contrition, and corporations will still pay you a million dollars a week and tell America you are a terrific guy as long as you keep making  them big profits. Continue reading →

Ethics Night on “American Idol,” As An Ethics Hero Is Born

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ethics Hero, Scotty McCreery

“American Idol’s” group portion of its winnowing process always is the most fascinating chapter of its yearly saga, as the singing competition briefly shifts into full reality show mode. I’ve never been convinced that it was a fair method to judge aspiring singers who were competing as solo acts, as it frequently results in superior vocalists being dumped because they couldn’t sing harmony, learn choreography and lyrics under pressure, or play well with others. I know you have to get that mass of ambition and ego reduced to 24 people somehow, but group day is the equivalent of throwing darts at a dartboard.

It makes for great ethics scenarios, though. The format guarantees it, as the contestants have to form groups of four or five in a cruel process reminiscent of choosing sides for pick-up baseball games, guaranteeing that some people will end up feeling like the fat kid who always gets chosen last, if at all.

Last night there were several featured ethics dramas, with the judges, as they have been all season, being less than consistent in their responses to them. Continue reading →

Ethics Scoreboard Flashback: “Death on Everest”, a Real Life “What Would You Do?”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

[ The discussion in the earlier post today regarding ABC’s revolting “What Would You Do?” convinced me that I should re-post this essay about a real-life “What Would You Do?”tragedy, which originally appeared on The Ethics Scoreboard in 2006.  Entitled “Death on Everest,” It has been lightly edited to bring it up to date.]

As 34-year-old mountaineer David Sharp lay near death on Mount Everest, over 40 other climbers trudged past him on their march to the peak. All had oxygen with them, and a few even stopped briefly to give Sharp a few breaths. But still they climbed on, and Sharp perished. His demise on May 15, 2006 has gone into ethics lore alongside the infamous death of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964. Genovese was murdered outside her apartment building in Queens while thirty-eight neighbors watched and did nothing.
The two incidents stem from very different causes, however. While Genovese’s death was fueled by urban fear and apathy, a mass failure of courage and the willingness to assume responsibility in a crisis, Sharp was the victim of that universal ethics-suppressant, the powerful non-ethical consideration. Continue reading →

Where We Miss Morality: The Unmarried Mothers Disaster

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

USA Today included an editorial yesterday about the explosion of births to unmarried mothers in America that has exacerbated many societal problems. It’s a stunning story : in 1960,  the figure was 5.3%; by 1970, in the teeth of the cultural upheaval launched in the late 60’s, it had  more than doubled to 10.7%.   In 2009, 41% of children born in the USA were born to unmarried mothers,  including a frightening 73% of non-Hispanic black children.  The editorial suggested that reversing the trend is a priority, but was short on ideas for how to address it. Notably absent was the method of social control that had served the United States well since 1776, and had been effective world-wide since the institution of marriage: calling it wrong. Continue reading →

Eliot Spitzer, Playing to Form

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The buzz out of CNN is that its struggling “Spitzer-Parker” talking heads show is on the ropes, and will soon be re-tooled, de-Parkered, or dropped altogether. Nobody who has tried to watch this virtually unwatchable program will be surprised to hear it, nor will anyone be surprised to see the show re-emerge as just “Spitzer” or perhaps “Spitz!” If that is the solution, it will be one more instance in which unethical conduct prevails over its good twin. This is show biz, after all.

It won’t prevail for long. Eliot Spitzer has revealed himself on the show as a selfish, unmannered bully, as well as an old-fashioned male chauvinist pig. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarm: Are You A Potential Jerk?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Eric Schwitzgebel, Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside, posted an essay on his terrific blog, “The Splintered Mind,”in which he speculates on the phenomenology of being a jerk, giving all of us some tools to determine whether we are jerks, or in imminent danger of jerkhood.

His method centers on two key features of a jerk mindset, both of which lead to the rationalization of unethical behavior: Continue reading →

Ethics Reality Check: Elizabeth Edwards Was No Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Elizabeth Edwards, the estranged wife of pariah John Edwards, lost her long battle with cancer last week. The columns and broadcast tributes extolling her courage and character have been ubiquitous. She handled her illness with dignity, and the public revelation of her husband’s betrayal as well as could be expected. As is often the case when a public figure dies, however, the accolades have been excessive: calling Elizabeth Edwards a hero goes too far. When  her opportunity for true heroism arrived, she not only rejected it, but chose a course of narrow self-interest that put the nation at risk. We can attribute this to ambition, human frailty,  a mother’s warped perspective, or a bad decision under stress, but whatever the cause, her actions were the antithesis of heroism. Continue reading →

Heeding the Christmas Season Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Yes, it has come to this. The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas season is a pre-unethical condition, getting worse every year. (Pre-unethical conditions are situations that experience teaches us deserve early ethics alarms, since the stage is set for habitual bad conduct.) The financial stresses on the public and the business community in 2010 will only fuel the creeping tendency to ignore the moral and ethical values that are supposed to underlie the winter holidays—charity, gratitude, generosity, kindness, love, forgiveness, peace and hope—for the non-ethical considerations that traditionally battle them for supremacy: avarice, selfishness, greed, self-pity, and cynicism. Combine this with the ideological and political polarization in today’s America and the deterioration of mutual respect and civility, and the days approaching Christmas are likely to become an ethical nightmare…unless we work collectively to stop that from happening. Continue reading →