Friday, January 18, 2013

The Vast (Ethical) Wasteland

Lance Armstrong? A professional athlete abused his body and the world's trust for an advantage and the potential for fame and fortune that advantage might bring? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to find gambling going on in this establishment!

Professional sports have been about nothing but the money for decades. Even the Olympics, supposed last refuge for "amateur" athletes - until the rules were changed to make them more profitable - is nothing more than a "profit opportunity" for organizers, locales, sponsors, athletes and all.

If you are shocked and surprised that a professional athlete would lie to enrich himself you must have been sleeping for the last thirty years or so.

In a country  where our "trusted elected officials" regularly go to jail for abusing the public trust (or, as in the case of New York's Joe Bruno, avoid going to jail), where the President of the US (Pick one or more:  Nixon,  Reagan, Bush I , Clinton, Bush II, Obama) lies to the public with a straight face and  without consequence, why are you surprised?

We've allowed our ethical standards to be so far eroded that this kind of behavior (which, let's face it, has always been part of public life to some extent) is seen as somehow "acceptable," something one can apologize for (or not) and move beyond.

Even in extreme cases - like lying about and concealing the death by torture of people under the jusirdiction of the US - our current moral code, as embodied by our US President, says "Let's look to the future and put the past behind us." We will not hold ourselves and our agents accountable for our/their actions, no matter how cruel, ruthless and sadistic.

But the bible has it right (because it's a psychological truth as much as a "religious" one): The sins of the fathers..." Those who imagine there are no consequences for abandoning ethical behavior and adopting an "ends justifies the means" attitude are condemning themselves to live in that kind of a world.

But we don't have to join them. We can try our best to live honestly and ethically, to hold ourselves accountable, and to remind others that such common ethics are one of the essential bases of all productive human society. At this moment in time, the ethically-ignorant opportunists and the self-styled  "pragamatists" are the fashion - but the consequences of their actions will continue to haunt them.

Meanwhile, our response can be to work to build an alternative, based on mutual respect, honesty and trust, on accountability and the painful, ongoing struggle with consciousness of our own failings and limitations. To do so is an act of existential defiance that we owe to ourselves and our posterity.

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