Living under ‘Fix Yourself’ hoax

I continue to be irritated by the daily suggestion that I am amongst the criminal elements in the society who needs to be fixed.  Like the majority of the population I am a law abiding citizen. I long for wrongdoers to be brought to justice ... for allegations of corruption to be proved ... for somebody “to make a jail” for their alleged wrong doings.  I long for a society that is just a little more disciplined, ordered and humane. Like several others I’m beginning to believe the conspiracy theorists, that it’s all a hoax which will amount to nothing.  What a pity?  If ever our society needed a commitment to doing things right it is now.  If our children believed that we were dedicated to the greater good then their own behaviours might change dramatically, but there is a widely held perception that there is one law for the privileged and another for the rest.  The only way out is for the scales to be more evenly balanced and for more of us to take responsibility for our actions and utterances.

We seem however to lack the courage to change the way we do things. Some-one once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  That’s where we are as a society; we keep taking the same action and expecting a different outcome.  There comes a time when it is necessary to make fundamental changes.  If our bottleneck is the legal system then let’s summon up the courage to carry out the necessary changes. On a more micro level, the current scenario suggests that there are no consequences for any actions taken by citizens.  People seem convinced that they can get away with whatever they fancy doing. Contrast this with our developed big brother, where in 2002 Time magazine declared it to be the “Summer of Mistrust”.  That was after WorldCom’s stocks experienced a 75% reduction in value after it was discovered that the company’s 2000 - 2002 profits had been overstated byUS$7.1 billion.

On June 3, 2002 the CEO of Tyco was charged with evading US$1 million in sales tax on artwork and other items he had purchased for himself with company funds. This reference would be incomplete without mentioning the more than US$60 billion in losses incurred by investors in Enron.  ‘Big brother’ is clearly experiencing an ethical and moral crisis. There is however no need for us to take exact pattern and follow suit.  There is still the opportunity for us to hammer out some shared values which could run across the society.  It could begin by simply revisiting the old notion of living by the “Golden Rule”. Do we naturally promote a win/win solution or is our predisposition that there’ll always be losers?  Is our guiding question, “How would I like to be treated in the same situation?” or do we look for a way to take advantage of the situation. This concept of the “Golden Rule” may seem old fashioned and irrelevant, but it fundamentally brings us back to ground zero and facilitates a re-definition of some of the basics. We can’t live by the Golden Rule if we encourage the development of the victim mentality which is taking hold.  The mother who explained that her son didn’t go to kill just to steal is not living by the “Golden Rule”.  She is not taking responsibility for her action and she must be made to understand that there is one expectation.  We must all take responsibility for our actions.

When people realise that there are consequences they’ll quickly learn behaviours which will avoid the consequences. So instead of channelling their discipline into “putting down ah wuk” they may channel their energies and discipline into earning a living.  But this will only happen when punishment and rewards are distributed evenly. When citizens experience leaders admitting that they were wrong even on the smallest of issues, they’ll believe the talk that our leaders are people of integrity.  When we experience our leaders applying the same ethical principles in their spiritual, business and professional lives, many more of us will provide unswerving support.  Until then we’ll all continue the discussion of what is business ethics forgetting that the term just doesn’t make sense, it’s either ethical or not.  Qualifying the word ethics, is simply setting ourselves up to continue in this mess of hypocrisy and wrong doing.  We need to apply one standard across the board. The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Guardian Life. You are invited to send your comments to guardianlife@ghl.co.tt