Category: Morality

Helping Others Matters

Morality, Society & Culture, Values

It used to be so straightforward. The Scout Slogan is “Do a good turn daily.” And many a Boy Scout has lived up to that slogan, not just when the whole troop was engaged in a community project, but In individual acts of kindness and service.

In today’s self-absorbed society, however, we’re told we should help others because it benefits us! Research “helping others” and you’ll get an array of articles citing the psychological, physical, spiritual and career-enhancing benefits of undertaking what should be a fundamental human activity.

Ayn Rand devotees will recognize this immediately. Objectivists argue that helping others is motivated by selfishness – that the positive feelings and benefits one derives from doing so are and should be the driving force behind acts of compassion or support for our fellow human beings.

Those with religious beliefs will, however, be motivated by the teachings of their canon. I know of no religion that doesn’t preach some form of the Golden Rule, even those the doctrines of which involve destroying anyone who doesn’t believe as they do!

A business associate of mine had the privileged responsibility of heading a centi-million-dollar foundation that was charged with improving health around the world. Explaining what it was the foundation did in that regard, my colleague pointed out, “Do you know how hard it is to give away money?” He went on to describe how difficult it was to identify legitimate opportunities to put the foundation’s money to work doing real good. He recounted story after story of how seemingly valid situations to fund potential health-improving initiatives in third world countries exposed corruption that delegitimized the opportunities. Not all, but way too much of the money would have lined the pockets of politicians, intermediaries and administrators.

We as a society face the same problem as my foundation chairman friend, both as organizations as well as individuals. It’s often difficult to assess whether the cause we wish to support is legitimate. That’s why we have websites and companies that undertake that assessment for us, promising to score philanthropies and causes objectively, while skimming just a wee bit off the top for their service.

As we walk down the streets of our major cities and are accosted by panhandlers it’s hard to know who are truly needy and who have the ability to work and care for themselves but choose not to. As we listen to pitch after pitch on television and on our phone answering machines asking for “just X$ per month”, it’s hard to know for sure how much is really going to the cause and how much is paying for the supporting bureaucracy.

In short, doing good and serving others today has been institutionalized. An array of honest and legitimate on one hand and dishonest and illegitimate organizations on the other have made helping others into an industry. Think about what “I gave at the office” means. It means we’ve abrogated responsibility for doing good to others to organizational intermediaries, or worse, to politicians and officials who with our tax dollars dole out money in return for support and votes.

I recall getting off a commuter train one day among a hoard of people racing to move along the platform and up the stairs to the exit. Suddenly there was a commotion ahead of me. Someone had, heaven forbid, failed to keep up the pace! In fact, uncharacteristically for this time of day, a mother with a stroller, clearly not a commuter, was struggling to fold it while hoisting her toddler into her arms, swing her bag over her shoulder and preparing to climb the stairs. Scowls and under-breath “take the elevator ______” accompanied the rush of people navigating around her.

As I got closer to the scene, having decided to offer my help, a suit-cladded businessman had already stopped to assist the mom and her child. By the time I got to the spot where the human flow had been stalled they were on their way up the stairs.

As it happens, I knew the businessman who stopped to help. He was the multi-millionaire chief executive of an insurance company, but you wouldn’t know that from his outward appearance or countenance. But I knew that the “good turn” he had just done was typical of him, and as I passed by him at the top of the stairs I caught his eye and smiled, saying, “I thought that was you!” and to myself said, “You beat me to it.”

A simple act of kindness. Service to another that cost absolutely nothing, where no recompense was needed or wanted. An example of helping another person not for the benefit it provided the good samaritan but simply because it was the right thing to do.

What would the world be like if everyone sought to help one another as a default state? Each and every day we are presented with multiple opportunities to help others, often in small ways.

May we strive to recognize those opportunities and live up to the Scout slogan.

Helping others matters.

What We Teach Our Children Matters

Family, Morality, Society & Culture, Values

Stand by while I put on my ballistic vest. This topic is a lightning rod and even many Traditionalists won’t like what I’m going to say here. But I’m old and on this subject, grumpy, so I’m going to call it like I see it.

I’ll begin with an anecdote. Some years ago I was attending a church picnic held at a park not far from our home. Families of all shapes and sizes came with their picnic accoutrements and the food, music, games and fun were typical of raucous church picnics.

As my family and I drove toward the area of the park where the picnic was being held, I slowed the car to a crawl as kids and pets were running all over the place. Off in the distance I could clearly see a boy, about 11 or 12, riding his bike straight towards us on this roadway/quasi pathway. I could see even 30 to 40 yards away that the boy wasn’t paying attention to what was in front him but looking from side to side.

So I stopped the car altogether, but on he came, straight for the hood of my car. I thought of beeping the horn but now he was within 20 yards and I didn’t want to startle him. “Surely he’ll look up and see where he’s going,” was what went through my mind, but he never looked up until the very last 5 yards whereupon he slammed on his brakes. It was too late.

He was barely moving, thank goodness, when he crashed head on into the front of my car and fell off the bike. I immediately jumped out to make sure he was alright. He was, but the front wheel of his bike was slightly bent, not enough to prevent it from turning, but enough to make riding the bike wobbly. So my wife and I changed places, she now behind the wheel, and I started walking with the boy, whose family I knew well, towards where they were set up in the park.

As I approached the family with my arm around the boy his father approached us, took one look at the bike, dropped to his knee and put his hands on his son’s shoulders asking if he was hurt. “No,” replied the boy who had gone sullen. Then the Dad asked, looking at me, “what happened?”.

I could see the little guy was fearful that he was going to get into trouble and so I chose my words carefully, explaining not how reckless he was, but rather how he was slowing to pull to the side of the road when it appeared his hand slipped off the brake and he couldn’t stop and ran into the front of my car.

How unprepared I was for the father’s reaction. It would be a huge understatement to say that he overreacted. He practically threatened to sue me for reckless endangerment of his son! Meanwhile, the look on the boy’s face was a combination of astonishment, bewilderment, embarrassment, and humiliation not at what happened, but for how his father was behaving!

I said little to nothing, and began walking over to where I could see my wife had parked our car and had started to take our picnic paraphernalia out. I had to hide my shock and disbelief of how obnoxious and affrontive my neighbor and church acquaintance had been.

And then I thought to myself, “What did that father say to his son after I left? And, what did the whole episode teach him?

Another example. I’m walking through the grocery store one day and a mother is desperately trying to reason with her pre-adolescent son. He is demanding she buy him candy from the shelf predictably placed at the checkout counter. The child is quite literally yelling at his mother saying the most appalling things while mom looks furtively around her obviously worried about what people are thinking.

Practicing tortured restraint, mom says to her son: “Alright, I’ll get you the candy just this once, but you must not speak to mommy that way.” The boy doesn’t even wait for his mother to pay for the candy, and she doesn’t intervene when he tears the wrapper off, throwing it on the floor and begins to chomp down.

What have these parents both taught their children? I’ll let you, the reader, answer this yourself. In both cases, however, I’ll venture a guess that you’ll agree the parents taught them something wrong.

But this is what has happened to discipline in the new millennium. My parents would have hauled me out to the car if I behaved like that in the store, pulled down my pants in front of the whole world, and given me a couple of good swats on the behind. In fact, I’m sure something like this DID happen to me when I was young, but truthfully, I don’t even remember the incidents. Why? Because it only took a few times for me to learn that there are right and wrong ways to behave.

Today, my own kids face situations like those above with their own children, but they are TERRIFIED of meting out ANY discipline, except for time-outs and toy confiscation, even in the confines of their own home! Because if word got to a teacher or school administrator of a spanking, they’d be at risk of “child protective services” showing up at their door. We’ve all heard horror stories of government intrusion in the parenting/child-rearing process.

While the current limp-wristed approach to parenting may work in some cases, I firmly believe the swift swat on the butt I received was far more effective in teaching me right and wrong, and much more lasting.

And right and wrong is what children need to be taught. Unfortunately, in the current environment of moral relativism and permissiveness, the impact of families where these are not taught has a devastating effect on the community at large. Just look at Antifa or, almost as bad, various skinhead groups for examples. Do you think their parents taught them to behave that way, or was it the absence of parental guidance and moral teaching that created them?

We thought OUR generation was spoiled and undisciplined? Just look at the next two after us!

What we teach our children, and our grandchildren, matters!

People Matter

Family, Morality, Society & Culture

Seems it should go without saying, but in this new world of technological wizardry, of AI, virtual reality, deep fake photos, avatars and animojis, where Dick Tracy watches are now a reality, and where communications have been reduced to “txt speak”… face to face and even voice to voice interaction is becoming more and more rare.

Our house has a number of floors. The other day I received a txt message from my wife, who was a couple of floors apart from me, reminding me of something. On one hand this saved her having to either climb several flights of stairs or yell at the top of her lungs to get her message across. On the other, without any tone/voice inflection to the communication, with no body language to see, there were several ways I could have interpreted what she was asking. From how soon I was supposed to get this done to whether there were other options, to any clarification I may have needed or questions that I might have had …you get the idea.

In a 1974 Harvard Business Review article, I was first exposed to the concept of “the monkey on your back.” It describes how one person can transfer a problem (the monkey) off his or her own shoulders and make it his supervisor/manager’s problem. Quoting from the article…

“Let us imagine that a manager is walking down the hall and that he notices one of his subordinates, Jones, coming his way. When the two meet, Jones greets the manager with, “Good morning. By the way, we’ve got a problem. You see….” As Jones continues, the manager recognizes in this problem the two characteristics common to all the problems his subordinates gratuitously bring to his attention. Namely, the manager knows (a) enough to get involved, but (b) not enough to make the on-the-spot decision expected of him. Eventually, the manager says, “So glad you brought this up. I’m in a rush right now. Meanwhile, let me think about it, and I’ll let you know.” Then he and Jones part company.”

What just happened? The monkey got transferred from the subordinate to the manager.

Email, voicemail, texting…these technological ‘solutions’ represent the ultimate in monkey-transferring. How many times have your heard, when asking for an update on an assignment you’ve given someone, “I sent him an email.” How many times have you sent a text message to someone and found yourself irritated when you didn’t get an immediate response? And when was the last time a person actually answered a phone when you had a question in lieu of entering voice-mail-jail? Monkeys are jumping all over the place!

Some of the other effects technology is having on interpersonal communication and relationships:

Superficiality: Some things simply cannot be communicated in a 140 character ‘tweet’ (now, I gather it’s 280 – big whoop!)

Constant Distraction: I’ll address the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) phenomenon in another post, but we’ve all seen what eyes pressed on little screens has done to threaten, perhaps even eliminate concentrating on any one thing. It’s the high-tech equivalent of trying to have a conversation with someone as their eyes dart around the room.

Lack of Privacy: there’s a price to pay for “free”. For example, to get ‘free email’, we give up our privacy. We allow the email service providers access to our communications. The ability of one person to talk in confidence with another goes out the window with technology.

Isolation: everyone has seen how people hide behind technology both creating false impressions of themselves or others, or simply “lurking”, i.e. observing what others are saying and doing. Why actually talk with other people when you can interact with them without every leaving your locked room?

Depersonalization: this is the ultimate “dis” (short in popular culture lingo for disrespect). By avoiding human interaction and communication one is thumbing one’s nose (I can think of another way of saying this using a hand gesture) at anyone and everyone with whom they interact. The lack of direct communication between tech users displays the ultimate disregard for others, i.e. people.

Instead of the pejorative “I’ll have my people get in touch with your people,” soon we’ll be saying, “I’ll have my iPhone get in touch with your iPhone.”

If we are to survive as a civilization, I posit that we will have to restore human to human speech, face to face conversation, and figure out whether we want to remain human, or become human/machine hybrids.

We need to stop hiding behind our technology and start talking to one another again.

People matter.

Our Word Matters

Morality, Society & Culture

My Greatest Generation father used to make a distinction between making a promise and giving one’s word. They oughtn’t be different, but he emphasized, “You should be able to count the number of times in your life you give your word on your two hands.”

His point was that giving your word was a sacred oath, to be reserved for the most important commitments of your life, not to be doled out capriciously.

Look at your spouse at the altar and say the words, “I do.” You’re giving your word.

Place your hand on a bible and vow to defend your country. You’re giving your word.

Promise you’ll take out the garbage. That’s rather different.

Giving your word is often expensive, hard and inconvenient, and almost always has a cost. Sometimes it’s a small cost…perhaps even an economic one. At the other end of the spectrum it can have the highest cost of all – the loss of one’s life.

But it’s fundamental to integrity. And integrity is fundamental for trust. It’s also fundamental to one’s reputation, trustworthiness, respectability, dignity, and above all, self-respect. And it’s also about Honor.

These are principles in short supply these days. The constant diet of hypocrisy, deflection, half-truths and outright lies the Left argues is necessary because it serves noble ends such as “Social Justice”, “Equality”, “Fairness”, saving the planet, “freedom” (basically, amoral license to do anything at any time for any reason), etc., leaves no room for the kind of integrity I’m talking about.

That’s the moral bankruptcy of not all but most of the Left, the majority but not all politicians, lawyers, pitchmen, spin doctors and con artists. And it’s, regrettably, reflected in much of what we see on television or hear on the radio.

Giving one’s word, telling the truth, and honoring commitments are fundamental to the fabric of a free society and to growth and prosperity of us as individuals, of our communities and our nation.

Yet I expect that if someone other than a clergyman were to try to explain the merits of giving and keeping one’s word (as I am here) he or she would be laughed at, perhaps even scorned.

“Everybody does it.” “Everyone lies.” “Promises are made to be broken.”

Not true. There are plenty, perhaps even a silent majority of people in this country, who’s word is still their bond. Who will at great cost and sacrifice say what they’ll do and do what they say.

They’re unheralded, unidentified, unacknowledged, but they’re there.

May they continue to honor their commitments, keep their word, and inspire others to do the same.

Keeping one’s word matters.

Right and Wrong Matter

Morality

One of the greatest casualties of the so-called ‘progressive’ movement and its antecedent, relativism, has been the obfuscation of right and wrong. These used to be obvious. Now, not so much.

Take violent protests for example. Hollywood and the leftist talking heads have created the impression that some violent protests are ok, even justified. Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, the riots at Berkley (choose from the long list)… all are at best excused and at worst condoned because they promote Leftist ends.

Despite the misreporting/outright lie that Far Right violence greatly surpasses Left, violent protest is wrong irrespective of whether it’s engaged in by either side. Yet, you wouldn’t know that by listening to many Hollywood heroes. Madonna, for example, flat out suggested she ought to blow up the White House. Kathy Griffin will forever be remembered for holding up a fake severed Trump head. Snoop Dog wrote a song entitled “Make America Crip Again” with a scene of Trump getting shot.

And the mainstream media and democrat leadership are, to any observer with eyes and ears, no better.

Roll back the clock to the Boomer generation and this kind of rhetoric and behavior was simply…wrong. Not today. It’s all relative, but paraphrasing George Orwell, “Some things are more relative than others.” If it allies with Leftist dogma, it’s right. If it allies with Right (.sic) dogma, it’s wrong, and once again, he who has the biggest megaphone is able to drown out the other side.

As if often the case, someone has said it better than I ever could. In a book titled 1938: A World Vanishing (London: Buchanan & Enright, 1982), Brian Talbot Cleeve contrasted Britain as it was entering World War II and the way it had become in the early 80’s.

“There really was, as nostalgia remembers, an air of greater contentment. Of a sturdier confidence in the future. [People] had a greater stock of moral certainties. Right and wrong were not matters for debate,” he wrote.

He went on to reflect, “To exchange a false morality for no morality at all is not necessarily an exchange for the better. And if, as a survivor of pre-war years, I were to offer an opinion as to one difference between then and now that is for the worse, I would have to choose morality. . . . the morality of believing that there are real and objective standards of behavior, that there are such things as virtues, and such things as vices; that certain things are unarguably good, and others unarguably bad.”

It’s often been noted that democracy carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The argument, with which I concur, is that what has happened today is the promotion of democratic ideas beyond reason.

“In our modern eagerness to be tolerant, we have come to tolerate things which no society can tolerate and remain healthy. In our understandable anxiety not to set ourselves up as judges, we have come to believe that all judgements are wrong. In our revulsion against hypocrisy and false morality we have abandoned morality itself. And with modest hesitations but firm convictions I submit that this has not made us happier, but much unhappier. We are like men at sea without a compass.”

And what was evident to Cleeve in 1982 is even more evident today.

How can we survive as a civilization if even right and wrong are confused and unclear? I believe the answer is, “We can’t, unless some outside shock brings us all down to earth again, causing us to focus on the basics.”

Right and wrong matter.

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