Turning Ethics Upside Down
In starting my research for this blog post I found a USA Today headline reading “Trump delivers the death blow to ethics.” Well That’s an Understatement! Presidential advisers pitching products, releasing fake news, accepting positions for which they have no qualifications or experience, fighting with federal judges, name calling, dismantling laws without considering consequences, brushing off conflicts of interest as irrelevant… Have I missed any???! If this isn’t the death of ethics I don’t know what is.
Watch the nightly news for 5 minutes and you’ll get a hefty dose of ethical dilemmas, conflicts and violations of the law. It’s almost overwhelming, even for me. What I’ve been unable to find anywhere are the punishments for all these actions. Where’s the accountability? What happened to professionalism? Where did truth and trust go? Are we really going to sit here and accept a simple apology from someone who has… um… let’s say spoken to a foreign leader while still a civilian and keep someone in office who knowingly released fake news, promoted products illegally or carried out a grudge on social media?
I must be missing something here. I’ve looked at all of this chaos from a lot of different angles, and I’m still having difficulty seeing a clear picture. When I was learning to draw and had a similar challenge, my art teacher would take the picture I was looking at and turn it upside down, giving me a new perspective. All it took was a change like this and the parts that were tough to comprehend suddenly came into focus. So let’s see if we can turn the ethical standards upside down and uncover some positive revelations…
Well, let’s see. Hmm… Nope, can’t do it. Oh, wait a minute. Ok, if I squint I can see extreme loyalty to both leader and staff. Oh, and I suppose I can also see the value of Twitter in getting attention and reaching the masses. But the biggest thing I see when I turn this picture upside down is that people are waking up and starting to stand up for their own values. Ah, yes, silent no more, people are speaking up, deciding what is desirable and what is not. Well, well, well.
Why don’t you try to shift your perspective to see if you can find something positive in our current situation! Let me know what insights you come up with!