What do you get when cross ethics and Wal*Mart?

Besides a bunch of lawsuits, I mean. Evidently, you get Global Ethics University (GEU), who really, really, really wants to be your

one-stop online ethics and compliance-training provider for both individuals and corporations. From easy, affordable online ethics courses to complete, ready-to-use ethics training curricula, look no further than Global Ethics University. Ethics is a serious problem and requires serious solutions. Of course you can do it yourself or reinvent the wheel, but Global Ethics University has everything you need in one convenient place with packages and prices that suit any size organization.

"Ethics is a serious problem?" Um, no it's not. Ethics means principally the study of habits, which means that it is at bottom a framework for understanding what the problem is and how to solve it. One kind of "serious problem" typically results when unscrupulous people and ineffective management systems get together and do the corruption mamba. Another kind of "serious problem," as I've noted before, occurs when people conflate ethics with compliance (again from the homepage):

You can do something significant and different TODAY to achieve high standards of ethical compliance. The best part is that you don't have to settle for either reflective professional/personal development course or hard-hitting compliance training. You can have BOTH in EVERY Global Ethics University course or training program.

Textbook conflation. This kind of thing just reeks of intellectual confusion.

But wait! There's more! From the glossy-pamphlet literature on their "flagship Ethics for a Modern Workforce program":

[The program] is the perfect balance between a no-nonsense compliance program and a personal/professional growth course. The easy, straight-forward program builds participants’ ethical skills and knowledge using practical teaching and real-life scenarios. What makes Ethics for a Modern Workforce unique is that it builds skills in incremental levels, or ethics Competencies.

"Perfect balance?" They mean that it's both and neither, right? Donkey before the cart and all that, right?

No one told us that the donkey was on a diet.

And the program "builds participants’ ethical skills and knowledge?" Maybe they mean working on participants' ethical reasoning, or something along those lines?

And the uniqueness of the program "is that it builds skills in incremental levels, or ethics Competencies?" The whole incremental education thing has been around since Johan Amos Comenius took the idea mainstream back in 1657 or so. And "ethics Competencies?" First off, the whole capitalization of random nouns thing died off in the early 19th century. And secondly, there are no such things as generalized competencies in ethics. Each person must develop techniques for his/her personal challenges.

If you want to learn pablums bordering on nonsense, it would seem that GEU is you one-stop shop. Otherwise, it's back to the books.

Web 2.0 meets real estate

I recently--in the context of this blog, I mean--opened the can of worms that is web 2.0 vis-a-vis education. Another important intersection between the internet and the real world is real estate. Although there's a tendency, as I recently noted, for people to think that the internet univocally minimizes the importance of geography, in fact there are a number of interesting ways in which the internet actually reifies geographical distinctions. One important way is through the organization and distribution of real estate information.

I've been poking around in the web 2.0 universe a little bit lately, and I'd like briefly to introduce four web 2.0 real estate tools to anyone who may not have yet heard of them. Organized roughly in order, in this author's humble opinion, from most interesting to least interesting (all emphasis added to call out the key innovation of each project):

(1) Zillow. From the site:

Today we are answering what we believe is the first question most home buyers, sellers, and the curious ask: "How much is this home really worth?" Zillow.com calculates a valuation (the Zestimate™) that anyone can see — for free — for most homes in the U.S., including yours. Or the one you want to be yours. Or the one you are curious about. Or ours, for that matter. You can refine the value of any home with My Estimator, an interactive tool that allows you to enter things you know about a home but we don't.

(2) Homethinking. From the site:

Homethinking helps you find real estate agents by showing you what each real estate agent has done in the past and what customers have said about the job they did.

(3) Propsmart. From the site:

Propsmart is a next-generation, independent real estate search engine and online community. We crawl and index over 1 million homes for sale and other properties, then organize and display them on a slick Google Map interface.

(4) Trulia. From the site:

Whether you are moving down the street or clear across the country, we're here to help you understand real estate trends at the local level. When you are about to make the biggest financial decision of your life, we help you understand how your future home stacks up compared to similar homes on the market, and similar homes that have recently sold. We show you how sales prices have been trending where it matters—in your county, city, ZIP code and neighborhood.

All players to watch.

Preservation + green = good questions

The Real Estate section of today's Sunday NYT has an article on "The Greening of Graying Buildings." The article covers two successful preservation projects--a NJ farmhouse and a Hoboken factory--which also go green. The most interesting of the two is the farmhouse, developed by Conservation Development of Hillsborough, NJ. (Full disclosure: The principal of Conservation Development, Lise Thompson, is a personal friend and colleague.)

It may not look green... and that's the point.

In its customarily clunky way, the NYT states the obvious as though it were utterly arcane:

THE conversion of a huge Hoboken warehouse building into condominiums and the nearly completed restoration of a small 1860 farmhouse near the Delaware River are two very different sorts of projects. But they share an intriguing goal: creation of 21st-century “green” homes in history-laden structures without stripping the buildings’ original character.

It's not "intriguing"--it's only sensible. In any case, the real story here is captured beautifully and succinctly in a quote from Ms. Thompson:

“Sometimes, we had to ask ourselves: What is ‘green?’”

Green isn't a "movement," a "lifestyle," or even a technological category. Green is a state of consciousness--a paradigm--a mental model. The challenge isn't a scientific or technical one--the whole question of "efficiency" is merely a sidebar--but rather a spiritual one. In order to build greener buildings, we must become greener people.

Ms. Thompson goes on to explain a bit of her generative thinking vis-à-vis this project:

“The fact is that preserving the house is itself ‘green,’ because it avoids further development and sprawl — but there are tensions between being green and authentic restoration, and we had to resolve them as best we could.”

While there's plenty of room for growth beyond this statement, the point is that Ms. Thompson didn't assume that there is only one answer, and that all she had to do was find it. Instead, she creatively opened up an entire new vista for thinking green: the idea that preservation itself is a kind of environmentally sensitive practice.

There's much left to explore here. But the takeaway, which of course the NYT doesn't really take away, is that green isn't the answer, it's the question.

How the web thwarts virtuality

Here's a new site which I think indicates a general trend which has creeping potential to be really important for proponents of place: placeblogger.

Notice the tagline: "towards an annotated world..."

One emerging trend in our networked world is the return of geography in (post-) modern consciousness. I remember seeing an ad for a cell-phone company (can't remember which) a few years back which said, "New York, Buenos Aires. What's the difference?" To which one can only reply that if you don't find the difference obvious, then I pity you your blindness. That ad was based on a 20th century, world-is-flat (a la Thomas Friedman) mentality. Increasingly, I'm seeing geography--by which I mean embodied place--emerge as a concern for designers, and in particular for designers of web-based services and products.

I (almost) hate to break it to Thomas Friedman and his fans, but, um... no, it's not.

Although placeblogger specifically is a project inspired by the journalism/ free press movement online, there are tremendous implications--and opportunities!--for anyone who cares about place. Even as our world becomes increasingly virtual (where we use the word "community" to describe people who merely share interests), it also becomes becomes ever more embodied (where your neighbors--who drink the same water and breathe the same air--matter more than your far-away fellow-feelers). It's just so surprising--and delighting--to find that the Internet organically enhances embodied experience as well as what you might call virtual experience.

Inquiry always trumps "information"

Educator, blogger, and technophile TomMarch summarizes web 2.0 in a single sentence:

Inquiry always trumps "information."

His coinage, "School 2.0" is suggestive, but this isn't just school he's talking about (whether he means it or not, it's how the mind of humanity--aided by the internet--functions as a thinking collective. World wide web as prosthetic.

What is "Ethics Training?"

Mr. Norm Alster takes a look at some of corporate America's recent efforts at protecting themselves against Enron's fate. Central to most efforts, according to Alster, is ethics training; the piece essentially revolves around the question of whether or not ethics training works, and if so, to what extent. In a brief two sentences, Alster defines in what ethics training consists:

Typically, the programs involve training in ethical reasoning, along with mechanisms to encourage the reporting of misconduct. In some cases, employees act out scenarios that could land them in trouble in the workplace.

So, ethics training more or less boils down to "training in ethical reasoning" coupled with information on and incentives for snitching. Oh yes, and a bit of playacting. Ultimately, Alster concludes that

...ethical training may not be enough to discourage cheating in a competitive business world. Training must be coupled with new techniques — things like preemployment screening and revamped performance reviews — if future Enrons and WorldComs are to be averted.

Given his watered-down and indistinct definition of ethics training, it's hardly surprising that reinforcements should be necessary.

After reading the article, I have one burning question: What is "ethical reasoning" (and how does it differ from normal reasoning)? Reasoning in general means the inference of valid conclusions based on given premises. There is only one, universally valid, way to reason, though there are infinite chains of reasoning one might follow. Ethical reasoning must therefore simply mean reasoning about ethical issues. OK, so no special skills necessary. Any training given in ethical reasoning must be quite simply training in how to reason.

Different? Yes. Better? Well, um... at least we've got the technology in hand.

Besides, ethics means one's relationship to one's habits. Habits as in "automatic thought, feeling, or action undertaken without reflection." Reasoning about ethics consists almost entirely in first (1) becoming aware of one's habits of thought, feeling, and action; second, (2) in discerning the broader implications of the patterns one finds; and third, (3) in identifying appropriate steps to improve one's habits. Ethical problems, in other words, are not of the same order as the question, "Is this action, which I am considering doing, right or wrong?" Ethical problems are long-term considerations of personal character and its relationship to personal contentment.

The goodness or badness of a particular action, in ethical terms, depends upon its position within a larger pattern of behavior. Whether an action does or does not comply with some code of belief is not an ethical, but rather a moral consideration. (The curious should consult Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory for more on this crucial distinction.) The moralistic and legalistic slant of the ethics training considered by Alster reveals itself through its reliance on the language of compliance, which has nothing really to do with ethics per se. Before corporate America can address its issues, it first needs to get clear on whether or not those problems are indeed ethical. If they are, then ethically effective--rather than morally hopeful--measures will be needed.

Graffiti that cleans

My friend AM emails me to let me know about reverse graffiti, which consists in making images by scrubbing away soot and dirt rather than applying paint or dye. Socially conscious art at its very, very best.

He's actually cleaning the wall--scrubbing away soot and grime to create images!

Why Bush and Rove seem confident

I think it's important to remember how very little information about states of mind that we are able to get via news stories and television. If we watched Bush and Rove deliver their bluffs in person, I bet we could tell within 30 seconds how much substance their claims had. Given what we do know about their personalities, my hunch is that they would both come off as liars, bluffers, and bullies, because that's what they are, after all.

Both men have built their careers on acting the way they're now acting, and both are habitual liars; each has a personal ethos to lie at the slightest provocation. Everything they both say is 100% unbelievable. The only reason we give their little tantrums any credence at all is because we don't see them regularly in person, and because we're not habitual liars, we find it difficult to bear in mind that other people may very well be. We all tend to project our own spiritual strengths and weaknesses onto others. The fact is that Bush and Rove are, as a matter of habit (which is to say, ethically), liars, bluffers, bullies, and we should interpret everything they say and do through that lens.

I would never join any club whose members ritualistically burn their underwear—while wearing it.

Bush is a self-deceiver. He can't admit, even to himself, who he really is and what he really thinks. Reality for him is only ever a dim reflection of his own desires and anguishes. Emotionally, he's 13 years old. He acts as though he can get what he wants simply by wanting it badly enough. Whatever good qualities he may have been born with have been spoiled. He's spiritually crippled. He bluffs and bullies because he actually thinks that's how leaders act.

Rove, on the other hand, is so habitually cynical that he wouldn't tell the truth even if it was wonderful. He'd still embellish it. He has a twisted, stunted heart, and so it's nearly impossible for him to imagine a world in which he doesn't have to lie and cheat in order to get what he wants. He bluffs and bullies because he literally cannot think of anything else to do.

As to stealing the election, I don't doubt that they'll try; nor do I doubt that they'll both fail and succeed to certain extent. The real question is whether the American people--who have thus far given these losers a pass on cheating--will continue to put up with their shenanigans. I somehow think that the carte blanche of 9/11 has expired. Candidates get away with stealing elections only when people let them. I frankly hope they really try to steal it, because I have a feeling convenient GOP victories will provoke a good deal more outrage now than they did in the past 6 years. Times have changed, but Bush and Rove have only become more like themselves.

(Cross-posted at TPMCafe.)

Investment guru does not understand what investment is

Mark Skousen, writing on socially responsible investing, writes that:

If you wish to maximize your profits, don’t limit your investment choices. If you choose to make value judgments on which stocks you are going to invest in (in today's example, "socially responsible investing" funds), you are probably going to hurt your return.

Mr. Skousen bases his conclusion by comparing the performance of a socially responsible mutual fund (the Sierra Club Stock Fund - SCFSX) against a mutual fund which focuses exclusively on investing in tobacco, alcohol, gambling and military stocks (the Vice Fund - VICEX). He claims that he didn't cherry-pick his funds, but his reasoning is baldly casuistic. It isn't valid to infer a general rule from a single example.Still, what I really want to focus on here is the elephant in the room when it comes to investing, which is the question of "value judgments."

Mr. Skousen quite reasonably assumes that investors generally desire to maximize their profits. How is it that profit doesn't qualify as a value? Profit is only one aspect of an investment. Warren Buffet advises that you treat the purchase of a portion of a company (essentially what a share of stock represents) exactly as you would treat the purchase of the entire company. We all need to make a living, so I find it difficult to resent profit--which is supposed to be the reward for competent work--per se. (I of course recognize that profit can be unfairly earned.) But am I the kind of business owner who's willing to accept the fruit of labor which results in the production of weapons or drugs? I presumably want to own the kinds of companies that I would found and operate.

Well of course I value profits over life on earth. I’m an investor.

Profit is only one reason among many that people work. Subsistence, personal satisfaction, a desire to contribute to one's community, and the desire to improve the world are others. Financial investment has never been a purely pecuniary consideration. Like all investors, socially responsible investors seek to maximize their return within such constraints as represent their values. Some people can tolerate high levels of risk; some people can tolerate larger demands on their time for research into investment opportunities; and some people can tolerate profiting from the production of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Skousen may be correct about socially responsible investments yielding lower returns (though I doubt it). His underlying assumptions, however, are both pernicious and foolish. Investment is nothing more than financing your values, and values are best understood as a system of mutually constrained desires. I want profit, but not at any price. I can only hope that Mr. Skousen and his readers agree.

Senate "leader" on ethics less than ethical on further review

U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) editorializes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure that the Senate does the right thing from an ethics point of view.

If we were to take Santorum's statement at face value, we would assume that he means to encourage Senate members to adopt habits of professional practice which result in good Senators. Generally speaking, good Senators (qua Senators, which may differ to some extent from their goodness qua husbands or businessmen) are accountable to their constituents, politically effective (by which I mean that they prove able to advance their policy agenda), and fundamentally committed to the overarching principles of American government. One perennial bad habit of Senators has been the reliance on a small group of especially wealthy contributors for their financial support (we qualify the interests of such groups as "special" precisely because they are not general).

Santorum goes on, however, to explain exactly what he means by doing everything in his power to keep Senators away from the ethically slippery slope of improper lobbying:

When Sen. Bill Frist asked me to lead the Republican lobbying reform effort, the goal was to bring Democrats and Republicans together on a bill that we could all agree on.

Curious. I would have thought that the goal was formulating a baseline standard for what constitutes poor practice when it comes to mixing lobbying and fundraising. The challenge would have been persuading everyone to accept the highest standard possible, which is what political leadership is. For Santorum, the goal is simply to find something "we could all agree on."

Finding people willing to agree with him proved Mr. Santorum’s greatest challenge.

This is not political leadership, and it is does not really concern ethics. This is demagoguery--a sitting member of Congress spinning about "bipartisan working groups" while he indulges the most egregious of his bad habits. Further, even if Santorum could be taken more or less at his word, his actions don't really address the ethics of the situation, since establishing baseline standards of naughtiness won't encourage good habits, and good ethics means, more or less, good habits (as I've discussed elsewhere).

I ask you: Does this look like the best way to make ethical decisions?

An authentically ethical solution to the problem of improper lobbying and fundraising requires an approach which first and foremost assumes that continual improvement is possible. It’s not enough simply to set standards and leave it at that. Ethically, the point would have to be to inculcate in Senators good habits when dealing with lobbyists and handling their fundraising. Not that rules don't have an important role to play, but the question is less about specific rules than about an underlying commitment to being a good Senator. We need first to agree what a good Senator is in general, and then we need to come up with ways to get those elected to adopt habits which fit them to that mold.

(Hat tip to Santorum Exposed.)

Food ethics in Africa

Chris MacDonald writes a blog on business ethics, which is refreshingly thoughtful. Chris generally has a pretty good nose for finding news items related to hot-button issues in ethics related to corporate business. (I recommend taking a look.)

In yesterday's post (Monday 27 March 2006), Chris blogs about DuPont subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred Int'l. Pioneer aims to develop a nutritionally enhanced strain of sorghum (an important food crop in Africa), and then more or less to give it away. They need to give it away because many African nations have proved reluctant (at best) to use genetically modified (GM) crops. Pioneer hopes that Africans can be persuaded to accept this "gift," because Pioneer believes that the performance of the new and improved sorghum will lift African confidence is GM crops generally. Pioneer freely admits that they intend the GM sorghum to serve as a loss leader for the company, assuring nervous Africans that GM crops can be trusted.

Chris interprets the ethical situation thusly:

The claim is often made that biotechnology will bring huge benefits to the world's developing nations. In particular, it's often--too often, I would venture--claimed that genetically modified (GM) foods will do wonderful things for the starving millions in Africa. It seems to me that the question is not whether biotechnology could help the developing world, but rather whether it will.

The distinction between could and will is ultimately a consequential distinction, which means that you paradoxically can't decide until the outcome of the decision is known. Current information is always both incomplete and imperfect, which means that some level of risk will always persist. Granting that there's no sure way to predict the future, I assume that Chris must intend a slightly weaker position: Africans just need to undertake a cost-benefit analysis with some kind of risk constant factored in. But what if our analysis is flawed? It seems that we're back in the realm of could. The could/will distinction isn't much use ethically speaking since almost all present decisions of any importance involve non-trivial levels of uncertainty.

For if it could you will must understand the meaning of ethics.

Despite this, Chris wields his distinction with vigor, valorizing the will over the could. He confidently posits two possible techniques for squeezing uncertainty out of the equation:

For biotech actually to help developing nations, it seems that one of two things has to happen. Either governments and NGO's need to spend a lot of money to donate biotech products or know-how, or companies need to find business models that let them a) do good, while b) making a profit.

I don't see how either of these options (spending money or alternative business models) will mitigate the fallout, from the Africans' point of view, should GM crops turn out to be a hindrance rather than a help.

From the African side, the fundamental ethical question is whether embracing this particular GM crop can serve as good foundation for subsequent good decisions about similar and/or related issues. As I've pointed out in an earlier post, ethics concerns the cumulative power of habits. The questions that Africans should be (and apparently are) asking concern the long view. What happens if these GM crops don't behave as advertised? (The controlled conditions in experiments, after all, are quite unlike the relatively uncontrolled conditions of widespread agriculture.) What happens if GM crops cause problems with other key species in our ecosystems? Why are they just giving us this stuff for free?

No, no, no. We couldn’t possibly accept any payment. Let it be our gift to you.

As to this last question, Chris notes that "the company involved in this story (Pioneer Hi-Bred) is frank about its business model." He goes on to suggest that "the company's candour about its business model is pretty disarming." The company explains it's strategy thusly:

Pioneer will have no rights to revenues from the biotech sorghum once it is developed and commercialized, said Anderson. But the company, already locked into tight competition in the commercial seeds market, hopes that success with biotech sorghum might help open doors for other biotech crops in countries currently skeptical of genetically altered crops.

Pioneer admits (1) that the GM sorghum is a loss-leader, (2) that the stimulus for this behavior is "tight competition," and (3) that the overall goal is to "open other doors for other biotech crops." Candid? Yes. Mercenary? Also, yes. I would certainly question whether or not one ought to get into the habit of thinking that mercenaries make good company, no matter how candid they are. Far from finding this disarming, I find it disappointing that Pioneer does not (because it believes that it cannot?) speak sincerely about reasons other than competitive advantage for their actions.

Trust me! I sell GMOs for a living. I wouldn’t lie to you about food, would I?

On Pioneer's side, the principal ethical issue is whether or not this whole project is conducive to a fruitful, long-term business relationship. I would question whether or not Pioneer is really looking at this whole issue from its customers' point of view. Wanting to make a profit is only sensible. Wanting nothing else from an action or a relationship except to make a profit is so shallow, stupid, and autistic as to be criminal. Deliberately inculcating and reinforcing such a desire is the very definition of poor ethics.

Enforcement (or: How to get uncooperative people to comply)

Following up on my previous post about the pretensions of “compliance professionals,” I’m going to recommend that you take a look at this great post (the first in a series of three) on the dos and don’ts of enforcement from the perspective of government regulators. (Full disclosure: I used to work for David Smith, who authors AHI’s USA weblog.)

For those unwilling to read the entire series, I give you the payload (offered in the third installment):

Rule enforcement: dos and don'ts

Do's	Don'ts
Within the rules as written	Based on a loose interpretation or memory
In writing	Solely verbally
Quickly	Slowly and irregularly
After each occurrence	Inconsistently
Proportionately	Unconnected to offense severity
In a measured escalation	Abruptly
To the letter of the documents	Whimsically
With forewarning	Out of the blue
Allowing chances to reform	Once and for all

Although “compliance professionals” ought to feel rather sheepish at picking such an embarrassing name for themselves, real law enforcement officers play a critical role, ethically speaking. Having good character means having good habits, and any set of habits must include both habits of commission (activities undertaken regularly) and habits of omission (activities avoided). Good rules (or laws) can provide an excellent starting point for the development of good character. But as David notes,

Written rules can never be better than their enforcement.

Ultimately, how you take your first steps on the path to virtue is less important ethically than the fact that they’re in the right direction. Getting “enforced” into the start of a good habit is largely equivalent, in the long run, to willing yourself into compliance. No matter who makes you do it, it’s never too late to start making those child support payments—you might end being a responsible parent. And it’s never to early to stop fudging your taxes. You might just catch yourself being honest when no one’s looking. And that’s good character.

Ethics goes sci-fi

Australia's St. James Ethics Centre (SJEC) proposes a bold vision:

we seek to bring about a world in which people feel free to include the ethical dimension in their daily lives

How many ways is this statement silly? Let me count the ways:

1) When they say that they're "seeking," don't they mean "acting?" Or maybe "struggling?" Doesn't sound like they know what they're doing, does it?

2) Someday someone's going to take me to visit the "ethical dimension," and I'm sure it'll be better than Doctor Who on party pills. Until then, I’m going to insist that SJEC's use of dimensionality as a metaphor for ethics is both misleading and revealing. Misleading because it implies that ethics, as its own dimension, is skew to the rest of life, intersecting it only at one point. But ethics saturates life; every action is ethically freighted. Further, the metaphor suggests that ethics reduces to a geometricized calculus—a vector equation. The metaphor is revealing because it shows that SJEC is insensitive to the absurd connotations insinuated by their language.

Extrapolating from the latest ethical probe data, top government artists offer tantalizing glimpses of what the ethical dimension might actually be like.

3) "To bring about a world" has such a lovely, dystopian ring to it. Seriously, I thought God already took care of the whole world-bringing-about business--first two chapters of Genesis and all that. Promethean pretensions like these are vapid to the point of being dangerous—and that’s on top of being irritating.

4) When they say they want "people [to] feel free to include the ethical dimension," it sounds like they're insisting that we make the most of the all-you-can-eat salad bar. "No, really. Go ahead and take all the ethical dimension you can stomach. There's plenty more in the kitchen." The sentiment is very sweet, but can we please find a less Donna Reed way to say this?

Our new ethics bar features virtues, moral principles, and fresh tomatoes. Satiate the saint in you for only $9.95!

5) I'm sure that the SJEC boasts a membership as erudite as it is pompous, but where do they get off suggesting to the rest of us that we “feel free” to get down with our ethical selves? First off, what’s with the nudge-nudge, wink-wink? If the rest of us are bad people, just come right out and say it. We’ll have a good clean argument and see who’s right, who’s bad, and who’s eye-rollingly self-righteous. Second, ethics is one of the foundations of human life whether we like it or not. (Tom DeLay, good postmodern that he is, probably convinced himself that that irksome ethical dimension was just a figment of the ol' imagination; but surprise, surprise--it turned out to be plenty real.) "Feeling free" has nothing to do with it. And third, ethics isn't patty-cake and crumpets. It’s not about comfort, but about excellence. We're already and always eyebrow deep in the sludge of questions concerning the best way to navigate life. Ethics concerns hard-won wisdom about the human good, hard-bitten advice given in the teeth of a dilemma, and hard-core you-break-it-you-bought-it consequentialism. (Anyone who thinks forgiveness is soft needs to think harder about what his parents did to him as a child.)

6) Somebody please tap me on the shoulder and let me know when our "daily lives" start happening. You know, as opposed to our other lives--the non-daily ones. This definitely isn't the first time I've heard of this "daily" life I'm supposed to be leading; I’m always the last one to the party. To the SJEC vision committee: adjectives—such as “daily”—are supposed to descriptive, not rhetorical. And as I said before, every action already and always carries ethical significance and imposes ethical consequences. Ethic significance is omnichronic; no deed to dilute it to "daily."

7) Last, but not least: the statement cited above isn't a vision statement; it's a mission statement. A vision statement describes what you'd like to see happen in future. (Hence the use of the word, "vision.") A mission statement describes what you plan to accomplish. (Hence the use of the word, "mission.")

Professionalizing ethics

As if we weren't confused enough about ethics these days. Today the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) will recognize 6 "Compliance Champions" for... well, for complying. And for making sure other people comply, too. "Comply with what?" you ask. Well, they explain:

Compliance professionals develop and oversee corporate compliance programs to ensure that their organizations comply with state and federal regulations.

Wait a minute. "Compliance professionals?" Professionals who ensures that organizations “comply with state and federal regulations?” Don’t you mean law enforcement officers? One might think that we already have enough people on top of the whole compliance issue (as in, nearly 800,000 as of 2000–-not counting federal regulators and officers). But cops, as we know, don’t—indeed can’t—force people to act ethically. No one can.

Hate to be the buzz-killer, SCCE, but at bottom, your “compliance professionals” are just security guards: privately employed rule-enforcers. So what’s with this language about ethics?

Highly competent compliance professionals are already active in your neighborhood.

On the surface, the SCCE looks like a bunch of quasi-academics trying to capitalize on corporate America’s rash of scandals. Dig a little bit deeper, though, and something stranger and more insidious pops up. The SCCE isn’t a group of concerned citizens banding together to fight corporate excesses; it’s a new professional advocacy group, with its sights set on introducing the process of certification into the arena of ethics.

Certified Smart Guys earn more than their uncertified (but equally Smart) counterparts.

Probably they’re just too foolish or greedy to stop and really think about this. The thing is, certification concerns technical know-how. Professions such as law, medicine, and engineering use certification precisely to enforce their monopolies, which we countenance only because we presume that no one else is competent to oversee them.

Only lawyers, for example, possess the technical knowledge necessary to spot the incompetence and/or clever malfeasance of other lawyers. But what sane, sound, adult (apart from these guys) isn’t competent to render ethical judgement? Ethical authority doesn’t derive from technical knowledge; it derives from wisdom. So either the SCCE thinks that there’s no difference between knowledge and wisdom (which is foolish), or they think that other people won’t care and will pay for their “certified” wisdom anyhow (which is greedy).

In any case, as any half-conscious American knows, compliance with the law and ethical action are two completely different things. It’s both confusing and dangerous to conflate the two. Being ethical does NOT mean complying with state and federal regulations. (“Civil Disobedience” anyone?) Like any sensible person, I think it’s obvious that corporations need competent oversight. I also think that corporations ought to act ethically no matter what the law is. Just because something is legal don’t make it right or good, and just because it’s illegal don’t make it wrong or bad. (“Letter from the Birmingham Jail” anyone?)

How to confuse ethical issues

Thomas Shanks, S.J., Executive Director of The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University runs through a sample case concerning due diligence on MCAE’s website. The webmaster introduces the case as follows:

Ethical principles and values are, of course, key to ethical decision making, but how should they be applied to actual business situations?

The clear implication is that ethics and business are two separate silos of human experience, one of which is highly abstract, and the other a collection of “actual situations.” Further, the webmaster’s statement suggests that achieving a clear understansing of ethics represents a intellectual challenge of the highest order. Oh my God! How should ethics be applied in bussines situations? Please, great and mighty consultant--enlighten us benighted souls! This clearly serves only to bolster the Center’s assumed position that you need a consultant to understand ethics. While leading an ethical life is surely a great challenge, understanding what ethics means and how ethics works could hardly be simpler.

The English word “ethics” derives from the Classical Greek word ethos, which means “habit.” (Ethos derives the Ancient Greek ethea, which means “where wild animals live,” closing the link between “habit” and “habitat.”) Ethics therefore means the habits of character we have acquired, and which shape our typical behavior. Good ethics means good habits of character; bad ethics means bad habits of character. Ethics do not specifically concern how we relate with other people, but rather how our characters--that is, our general disposition toward our experience--improve or worsen over time.

Habits are patterns of behavior—predispositions to act in a certain way—which we acquire through repetition. We become brave precisely by practising bravery; we become greedy by practising greed. These days, when we say that an action is “unethical,” we seem to mean that it’s a “cruel” or “insensitive” action. In point of fact, an unethical action is one which leads down the slippery slope to bad character. Several intemperate actions tend to incline one to still greater shows of intemperance. The guys at Enron didn’t start robbing old ladies in California as their first malfeasance; they had to build up to it.

Mr. Fastow: "I wasn't born a cheat and a crook; I had to practice diligently for many years.”

All of which makes speaking of ethics as if they were something to be applied seem pretty weird. You don’t apply your habits or your character; you just live them. (With determination and grace, you improve them.) Business situations, like all human situations, are saturated with ethical significance. The question isn’t whether or not to apply ethical values and principles. The question is whether your next move is going to make you worse or better off in terms of your habits of character. Does the choice you're making now make the next good move easier or harder? As to the question of why one ought to prefer a better character, another post to follow.

Who creates knowledge?

From a cover letter I found on the internet:

A teacher’s role is not to impart knowledge, but rather to help students create knowledge.

The so-called revolution in education has been going on, in the U.S. at least, for a long time now—at least since Emerson wrote his seminal essay, “Education,” and I suspect some time before that as well. It has never made much progress because it has tended to focus on methods of instruction, student-teacher ratios, curricular composition, etc. But it is neither the tools nor the circumstances of schools which restrain us from making real improvements in education. It is our concept of knowledge.

Can you spot the knowledge in this picture?

Contained in the rather unassuming remark quoted above, tossed off in a cover letter, is a radical critique of our concept of knowledge as a kind of “bundle of facts,” or a “collection of information.” Knowledge does not exist in the abstract; it exists only within the horizon of some person’s real engagement with herself and her world. No one else can give me her knowledge in the way she might give me a book. Mediocre teachers simply fail to understand this, and so they fail to understand the difference between the student parroting the teacher and real knowledge. Good teachers understand where knowledge originates, so they encourage their students to engage the world on their own (i.e., the students’) terms. Great teachers provoke students to create knowledge by engaging students strategically. With a great teacher, neither the teacher nor the student sets the terms; instead, the teacher tailors every aspect of his practice to his most honest perception of his students’ best selves. In a sense, the teacher acts like a shaman, assisting the students to become whole through their active engagement with the practice of learning.

Revisioning knowledge as something created anew in each generation entails profound consequences for nearly every aspect of our culture: science, technology, politics, industry, etc. etc. Indeed, the entire idea of culture in general takes an interesting turn. One this new view, culture is not a shared body of knowledge; it is a collection of insights about how to help the next generation find the knowledge necessary to keep things running smoothly. The distinction between facts and values here collapses into their common origin in education.

The issues of pedagogical methods, student-teacher ratios, curricular composition must take second fiddle to the essential issue of knowledge generation. We keep making silly decisions because we don’t understand what’s really happening when teaching occurs. Once we understand where knowledge comes from (we don’t even have to understand what it is!), we can begin to make more intelligent choices about other educational issues.

Introduction

While the topics which most interest me (listed below) have reasonably clear dictionary definitions--and it's not as if I'll try to gainsay the OED--the way that I think about most of them is pretty unconventional. Let me lay out some of the principal points of digression:

Philosophy - I went to graduate school for philosophy (focused on ethics if I focused on anything), which is where I learned that philosophy is not an academic discipline. The "love of wisdom" is a feeling, an intuition that wisdom--which itself needs to be distinguished from both intelligence and knowledge--is something to be cherished. Wisdom, which is an insight to the way the world really works, represents one of the most rarefied and astonishing achievements of human civilization.

Architecture - I'm in graduate school right now for architecture (history and theory), and I learned quickly that architecture is not a profession, and it is definitely not just "buildings." Architecture is the way that humans, using rituals, language, and techniques for the manipulation of materials (this includes both the arts and construction), appropriate space and transform it into place. Architecture is the residue of human inhabitation on the earth.

Education - George Savile said that "education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught." Precisely. Information and knowledge are merely the means by which we shape our characters. At bottom, education is about habits of character--what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

Finance - People love to conflate economics and finance. Economics concerns the allocation and relative value of resources. Finance concerns the definition and management of risk.

Politics - I've heard more than one professional politician echo Otto von Biskmark's definition, that "politics is the art of the possible." But that definition derives from the experience of the statesman as a forger of compromises. Politics more largely means those projects which we humans can envision and accomplish only if we act collectively in concert with one another.

Writing - Because we live though language, we give little thought to its power. Even the incidental language we use in daily life--ordering coffee in the morning or gossipping at the office--shapes our actions and, ultimately, who we are. Writing therefore represents one of the great powers ever developed or deployed by human civilization. Few things are harder than writing well, and few activities more redolent of the potential to change lives.