The Fudge Factor

This week I watched “The Lorax,” and surprisingly I found that there were several ethical issues riddled throughout the Dr. Seuss movie.  I think that one of the most significant aspects that I have noticed since I started taking this ethics course is that there are ethical dilemmas and ethical issues everywhere if you keep an eye out for them!  Granted, ethical dilemmas make for great movie plots because it is intriguing to see how others get themselves out of binds and sticky situations.  In “The Lorax,” the main character, the Once-ler, breaks his promise to the Lorax and makes the decision to cut down the trees in order to produce his new line of Thneeds (weird sweater/scarf things); however, in doing so, he robs the animals of their homes and he severely damages the environment.  He sings a song called “How Bad Can I Be,” and I think that this song sums up the message of the entire movie, so I am going to post the link so that you can listen to the lyrics before I discuss it further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp3Iy06NYaw.

The Once-ler kicks off the song by asking the duck if the duck thinks that he is bad.  The duck cannot talk and simply quacks back to everything that the Once-ler asks, and the Once-ler takes that as an agreement that he is a good person.  I think this symbolizes that people often hear what they want to hear—regardless of if it is the truth.   Our textbook discussed how and why honest people sometimes do dishonest things; many people who engage in unethical behaviors do not consider themselves to be dishonest people.  Bowman and West (2015) referred to this as the “fudge factor” and elaborated that this notion occurs as people contemplate just how much "bad" they can do while still being a "good" person.  Bowman and West (2015) further discussed how many people find it easier to act in unethical manners when there is more distance between them and the actual act; an example of this that they provided in the text was that if a person nudged his golf-ball with his shoe to inch it closer to the hole, this would likely be "easier" for him to do than to actually lean down and physically pick up the ball to move it.  The latter is blatant cheating; whereas, someone could justify the former action as an accident to minimize the guilt/blame.  I wonder how much fudging has to occur before a person will no longer feel that they are an honest person.  At what point do people cross the line?

At one point in the song, the Once-ler sings something along the lines of money makes the world go round, which shows that he is starting to lose his moral compass and get lost in the profits.  He even tries to justify his actions by saying that he is boosting the economy, so he questions how this can possibly be bad?  Furthermore, he sings that he cannot be bad because a portion of his profits go to “charity” although who knows which one or how much, if it is even true at all (the guy winking made me think otherwise).  I think that while the Once-ler started out feeling guilty about breaking his word to the Lorax and cutting down the trees, he eventually lost sight of his moral compass and could only see dollar signs.  The Once-ler was not a “bad” character at the beginning of the movie; on the contrary, he was one of the “good” guys just trying to succeed in life.  

Last week we had a class debate about whether or not people are born evil, or if evilness is something that people learn over the years.  Students had good arguments for both sides, but ultimately there was no definitive answer.  Personally, I think that people are born good, and their interactions with others and societal influences cause people to engage in good or evil behaviors.  I would be interested to hear what you all think, though!  In the case of the Once-ler, I would argue that he was definitely born "good" but he let his personal desires get the best of him and cloud his judgment when he unethically engaged in the mass Thneed production.  While this was just a movie, I think it is a good one to watch because of the adult implications sprinkled throughout it.  The movie showed that there are consequences for our actions, even if we did not intend for them to be harmful.  It showed the importance of thinking through decisions before going through with them, and it also showed how the Once-ler was full of remorse after-the-fact.  It was not until Ted stumbled onto the Once-ler's property that the Once-ler had the opportunity to "right" his wrongs that he had previously made. 

The word "UNLESS" appeared on a rock outside of the Once-ler's isolated house, and this rock reminded the Once-ler of an important message that wrapped up the movie.  The message was that unless someone cares enough to do something, nothing is ever going to improve.  The Once-ler was able to pass along the last seed to Ted, so that Ted would be able to grow a tree and hopefully reverse the cycle. 

The very end of the movie had the following quote by Dr. Seuss, and I believe that it is a powerful message that should resonate within all of us:

Thank you for visiting my blog! 

References:

Bowman, J. S., and West, J. P. (2015). Public service ethics: Individual and institutional responsibilities.  Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press.

The Front-Page Test

This week in my Ethics course, we read the letter that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham Jail in response to the Alabama Clergymen.  Here is a link for the letter if you have not had a chance to read it but would like to: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html  .

To start out with, I was impressed with how well Dr. King articulated his thoughts while he was sitting in jail for something that he knew was unjust.  If I would have found myself in this same situation, I do not believe that I would have been nearly as eloquent with my words or writing styles as Dr. King was with his response to the Clergymen.  Dr. King knew that segregation was not only unjust, but it was something that was not going to quietly disappear unless people like him took a stand and stood up for what they believed in.  While I feel as though there were many other people who felt as passionately about ending segregation as he did, I think that a lot of people let their fear hold them back from speaking out against injustice.  Dr. King pointed out in his letter that the “white moderate” was actually doing more harm than the Ku Klux Klan in enabling segregation because these people knew it was wrong yet they did little or nothing in order to help stop it.  

This notion made me think about other issues today that people feel are wrong, but for fear of upsetting someone (family member, friend, etc.) they do not speak up about them.  An example that came to mind derived from the events on September 11, 2001.  Since that day when those horrendous attacks took place on American soil, I feel that many Americans have changed their attitudes toward people from the Middle East.  While “terrorists” are definitely people who we have learned to be wary of, I do not think it is right automatically assign suspicion to anyone who may be of Middle Eastern descent.  Unfortunately, I have personally witnessed this kind of stereotyping against them, especially in airports.  I am not talking about the searches that everyone must comply with—I think those are great and promote safety during our air travel; rather, I am talking about the attitude or conduct change that occurs when people see a person wearing a turban or burka.  The whispers, the stares, or in general just the immediate fear that arises solely based on the color of a person’s skin or articles of clothing that they are wearing is not warranted.  I have witnessed people being downright rude to Middle Eastern people, who were just trying to make their way from A to B, just as we were.  While this is very different from segregation, due to the lack of laws supporting this type of differential treatment, it still presents an ethical issue because this group of people is not being treated justly.  Unfortunately, because of the 9/11 attacks and the ongoing Muslim extremism throughout the world, there is no easy "fix" to this; however, I believe that people should be cognizant of this biased attitude so that they can recognize when they are treating someone in a way that may promote this type of unrecognized segregation.

In class this week we watched the movie “The Dark Night,” which depicted the classic struggle of good and evil as embodied by the struggle between the Batman and Joker.   The Joker continued to put Batman in ethical dilemmas, where he would have to choose the lesser evil.  One significant struggle in the movie came when the Joker took both Harvey and Rachel hostage, and Batman was forced to choose which person he would save because there was no time to save both.  Talk about an ethical dilemma!  This was one of those situations where there was no “right” answer because either decision would have resulted in someone's death.  Our textbook this week focused on corruption, and this movie aligned perfectly with that topic.  The authors, Bowman and West (2015), discussed a “front-page test” that people should consider when making ethical decisions.  If the actions that people are committing right now ended up on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow, would they be okay with this?  When thinking about the actions that the Joker made throughout the movie, the "front-page test" would not seem to be much of a deterrent, especially since he took pleasure in making other people, namely Batman, suffer.  However, for many people, the idea of having their unethical actions publicly displayed on the front page of a newspaper would raise a red flag for them and might help them to reconsider whatever decision they were about to make.  I think this test is a good thing to keep in mind when making questionable decisions because if having a story in the newspaper would bother you, then maybe you should not proceed with your current plan.

Thank you for reading my blog post.  Please leave any comments or questions below.  Have a great week!

References:

Bowman, J. S., and West, J. P. (2015). Public service ethics: Individual and institutional responsibilities.  Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

This week I watched an excellent movie called “The Imitation Game,” which was full of ethical dilemmas!  This movie showed how a team of mathematicians and cryptographers worked together to build the first digital computer in order to break the German’s “Enigma” code during World War II.  To begin with, the team involved with the code had to lie to everyone around them regarding what it was they were working on; they had to lie because otherwise it could have compromised the mission if word had gotten out regarding the progress of cracking the code.  I think that the most significant ethical dilemma in this movie, though, occurred after the code had been broken.  The team made the decision to not prevent an attack from occurring because it would have allowed the Nazis to know that the code had been broken, in which case they would have been able to change it.  One of the teammates had a brother who was going to be killed in the upcoming attack.  The team could have prevented it, though, if they had blown the whistle; however, they were in between a rock and a hard place because this would have blown their cover and could have wasted their years of work to prevent one attack, as opposed to utilizing the information they had gained to slowly but surely win the war without making it obvious how they were obtaining their information.  The young man whose brother was going to be killed in the attack was angry that his teammates did not want to prevent this attack that they very well could prevent.   I believe that he was speaking from emotion, though, as opposed to reason.  As tough of a decision as it would have been, I think that the team made the right call, even though people had to die in the process.  One of the teammates questioned whose right it was to play God and to determine who gets to live and who dies, and this posed a great question; should we ever have that capability to decide which person has to die so that other people may live?  What if it is for the greater good, like it was in this scenario?  Where does one draw the line?  I believe that this poses an ethical dilemma, for sure, because there is no “easy” answer here.

If you have not seen the movie I am referring to, here is the trailer:

In my Ethics in Public Administration course this week, the focus shifted from individual-centered ethical approaches to institutional ethical approaches.  Interestingly enough, though, the same ethics triad that was applied to the individual’s decision-making process last week can also be applied to an organizational approach to ethics (if you did not have a chance to read my blog post from last week, I thoroughly explained this triad there).  Between oaths, creeds, value statements, codes of ethics, and much more, ethical standards are a fundamental component of organizations, whether people realize it or not.  Unfortunately, though, it does not take much to hurt an organization’s reputation because “bad news” tends to spread much quicker than “good news” does.

In a group project this week, my group analyzed the movie “Minority Report” and discussed the ethical dilemmas that arose throughout the movie.  While there were many ethical dilemmas to choose from, the one that stood out the most to me was the notion of giving up the freedoms of a few to benefit the greater majority.  I think that this becomes a “gray area” pretty quickly because it is difficult to determine where exactly the line should be drawn.  Some of my classmates mentioned the events that happened on September 11^th, and how basic freedoms have changed from that specific date.  While security has definitely tightened in many areas, I feel that it has been in the best interest of the American people; therefore, I am not opposed to the changes.  I would be interested to hear what you think about this, though!

Another movie I watched this week was called “Jupiter Ascending,” and the main character, Jupiter, faced a monumental ethical dilemma when she was faced with the decision to either save herself and her family or to save the people on planet Earth.  Ever since I start taking this course on ethics, I have started to notice that ethical dilemmas are seemingly everywhere.  I find it interesting to be able to watch how people make their decisions now, based on thinking back to the ethics triad that I read about in my textbook.  In many cases, it appears as though people do not think about their decisions based on anything other than the immediate emotional response, which can oftentimes lead people to the “wrong” decision.  Throughout this course, I have learned that people need to take time to think about ethical decisions, and refrain from making “snap” judgments.  If you find that you are faced with an ethical issue or ethical dilemma, I would encourage you to take some time to figure out what is the best answer for you and to make sure that you consider multiple aspects, as opposed to just a singular one.  Thank you for visiting my blog!