Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Duty
Topic Started: Jul 22 2009, 05:24 PM (202 Views)
Jolly
Member Avatar
Geaux Tigers!
Let’s Bring Back the Concept of Duty


By Charles Murray

Thinking about the behavior of the investment bankers last fall and of Republican governors more recently, I am struck by the way that public discourse on public miscreants has been stripped of the vocabulary of virtue. Consider two of the four cardinal virtues, temperance and prudence. The want of temperance and prudence explains a lot about the financial meltdown last summer, but they are words without even positive connotations any more, let alone words that denote virtues. What parent among you has used “temperance” or “prudence” in advising your children how to live their lives? You rightly suspect that they’d break into giggles as soon as you left the room. Or before.

The disappearance of the word “duty” is weighing on us most heavily. The phrase “dereliction of duty” is still around, and I saw it used a few times about Governor Sanford, but it’s a cliché, like “let bygones be bygones.” Nobody thinks about what a “bygone” is. Nobody thinks about what “duty” means. In place of “duty,” we use the word “responsibility.” But they aren’t the same. “England expects that every man will do his duty” asked something far sterner of Nelson’s men than “England expects that every man will fulfill his responsibilities.”

We need to bring back the concept of duty for two reasons.

First, it’s time to be honest about hierarchy. Some people end up with great responsibilities that other people don’t. I don’t want a world in which the underlings pull their forelocks as their betters sweep by. We already have plenty of that. People at the top of American society are fawned upon in ways that might have made Louis XIV blush. What we don’t have is a corresponding ethic of obligation. The goal of reintroducing structure in roles is not to make underlings know their place, but to make overlings know their place.

At it stands, the overlings try to have it both ways, like parents who try to be buddies with their children, refusing to accept the full price of being the grown-up. Similarly, CEOs and college presidents and senators and governors—everyone who can’t be just buddies with everyone else—have duties that are different from the duties of their subordinates, and must be prepared to bear burdens and pay costs that their subordinates are not expected to bear and pay. We can’t have an ethic of obligation among the elites when we’re all on a first-name basis and we let people act as if they’re just one of the guys or one of the gals.

Bringing back the concept of duty would also encourage appropriate behavior among people who betray their duty. I am not quite asking for ritual suicide among those who fall short (though I can think of a few people for whom it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea). But great failures should have great prices. Governor Sanford should have resigned immediately, without trying to wait out the furor. The investment bankers who could see in retrospect that they had been negligent should be devoting their private fortunes to recompensing as many people as they can. (Yes, my disbelieving readers: People actually used to think they had a moral obligation to pay their debts even if they were not legally obligated to do so. See Mark Twain.) The reaction of the fallen ones’ colleagues, the press, and the public should not be that “mistakes were made,” but that people failed in their duty. Oprah and Barbara shouldn’t be jockeying for exclusive interviews. The fallen ones should go into seclusion, and be expected to go into seclusion.

I don’t think I’m being hopelessly idealistic. Many societies across history have enforced an ethic of obligation on their elites reasonably effectively. The United States has sometimes been among them. But if we are to restore that ethic, it won’t be done by passing laws saying that miscreants should be ashamed of themselves. It will be done by restoring the language of virtue to everyday life—one editorial page at a time, one blogger at a time, and, indispensably, one parent at a time.

The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
jon-nyc
Member Avatar
Cheers
Scapegoating bankers for the real estate bubble...
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Kincaid
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
As an aside, last night I attended the last day of our church's annual conference. One of the things they did was go thru about 80 pastors and associate pastors and re-affirm their assignments. Believe me, that's a lot of clapping.

It was heart warming to hear the applause for an army chaplain that lasted five times longer than anyone else received and continued well after she took her place on the stage.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jolly
Member Avatar
Geaux Tigers!
jon-nyc
Jul 23 2009, 01:37 AM
Scapegoating bankers for the real estate bubble...
That's only a small part of the piece.

Besides, some of them don't need to be scapegoated, they need to be shot...
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ivorythumper
Member Avatar
I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
jon-nyc
Jul 23 2009, 01:37 AM
Scapegoating bankers for the real estate bubble...
It's ok, Jon, no one really thinks that investment bankers have any idea of what virtue is anyway.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
I hope the Harvard MBA Oath is a step in the right direction.

THE MBA OATH

As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face choices that are not easy for me and others.

Therefore I promise:

I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.
I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.
I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.
I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.
I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.
I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.
I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.

This oath I make freely, and upon my honor.

Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ivorythumper
Member Avatar
I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
I like that, RR. Hadn't seen it before.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply