1. Jeffrey Moses, Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002).
2. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Bantam Books, 2006).
1. Terrence O’Brien, “Unfunny Amber Alert Hoax Spreads Via Twitter and Text Message,” Switched, February 14, 2009,
http://www.switched.com/2009/02/14/unfunny-amber-alert-hoax-spreads-via-twitter-and-text-message.
2. It’s not just doing nothing versus doing something that distinguishes Do No Harm from Prevent Harm. Do No Harm usually speaks to harm that you yourself might cause; in Prevent Harm, the harm emanates from somewhere (or someone) else.
3. There are, of course, limits to what you should be expected to do simply because someone asks you to do it. For example, businesses have no obligation to honor unfair demands that customers make. I explore this in chapter 8.
4. George Carlin, George Carlin: It’s Bad for Ya, directed by Rocco Urbisci (Orland Park, IL: MPI Home Video, 2008), DVD. This performance is also available on CD at www.laugh.com and as an MP3 download from many online retailers. Be warned that some of this material contains language and points of view that you may find offensive. But because his discussion of rights is relevant here, the material is readily available, and many people appear to share his beliefs, I felt it would be useful to cite it.
5. International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, “Child Pornography Is Not a Crime in Most Countries,” Progress Report, Summer 2006, accessed March 30, 2011, www.icmec.org/en_X1/pdf/Summer Newsletter2006formatted.pdf.
6. Ibid.
7. Saying, “I wasn’t aware of what I was doing,” isn’t a reasonable defense against breaches of confidentiality. To be ethically intelligent means, in part, to be mindful of one’s actions. One resource (discussed in the appendix) for enhancing mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are, 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Hyperion, 2005).
8. This speaks to what Aristotle calls phronesis, or practical wisdom. A tuneful explanation of the importance of practical wisdom in everyday life can be found in the song “The Gambler,” made popular by Kenny Rogers. For more on Aristotle, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962). To find out when you can hear Kenny Rogers sing “The Gambler” in person, see http://kennyrogers.musiccitynetworks.com.
9. Ben Sisario, “Dr
Pepper and Rocker in a War of Hype,” New York Times, November 26, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/arts/music/27pepp.html.
10. Whether it’s ethical for a
band to keep its name after losing all but one of its original members is a matter for another discussion.
11. This idea comes from Immanuel Kant, whose work I discuss briefly in the appendix.
12. I’m grateful to Dianne Trumbull for helping me to see “A Medal for Opie” is about discipline, not punishment.
13. In a sense, this formulation of the principle of fairness is a dodge. What, one might ask, is due to others? The correct answer to this question is, it depends. That is, what is due to others depends on the context. In some situations, it is based on need. (For example, the college-bound child of poor parents has a greater need for, and thus a greater claim to, a grant than the child of wealthy parents does.) In other situations, what is due is based on the order in which others make a claim — the “first come, first served” rule of fairness. (It’s not unfair for the second caller to a radio station to be denied a pair of tickets to see Lady Gaga if the disc jockey announces, “Be the first caller, and get a pair of tickets to see Lady Gaga.”)
For a more thorough analysis of this complex topic, see Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
14. Punishment and discipline are concepts that merit their own book. Briefly, punishment has several possible goals, some of which conflict; discipline is more limited in scope. There is probably more agreement about the purpose of discipline than about the purpose of punishment. To discipline someone (your child, an employee) is to help that person see the error of his or her ways and to get him or her back on track. To discipline may also be to send a message to others (the child’s siblings, other employees) that such behavior is not to be tolerated. Punishment can include discipline but it need not, and for some extreme forms of behavior — pedophilia, for example — rehabilitation may not even be possible. In these cases, and even in less extreme forms of errant conduct (fraud, robbery, identity theft), the goal may simply be retribution. By committing certain wrongful acts, one owes a debt to society, and some rights may legitimately be taken away temporarily or permanently, such as through incarceration.
Whether you have to discipline a direct report for sending an inappropriate email or you’re on a jury deliberating about the just punishment for a white-collar crook, ethical intelligence calls upon you to moderate your feelings. Only then is it possible to discipline or punish fairly.
15. The ethically intelligent response to being discriminated against may also be to take legal action. It depends on a variety of factors. I am not an attorney and am not qualified to offer legal advice. I’m merely suggesting that there is a range of possible responses to being on the receiving end of an injustice, and not all of them are ethically intelligent.
16. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, trans. Marion Hausner Pauk, 50th anniversary ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006).
17. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, rev. ed. (New York: Pocket Books, 1981).
18. Jim Harter and Sangeeta Agrawal, “Workers in Bad Jobs Have Worse Wellbeing Than Jobless,” Gallup, March 30, 2011, www.gallup.com/poll/146867/Workers-Bad-Jobs-Worse-Wellbeing-Jobless.aspx.
1. Emily Bryson York, “Kellogg to Drop Olympian Phelps,” Ad Age, February 5, 2009, http://adage.com/article/news/kellogg-drop-olympian-michael-phelps-bong-photo/134363.
2. I say that it’s “almost” impossible to erase Internet communications, because there are businesses that — for a price — can remove some of them for you. The service isn’t cheap; one “reputation management company” charges celebrities, politicians, and high-level executives between $5,000 and $10,000 per month. Nick Bilton, “Erasing the Digital Past,” New York Times, April 1, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/fashion/03reputation.html.
3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962). The “treat like cases alike” rule is traced to Aristotle’s discussion of distributive justice in book 5.
1. Bruce Weinstein, “The Possibility of Ethical Expertise” (doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University, 1989). I argued that there are two kinds of expertise: epistemic and performative. The first kind concerns people who are experts by virtue of what they know (hence the designation “epistemic,” which comes from the Greek word for knowledge); the second refers to people who are experts by virtue of what they do. One kind of expertise does not entail the other. Robert De Niro is one of the greatest screen actors of all time, but he is almost completely at a loss to explain how he was able to create such memorable performances as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, and Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy. The distinction between epistemic and performative expertise has profound implications in ethics: someone can do good things but be unable to give anything more than a cursory explanation of why he or she does them. An example I cited in my dissertation was Mother Teresa’s appearance on William F. Buckley Jr.’s TV program Firing Line. Buckley wanted to know why a person would dedicate her life to serving the poor, but all Mother Teresa could say was, “It’s God’s will.” By the same token, a person can be a scholar of ethical theory yet unfaithful to his wife and dishonest on his income tax returns. Still, when we want to know what we should do and why we should do it, there are good reasons to turn to ethics experts (in the epistemic sense) for help.
1. Sammy Hagar with Joel Selvin, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock (New York: It Books, 2011), 91–93.
2. See Jeffrey Moses, Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002).
3. Created by Buddy Ruskin, this TV series ran on ABC from 1968 to 1973. See “The Mod Squad,” Internet Movie Database, accessed April 10, 2011, www.imdb.com/title/tt0062589; and “The Mod Squad,” Wikipedia, last modified March 29, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The _Mod_Squad.
4. I’m not taking a position about whether aesthetic judgments are objective or subjective, because it’s not relevant to the point I’m making about the ethics of having political conversations in the office. Even if Citizen Kane is truly a better film than Dude, Where’s My Car? (and there is much evidence to support this claim), arguments about cinema generally don’t have the same negative consequences as those about political issues and campaigns. If I say that Ernest Saves Christmas is a cinematic masterpiece, you may think I’m strange (and you’d have good reason to think so), but this probably wouldn’t affect our working relationship. However, if you and I are on opposite sides of a controversial political issue and this becomes fodder for discussion at work, problems between us may very well occur.
5. Remy Melina, “Why Were Red M&M’s Discontinued for a Decade?,” Life’s Little Mysteries, February 10, 2011,
www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/why-were-red-mms-discontinued-for-a-decade-1339.
6. Since red M&M’s were discontinued due to health concerns related to the dye used on them, it might appear that a discussion about that issue could be just as volatile as one about closing a manufacturing plant. But they’re not commensurable issues because a person would have to have eaten an awful lot of M&M’s for there to be a serious risk to his or her well-being.
7. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006), p. 33.
8. A commitment to bringing out the best in others is the foundation of servant leadership. See Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, 25th anniversary ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007).
9. Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen, 1997), 47ff.
10. Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook, quoted in Barbara Schmidt, “Cheerfulness,” Mark Twain Quotations, Newspaper Collections & Related Resources, accessed May 4, 2011, www.twainquotes.com/Cheer fulness.html.
1. Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames (New York: Riverhead Books, 2002).
2. Matt Hines, “Facing Digital Realities, Kodak to Trim Staff,” CNET News, January 22, 2004, http://news.cnet.com/Facing-digital-realities,-Kodak-to-trim-staff/2100-1047_3-5145259.html.
3. B. David Joffe, personal communication with author, March 31, 2011.
4. This is a good example of a rule that is both legal and ethical.
1. To speak of prudence is to recognize the role that virtue plays in the ethically intelligent life. In the appendix, I identify several important works about virtue, and I intend to explore this crucial topic in a subsequent volume about ethical intelligence.
2. For more examples of Elizabethan-era insults, consult the handy chart in Suzanne L. Gordon, “The Elizabethan Insult and Curses of an Elizabethan Nature or, How to Cuss Like an Elizabethan Sailor,” accessed April 10, 2011, www.museangel.net/insult.html; and “Elizabethan Oaths, Curses, and Insults,” accessed April 10, 2011, www.renfaire.com/Language/insults.html (which also contains a useful bibliography on the topic).
3. See Jan Hoffman, “A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives,” New York Times, March 24, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27sexting.html, for an example of the harsh consequences of anonymous Internet communication and how the revelation of the sender’s identity made him rethink what he had done.
4. Tina Fey, Bossypants (New York: Reagan Arthur Books, 2011).
5. Janet Maslin, “Tina Fey Is Greek and Also Teutonic, but She Isn’t a Troll,” New York Times, April 3, 2011,
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/books/bossypants-by-tina-fey-review.html.
6. Omar Manejwala, personal communication with author, April 1, 2011.
7. National Survey on Drug Use and Health, https://nsduhweb.rti.org.
8. Wendy Lee, “Hazelden Lines Up New Help for Attorney Addicts,” Star Tribune, January 6, 2011,
www.startribune.com/local/east/113050504.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DUqEiaDUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_27EQU,.
9. Chuck Rice, personal communication with author, April 1, 2011.
1. For more about the differences between shareholders and stakeholders, see “Shareholder,” Wikipedia, last modified March 15, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder; and “Stakeholder,” Wikipedia, last modified March 3, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder.
2. Asking someone, “Why did you do x?” can put him or her on the defensive. Saying instead, “Help me to understand this,” is more likely to get results, and it does so in a nonthreatening way. I learned this technique from Kellogg Fellow Darlyne Bailey, dean and professor of the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College.
3. Miguel Helft, “Jobs Takes Sick Leave at Apple Again, Stirring Questions,” New York Times, January 17, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/technology/18apple.html.
4. Maureen Salamon, “The Hidden Illnesses of Presidents,” MyHealth-NewsDaily, February 17, 2011, www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/illnesses-of-presidents-secret-surgeries-110217-1184. Salamon quotes Robert Lahita, chairman of the Department of Medicine at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, who has studied the subject. A summary of Lahita’s research can be found in “Hidden Illnesses of U.S. Presidents Discussed by Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center,” Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, January 3, 2011, www.saintbarnabas.com/hospitals/newark_beth_israel/press/2011/lahita_president_illness.html.
5. The ethics of outsourcing any job is important to consider but lies beyond the scope of this discussion. I plan to tackle this knotty subject in a future work.
6. Ilan Brat and Jared Favole, “Food Makers Warned on Claims,” Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014 24052748703862704575099950193636906.html.
7. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Nurses Top Honesty and Ethics List for 11th Year,” Gallup, December 3, 2010, www.gallup.com/poll/145043/Nurses-Top -Honesty-Ethics-List-11-Year.aspx. See the actual 2010 survey results in “Honesty/Ethics in Professions,” Gallup, November 19–21, 2010, www.gallup.com/poll/1654/Honesty-Ethics-Professions.aspx.
8. This statement assumes that people who engage in unethical business practices are aware that what they’re doing is wrong but do it anyway. Yet, as we all know, there are some people in this category for whom the concept of ethics isn’t even on the radar.
9. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Shaila Dewan, and Brian Stelter, “With Apology, Fired Official Is Offered a New Job,” New York Times, July 21, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/us/politics/22sherrod.html.
10. Maureen Miller, “Evening Buzz: An Apology for Sherrod,” Anderson Cooper 360, July 21, 2010, http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/21/evening-buzz-an-apology-for-sherrod.
11. In the interests of full disclosure, I will add that Shirley Sherrod and I were in the same fellowship program, sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, at the same time.
12. It is beyond the scope of this book to investigate the issue of ethical relativism — the belief that there is no objective truth about ethical judgments. With the example of the thieving financial consultant, I’ve provided at least one counterargument to ethical relativism, but there is obviously much more to be said about the matter. However, I suspect that the reason you’re reading this book (assuming that you’re doing so of your own free will and not because it has been assigned to you) is because you already buy into the notion that at least some ethical judgments are true or false.
13. Kirsten Korosec, “Gulf Oil Spill: BP CEO Hayward Just Can’t Help Blaming Someone Else,” BNET, April 29, 2010, www.bnet.com/blog /clean-energy/gulf-oil-spill-bp-ceo-hayward-just-can-8217t-help-blaming-someone-else/1717.
1. Elizabeth Mendes, “Americans Worry More about Lack of Money Than Job Loss,” Gallup, January 20, 2011, www.gallup.com/poll/145730/Americans-Worry-Lack-Money-Job-Loss.aspx.
2. Stacey Standish (spokesperson, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor), personal communication with author, March 31, 2011.
3. Michael Gates Gill, How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else (New York: Gotham Books, 2007).
4. Barron H. Lerner, “A Life-Changing Case for Doctors in Training,” New York Times, March 2, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/health/03zion.html. I am not related to the resident involved in the case who bears my surname.
5. In the United States, the right to a vacation is an ethical one, not a legal one. According to B. David Joffe (personal communication with author, May 10, 2010), “There is no federal law that mandates the provision of vacation leave or payment for such leave for employees in the private sector. Certain public sector employees and employees under a government contract may be entitled to paid vacation leave.” For more information, see “Vacation Leave,” U.S. Department of Labor, accessed April 10, 2011, www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/vacation_leave.htm.
By an ethical right to a vacation, I mean that your employer ought to allow you to take time off every year, whether or not the organization has a legal responsibility to do this. Ideally, this means you should be paid while on vacation, but at the very least, you should not be penalized or stigmatized for taking a break. The ethical right to a vacation thus refers to any time away from work, paid or unpaid, for restorative purposes.
6. Jeanne Sahadi, “Who Gets the Most (and Least) Vacation,” CNNMoney .com, June 14, 2007, http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/12/pf/vacation_days_worldwide.
7. Barbara Mikkelson and David P. Mikkelson, “The Secret Words,” Snopes.com, last modified January 6, 2007, www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/grouchocigar.asp.
8. This is a reference to the surprisingly delightful film written by Kevin James and Nick Bakay and directed by Steve Carr. A flight attendant once announced to my fellow passengers and me, “The movie this afternoon will be Mall Cop, starring Paul Blart.” But it’s actually Kevin James who plays the lead role.
9. Bruce Weinstein, “If Borders Goes Under, Who Will Be to Blame?,” New York Times, February 26, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/opinion/lweb27borders.html.
1. Matt Richtel, “Your Brain on Computers: Attached to Technology and Paying a Price,” New York Times, June 6, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html.
2. Edward M. Hallowell, CraryBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD (New York: Ballantine Books, 2006), quoted in Alina Tugend, “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” New York Times, October 24, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/business/yourmoney/25shortcuts.html.
3. Matt Richtel, “In Study, Texting Lifts Crash Risk by Large Margin,” New York Times, July 27, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/technology/28texting.html. Lest you think that the twenty-threefold increase in crashes applies only to truck drivers who text, Richtel reports the following: “Even though trucks take longer to stop and are less maneuverable than cars, the findings generally applied to all drivers, who tend to exhibit the same behaviors as the more than 100 truckers studied, the researchers said.”
4. “Texting While Driving,” Wikipedia, last modified April 10, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texting_while_driving.
5. Bowman, special ethics counsel for the law firm Burns White, and Jackson Kelly Professor of Law Emeritus at West Virginia University, makes this distinction in the time-management seminars he teaches. I had the pleasure of taking one of his seminars while I was a professor at the West Virginia University Health Sciences Center.
6. Robert Timko, who until recently was chair of the Department of Philosophy at Mansfield University, made this observation: “I remain continually dismayed by the number of students who feel they need to text friends while in class instead of participating in the discussion. In an interesting way, technology should remind us of Plato’s cave. It may not be fire casting shadows, but what we get from the computer or the cell phone or the iPod is an image nonetheless. It is taking us away from what is real and what is valuable.” Personal communication with author, March 27, 2011. For more about Plato’s allegory of the cave, see Plato, The Republic, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Fran Liebowitz makes a similar observation in Martin Scorsese’s 2011 documentary Public Speaking, originally broadcast on HBO. A synopsis and trailer of the film are available at www.hbo.com/documentaries/public-speaking/index.html.
7. The software is available at http://macfreedom.com. I have no financial stake in the company; I’m just glad it exists. It certainly helped me focus while I wrote this book.
8. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 20th anniversary ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). Written well before the age of the Internet and cell phones, Postman’s book is still relevant.
9. Carl Kruger, “Rise in ‘Pedestrian Distraction’ Prompts Renewed Call for Sen. Carl Kruger’s iPod Bill,” New York State Senate website, January 25, 2011, www.nysenate.gov/press-release/rise-pedestrian-distraction-prompts-renewed-call-sen-carl-kruger-s-ipod-bill. See also Taylor Behrendt and Amanda Vanallen, “Distracted Pedestrians Might Have to Pay Up,” ABCNews.com, January 25, 2011, http://abcnews.go.com/US/texting-walking-risk/story?id=12756091.
10. “ABC America This Morning: Woman Falls into Fountain While Texting,” YouTube video, 0:52, posted by “repeteproductions,” January 18, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch? v=bGpVpsaItpU.
11. Charles McGrath, “The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson,” New York Times, May 20, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Larsson-t.html.
12. David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding, Eat This, Not That!: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books, 2010), 70.
13. Quoted in Joanne Silberner, “100 Years Ago, Exercise Was Blended into Daily Life,” National Public Radio transcript, June 7, 2010, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId= 127525702.
14. Mayo Clinic staff, “Exercise: 7 Benefits of Regular Physical Activity,” MayoClinic.com, July 25, 2009, www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/HQ01676.
15. Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames (New York: Riverhead Books, 2002).
16. Chris Isidore, “Job Losses: Worst in 5 Years,” CNNMoney.com, March 14, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/07/news/economy/jobs_february.
17. “Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale,” Wikipedia, last modified February 1, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmes_and_Rahe_stress_scale.
18. Harvey Mackay, We Got Fired! …And It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004).
19. ThinkExist.com, accessed July 1, 2011, http://thinkexist.com/quotation/he_who_angers_you_conquers_you/204255.html.
1. For a brief analysis of this scene, see “The Ethics Guy on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’” You Tube video, 1:47, posted by “TheEthicsGuy” [Bruce Weinstein], May 18, 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_CPQ2xqAfc.