My thoughts after the readings

Reading Chapter Two brought back memories of my undergrad years when I first became aware of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism. As I recall, the information was less intriquing to me at the time because it seemed so obvious that anyone with an ounce of integrity would know that to do what was 'good' and what was 'right' were the only options. These were the foundation of my upbringing - what my parents and grandparents professed throughout their lives.

Unfortunately, the moral (or not) and (un)ethical behaviors of people in general, our government and American corporations of today have proven me wrong. What used to be considered the foundations for fairness, equity and prosperity - ethical reasoning - as a practical basis for decision-making, seems entirely unheard of today - business or otherwise.

There were so many points in the chapter that I wanted to debate, not because they were right or wrong, but because there are so many variations to be discussed in each of the approaches to ethical reasoning. There were good and bad aspects of both the Kantian and Aristotlean
approaches to reasoning that needed to be addressed from different perspectives so I hope we discuss them in class.

As I read, it struck me as strange that much of what is viewed as leadership and governance today lacks the focus, forethought or even the guts to make the hard and right decisions needed to turn this trend towards self-destruction around. Today, instead of punishing ill-begotten wealth, greed, intolerance and bad behavior, we actually reward it. Instead of monitoring our actions so that we do the least amount of harm and the most amount of good, we are somehow reversing the outcome to produce the most amount of harm to the largest number of indiviuals while providing the least amount of good to ensure the pleasures and prosperity of the fewest amount of individuals.

What used to be considered acts of benevolent behavior towards humanity has now become a litany of intolerance and self-preservation. Our heroes and role-models are mindless, weightless talking heads on the television screens and drug-induced atheletes, music and movie stars. We are outraged that our government questions the actions of wealthy individuals but murmur not a word about the rape of our nation by corporate greed, the plight of the homeless, the poor, the middle-class or the deterioration of our economy.

Today, instead of providing reasonable and swift solutions to damages created by corporate and government overseers to our U. S. citizens, our government takes away Welfare from the poor and turns around and creates corpororate welfare by giving billions of dollars to corporations and other institutions that don't need the money. We watch our corporations reduce workforces in the U. S. for the sake of increasing stakeholder wealth and reducing cost (so they claim), while they build mega-facilities in foreign nations and create thousands of new jobs at lower wages.

Let me get off of my soap box. I must add that Chapter 11 was very good. I too am learning to be more accepting of cultures that are different from my own. I had an opportunity to visit China two years ago and have met many wonderful people from other countries including Africa, Russia, Pakistan and India and am very proud to embrace so many wonderful people as our world becomes increasingly more diverse and touches closer to home.