Actions Speak Louder

What people say about themselves does not matter; people will say anything. Look at what they have done; deeds do not lie. You must apply this logic to yourself.

Robert Greene

Welcome!

Welcome to another fantastic day of opportunity and chance to drink in life! Make sure you get your daily recommended allowance.

What God Wants

We might think that God wanted simple obedience to a set of rules: whereas he really wants people of a particular sort.

CS Lewis

Cultural Relativism

Recognizing the importance of our social environment in generating customs and beliefs, many people suppose that ethical relativism is the correct metaethical theory. Furthermore, they are drawn to it for its liberal philosophical stance. It seems to be an enlightened response to the sin of ethnocentricity, and it seems to entail or strongly imply an attitude of tolerance toward other cultures.

Tolerance is certainly a virtue, but is this a good argument for it? I think not. If morality is relative to each culture, then if the culture in question does not have a principle of tolerance, its members have no obligation to be tolerant.

Not only do relativists fail to offer a basis for criticizing those who are intolerant, they cannot rationally criticize anyone who espouses what they might regard as a heinous principle. Relativists cannot morally criticize anyone outside their own culture. Adolf Hitler’s genocidal actions, as long as they are culturally accepted, are as morally legitimate as Mother Teresa’s work of mercy.

There are other disturbing consequences of ethical relativism. It seems to entail that reformers are always (morally) wrong since they go against the tide of cultural standards. William Wilberforce was wrong in the eighteenth Century to oppose slavery, the British were immoral in opposing the burning of widows in India.

There is an even more basic problem with the notion that morality is dependent on cultural acceptance for its validity. The problem is that of culture or society is notoriously difficult to define. This is especially true in a pluralistic society like our own where the notion seems to be vague with unclear boundaries.

One person may belong to several societies (subcultures).. if Mary is a US citizen and a member of the Roman Catholic church, she is wrong if she chooses to have an abortion and not-wrong if she acts against the teaching of the church on abortion.

This moral Babel.. has lost its action-guiding function.

Louis Pojman
Ethical Theory

Getting and Giving

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

You Have Your Truth, I have Mine

Some people.. maintain that morality is not dependent on the society but rather the individual. “Morality is in the eye of the beholder.” They treat morality like taste or aesthetic judgments, person relative.

On the basis of (moral) subjectivism Adolf Hitler and serial murderer Ted Bundy could be considered as a moral as Gandhi, as long as each lived by his own standards, whatever those might be.

Although many students say they espouse subjectivism, there is evidence that it conflicts with other of their moral views. They typically condemn Hitler as an evil man for his genocidal policies. A contradiction seems to exist between subjectivism and the very concept of morality.

Louis Pojman
Ethical Theory

Our Narrative

We have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world. We can get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification.

Nissim Taleb

Changing with Age

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.

Lynn Hall

Slow to Anger

Learning to be slow to anger gives us the time and freedom of mind to decide how we should solve our problems or how we should express our anger. Being slow to anger allows us to respond to conviction, to confess our sins of anger, and to rise above hate to forgive those who have offended us.

Mark Cosgrove
Counseling for Anger

Guilt and Blame

No one in a relationship problem is ever totally innocent or totally guilty. With this belief, people can always keep the door open to their own faults without engaging in excessive, guilty-provoking self incrimination. Holding back anger for even a short time and engaging in self-analysis in private has the effect of tempering the expression of anger. Confession alters our goals from changing others to changing the relationship.

Mark Cosgrove
Counseling for Anger

Think About It

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

Birth Order

Everyone takes it personally when it comes to birth order.

Children and parents alike are profoundly affected by the constellations of siblings.. But that doesn’t mean the effects of birth order are as clear or straightforward as we sometimes make them sound. Indeed, birth order can be used to explain every trait and its precise opposite. I’m competitive, driven — typical oldest child! My brother, two years younger, is even more competitive, more driven — typical second child, always trying to catch up!

“Too many parents are haunted by experiences both good and bad that they identify with their birth order,” said Dr. Peter A. Gorski, a professor of pediatrics, public health and psychiatry at the University of South Florida. And that might lead them to classify their own children according to birth order, he went on, which in turn can lead to a sense of identification or even rejection and to “self-fulfilling prophecies.”

“Birth order doesn’t cause anything,” (says) Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at theUniversity of California Berkeley Dr. Sulloway said. “It’s simply a proxy for the actual mechanisms that go on in family dynamics that shape character and personality.”

Now, of course birth order played into my patients’ patterns, but so did gender and birth spacing and, above all, temperament.

"I wouldn’t discount the impact of birth order,” Dr. Gorski told me. “It sets up the structure of one’s place in relation to others from the beginning, as we learn how to react to people of different ages and different relationships.”

Perri Klass
New York Times

Molded By Our Loves

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Johann Von Goethe

Retreat

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.

General Douglas MacArthur

Acting The Part

The late Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack once told me that he was at a loss when he first moved behind the camera, so he simply acted like a director.

The feeling of not being up to the job, the belief that the role is too big, is something every leader has felt. It is evidence that the role is greater than the individual—and thus worth taking on. Pollack made the leader's requisite leap into the unknown, accepting the risk of failure that is the first step in becoming a leader—and he excelled.

That adaptive capacity is the most important attribute in determining who will become a leader. It's also the defining trait of the best actors. Inhabiting roles other than the one most of us think of as self is essential to both. So is the empathy needed to project yourself into someone else's skin.

Like great actors, great leaders create and sell an alternative vision of the world, a better one in which we are an essential part. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote that Churchill idealized his countrymen with such intensity that in the end they rose to his ideal. Mahatma Gandhi made India proud of herself. Washington and the other Founding-Fathers shared that great leader's gift of making people believe they could be—and were—part of a great nation. Martin Luther King Jr. had that same genius.

When you consider such towering and theatrical leaders, you realize leadership may be the greatest performing art of all—the only one that creates institutions of lasting value, institutions that can endure long after the stars who envisioned them have left the theater.

Warren Bennis
The Essential Bennis

Lost and Found

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

G. K. Chesterton

The Little Things

Real love motivates the lover to naturally pay attention to little behaviors in the beloved, noticing patterns that no one else does. It can leave the beloved feeling vulnerable.. and yet truly secure and loved.

Stephen Goforth

Let's Make a Deal

Would you rather have $74 in three days or $115 in three months?

That’s the question UK researchers put to more than 40,000 participants through a BBC website. They wanted to know if a person's tendancy to spend or save comes from their understanding of financies or if it the decision reflects the person's overall personality.

Almost half of those responding preferred getting quick cash. This impulsive group turned down an interest rate hundreds of times higher than what they could get from normal investments. The people showing this a desire for immediate gratification was also more likely to indulge in other impulsive behaviors.. like overeating, smoking and even infidelity. The financial impulsivity was a common theme running through their lives.

The study was conducted by University College London and the University of Warwick. You'll find details in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. (The question was actually given in pounds instead of dollars. So the choice was 45 or 70 pounds).

Stephen Goforth

Getting Ahead

The way to get ahead is to overdeliver.

Jack Welch

Angry Smokers

People with anger issues may be more likely to get hooked on smoking cigarettes because they find it soothing. A brain imaging study out of the University of California discovered that nicotine can dull anger responses. Nonsmokers in the study who were more likely to retaliate when they took a placebo than when they were given half of a nicotine patch. Details are in the journal Behavioral and Brain Functions.

Not Worth it

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

Standing

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King

Skeptics

I ran into skeptics in my philosophy classes who were proud of the fact they were always able to tear down the systems of others. But they were taking the easy way out. Never settling on a viewpoint (or at least pretending they hadn't) allowed them the luxury of throwing rocks but never being a target themselves. What they failed to realize is that life does not allow this option and we all vote with our feet even when remaining verbally neutral. A sense of desperation will shadow those who recognize the situation for what it is.

Stephen Goforth