Ethics

Today I had to renew my business insurance license. As part of that I have to take CE (continuing education) credits. One is on ethics in insurance. Here are a few excerpts from the definition of ethics;

Personal adj. 1. Of, pertaining to, or coming as from a particular
person; individual; private.

Conduct n. 1. Personal behavior; way of acting; deportment, to
behave or manage oneself.

Responsibility 1. the state of or fact of being answerable or
accountable. 2. a particular burden or obligation upon one who is
responsible. syn. answer ability, accountability.

Aspiring v. 1. to long, aim, or seek ambitiously; be eagerly
desirous, esp. for something great or of high value.

I would summarize ethics as a personal aspiration to conduct oneself responsibly.

Candy Man - Adam Sandler

I have just been in a mood to post some funny clips these days. This is a classic from Saturday Nigh Live;

Comedian Adam Sandler - SNL Halloween Costume Suggestions Funny Jokes at JibJab

Mind Bender - Solve the Riddle

You are in front of a wide river. With you is a chicken, a fox and a bag of grain. You can only carry one of those across the river at at time. If you leave the fox with the chicken, the chicken will be eatin. If you leave the chicken with the grain the chicken will eat the grain. How do you get them all across?

Take a minute to laugh...

Watch this it will help...

Doing good in a "bad" economy

A couple of good articles today on get rich slowly and the simple dollar. On get rich slowly JD wrote:

"Whatever happens, I’m going to pursue the get rich slowly philosophy. It’s worked for me so far, and I’m confident that it will work in the future (whatever that may bring). I will:

Avoid debt.
Spend less than I earn.
Maintain an emergency fund.
Track my spending.
Exercise frugality.
Save for my retirement.
Ignore the media hype."

I cannot say that I have personally been practicing all of these. We are starting to spend less, building an emergency fund, sporadically tracking spending (thank you Mint), thinking about frugality, doing some retirement savings and reading lots of media. However, we are on track and discussing practicing them. Baby steps, right?

On simple dollar, the author wrote, "Every single minute, you have choices in life. You can sit there twiddling your thumbs and reading TMZ or you can bust your hump getting a great project done on time. You can burn $30 at the bookstore, or you can go to the library and get those same books for free. You can spend your evening watching television, or you can use it to educate yourself."

Good stuff.

Room to Breathe

This is a short movie (12 minutes) that Steve Johnson directed and wrote. Steve leads a church in Portland, Oregon.

Art Alexikas, lead singer from Everclear, stars in it as the main psycho. Steve has done alot of good in the world and is a great guy. This movie is very dark. I love the contradiction! Enjoy!

The problem with evil

A couple weeks ago I saw a two hour documentary on Canadian General Roméo Dallaire. He was head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rhwanda in 1993. He recently wrote a book called, "shake hands with the devil."

It was very moving to see General Dallaire's plight as he was one of the only units to remain after the genocide began. Personally it has taken him years to recover from the guilt (feeling as though he could have done more), the depression (sheer volume of destruction of life he saw) and heartache.

Then last week I read an article (with the same title as mine above) from the Ted Conference. You can see the article in it's entirety here. Cited in the article are a couple of studies from Stanley Milgram and Phil Zimbardo, both on the concept of authority. Basically, the premise is that we are all capable of evil and lots of it given the right circumstances. Here are a couple highlights; (read the article)

seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil:

mindlessly taking the first small step
dehumanization of others
de-individualization of self (anonymity)
diffusion of personal responsibility
blind obedience to authority
uncritical conformity to group norms
passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference
and that particularly in new or unfamiliar situations

Power without oversight is prescription for abuse.