I remember agreeing with most of the things that were presented to me in that class. But I was also surprised by some of the responses that I heard from my fellow students. Black Board is the online version of student-teacher communication at Boise State. This is the tool that we use to talk to our teachers, for our teachers to talk to us, for us to submit assignments, and to participate in something called the Discussion Board. Or DB for short. On DB we would usually answer some kind of question, and then we would respond to other's responses and so on. Hence the "discussion" in Discussion Board. Sometimes the discussion was very specific to a chapter, or reading, or aspects of things we had learned in class. And sometimes questions would be very general and we would have to pick our way through something that we thought would be applicable and pleasing to our teacher.
For one of the discussion boards we had during the ethics section, I remember there was a story posed to us. It was a scenario of a girl that was part of a charity fund raising event where we had gone door to door seeking money for this specific charity. The ethics conundrum that we were to address, was that at the end of the day we saw this girl who had been working with us, take some of the funds from the bag she had collected and used it for beer money for herself. And to throw a wrench in the whole situation her father was one of the muckity-mucks for the charity for which we were gathering donations. The father was not present during the charity event, but a large presence none the less.
We were asked, "What would you do in this situation?" Without hesitation, I wrote my answer which had something to do in the effect of, I would talk to the organizers of the event and report what I saw. It seemed a no-brainer to me. I am quite sure that no one who had given money that day for that specific charity had ever once intended a penny of their money to go towards this girl's beer fund. I also said that if she were of legal age, that it would be none of her father's business (unless it was his professional responsibility to handle these kinds of in-house affairs). Nor was it my business to reprimand her, but to let the organizers take my information and hope they would deal with it properly. And if this were a real story, I would watch to see if I felt they handled the situation in an ethical way (according to me) and decide if I would ever lend my time and effort to them again. i.e. not go back if they let her off because of daddy.
Like I said, it seemed like a no-brainer. I was astounded to hear some of the responses from the other students. They ran the gamut from something I might have said (as above), to responses such as "She worked hard, she deserved it". "A few bucks for beer money is no big deal". It's not that I didn't know that people said that sort of thing, but I was still a little surprised. And then I got thinking over the days to follow, why do I have the ethics that I do? I no longer side with my childhood religious beliefs that were very staunch on honesty and such. And yet, I'm still pretty staunch on honesty in my own way. I realized as I thought about this, my version of ethics has come from energy and from watching energy over the decades. I have found that when we are dishonest, when we hold secrets, when we negatively conspire against someone or something, and etc it directly effects our energy to the detriment of our wellbeing. Physical follows energy and so it often comes out in some kind of negative physical form. This also plays havoc to our emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. So, it has become clear to me that one should do what one can to keep our energy balanced and flowing so that we feel good in all aspects of our lives. The natural outcome for me, following that path over the years, has been to be extremely honest, extremely transparent, and extremely helpful to others and myself in a balanced and healthy way.
This was a great insight for me. I'm sure that's what school was designed for right? It helps us to be critical thinkers. Not just to have an answer, but to be able to trace back that answer and defend it. Why do I feel this way? Is it sustainable? Is it based in any kind truth?
At this point, I feel clear about my ethics and why I have come up with my current believes regarding them. I also know I want to continue to fine tune this as I go from here. Good class on ethics! Or as I might call my version, the In-the-flow Ethics.
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