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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)
Why And How To Make Ethical Issues A Part Of Your Communications
Do you spend much time urging others to see things your way? It's not a sin, crime, offense or rude thing to do. We all did it as kids and most of us continue the habit as adults. Hopefully, our arguments are more refined, developed and sophisticated than when we were children but I'm being optimistic here.
In any event, I do this professionally, that is, I urge everyone to consider the benefits of living in ways that boost quality of life. My arguments fall under the heading REAL wellness.
To get your way, it helps to have persuasion skills, a good sense of timing, knowledge of what you're talking about, a winning personality like mine and modesty. A touch of humor helps, too, as does a sensitivity to circumstances, customs and traditions.
One of the key areas of REAL wellness, ignored so far in nearly all worksite wellness programs, is applied ethics. If it is tricky to make a good argument for something as value-free as exercise and nutrition, imagine how much more complicated it gets to convince other people to adopt ethical standards other than those they already possess, if any. No wonder companies don't make applied ethics part of the corporate wellness agenda, at least not so far.
The dynamics of ethics are interesting, complex and fraught with the potential for controversy, the latter something that companies do not want to create with their wellness offerings.
As a wellness promoter, I want applied ethics to be a part of worksite health promotion programs, and in all other ways to be considered a part of a healthy lifestyle that boosts quality of life. Too often, health education programs are largely medical in nature, with testing for risks and lectures about overcoming bad habits (e.g., smoking, drinking, carousing and voting Republican). I want wellness to be REAL—to address such quality of life matters as happiness, the meaning of life, global awareness, critical thinking and ethical behavior. The latter entails conducting yourself at all times with integrity, honesty and fairness in the spirit of common decencies. That is, ethically.
One of the first steps in persuading people to look at the ethical issues in any decision or perspective is to create conditions for consciously examining their current ethical positions. I believe most people rarely do this and are not even aware of their ethical standards or beliefs except in the most basic ways (e.g., not steal, don't murder people, don't lie) and how these standards and beliefs apply in even slightly complex situations.Â
By creating real life, practical opportunities to discuss how one would behave in hypothetical situations, ethical learning can occur and changes can be made. We benefit from knowing more about how our ethical positions have formed. Our ethics can be identified, tested and, most important, reformed in deliberate ways. This process will make a person's ethics more conscious to the individual and increase the chances that the ethical norms will be applied to future situations.
One convenient educational forum for better appreciating applied ethics is the TV show "The Office," and/or a book consisting of an anthology of academic papers on the varied moral and ethical issues and situations brought to light by the show edited by J. Jeremy Wisnewski. Chris Doherty, the Mayor of Scranton, said this of the book: "The Office and Philosophy provides a brilliant examination of life's unexamined, or "willfully ignored" dilemmas: love trysts, unremitting self-denial, H.R. nightmares, and humiliating personnel blunders. Thankfully, we have none of these problems in Scranton."
Another excellent source is the newspaper column "The Ethicist" by Randy Cohen appearing weekly in the New York Times. A recent column entitled "The Porn Identity" contained a letter by a reader who recognized a woman friend in an amateur porn video clip at an Internet site. She wondered if the friend, now a respected professional in a non-porn industry (medicine), should be told about it.
Well, what do YOU think?
After reading the issue posed by Cohen, I mull my own likely response to the situation described before reading what Cohen thinks. I find Mr. Cohen's explanations for one action recommendation or another more nuanced, developed and defensible from an ethical perspective than my own first responses. I usually agree with "The Ethicist." After months of reading his columns, I have become more adept at anticipating what his view of the ethical course of action to be. I hope this means I am becoming more ethical! That is my preferred explanation, in any event. However, it's clear that I have been influenced by the process of consciously testing the values applicable to a given situation, modifying those values when it seems proper to do so and applying them when conditions warranted.
What do YOU think Mr. Cohen advised in the porn matter? More important, what was the ethical reasoning he used to justify his advice? (The lessons are in the latter, not the former.)
He said tell, even if doing so risked embarrassment or worse. (The column ran on February 22, 2009 and can be accessed at the New York Times website.)
Mr. Cohen is paid to be an ethicist and is very good at it. Readers of the Times are fortunate to have his perspectives on a regular basis. But, even though we are not paid for such advice, most of us readily offer it nonetheless. It's just a part of how we are shaped by our cultures and environments—at least most of us. Personally, I feel aligned with "Calvin" of Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" fame. Calvin once declaimed: "I believe everyone is richly entitled to my opinions." I offer them daily in columns, as well as occasionally in bulk with my books and newsletters. Most of us want others to know what we think and to adopt our perspectives, as well. So, if we are going to offer advice shaped by our ethical frameworks, let's recognize, test and fine-tune these standards as they apply to one situation of another.
Watch "The Office," read "The Ethicist" and in other ways put your values to varied low-key, objective tests. In doing so, you will add to your skill, sense of timing, knowledge and winning personality when "sharing" your points of view. Don't overlook the use of humor and sensitivity to the circumstances, customs and traditions that apply to all such interactions.
Be well and let your ever-evolving sense of ethics founded on common decencies at-the-ready inform your wellness insights and other persuasive observations. Good cheer.
Domain: mentalSubdomain: factual knowledge
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