'Dear Lord, don't make me good, make me lucky!'

My title seems to be the default prayer today for more and more people, men and women, in all stratas of our society.  You might care to add to my title, 'And, Lord, don't let me be found out!'  I do realise that old men are prone to wailing that things aren't like they used to be and so I should make clear that I don't believe there has been some sort of golden age in which honesty and probity and straight-dealing was the order of the day.  Even so, it seems to me that simple, old-fashioned notions of virtue seem to have almost disappeared.  Ethics, in so far as it exists anywhere, seems to be confined by large organisations to ensuring that no-one indulges in racism!

In the last few years I have spectated the goings-on in the dismal non-science of climatology in which politically (I use the word in its widest sense) committed 'scientists' have bent truth to suit their agenda.  When they were found out, various committees of 'the Great and the Good' were wheeled in to whitewash their behaviour.  Just yesterday, I pointed out the disgraceful fact that 47 out of 53 supposedly 'scientific' papers on possible cancer cures were found to be impossible to replicate.  In our civil service, our local authorities, our schools, our universities, our police, our media industry and, above all, our parliament and government, we find a constant practice, almost amounting to a deliberate policy, of lying and cheating.  I would remind you that, despite appearances, these dishonest activites are not conducted by 'organisations', they are executed by individuals, people - people like me and you!

Whilst I cannot claim with any certainty that such corrupting and corruptible behaviour never occurred in earlier generations, I think I can claim that at least there was a sense of shame involved.  The perpetrators knew they were doing wrong. Today, I rarely sense that in the behaviour of the lying liars who hold positions of influence in our society.  Whether it's a teacher giving her pupils hints on the exam questions to come, or a public employee 'throwing sickies' as often as he or she can get away with, or a managers of large corporations being 'economical with the actualité', or a 'scientist glossing his experimental results, everywhere and all the time people are lying through their teeth.

So why, I wonder, has the notion of ethical behaviour, of honesty, almost totally disappeared?  No doubt part of it is the loss of Christian teaching to the very young.  Whatever one might think of Christianity as a corporate body, so to speak, no-one can gainsay its fundamental teachings on personal virtue.  However, the loss of the ten commandments has been matched by the growth in political ideology in which ends justify means.  Examples of this are too numerous to list and they exist on both sides of the political divide.  Well, as individuals, of course, our power is limited but we do have dominion over ourselves.  So perhaps we should remind ourselves of Shakespeare's words:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves

Or, perhaps the words of many of my old school teachers, "Could do better!"

 

Comments

[Whyaxye]

"the words of many of my old school teachers, "Could do better!""

Alas, this would now be impossible for teachers to say or write. "Targets partially achieved" is how it would need to be expressed.

In the public services, the erosion of truthfulness has been steady but relentless. If you want to keep your job, I guess you have to do it. If you don't, then you mark yourself out as a member of the "awkward squad", and your days are numbered.

At least in the second-hand motor trade, lying aspires to a poetic exuberance. In the public sector, it is simply a matter of mangling words, ignoring inconvenient truths, and adding a few per cent here and there.

[H]

O tempora, o mores...

[David Duff]

"poetic exuberance"

I never thought of it like that before, 'W'. Actually, my old music master gave me an end of year report which was so apt I have never forgotten it: "These lessons consist mainly of listening - a habit Duff has not yet mastered!"

Thanks, 'H', for an old man's motto!

[dearieme]

The most dismissive remark I ever had from a teacher was "Ah, ever the intellectual, eh?"

The most insightful was "Still finding everything comes easy?"

They know a bit, teachers.

[David Duff]

Well, they certainly had me taped. You, DM, were obviously one of the swots!