At 13:05 10/12/97 UT, Tom Petzinger wrote:
> Then, tell them that in the world
>of work, their employers are holding channel zappers. If you don't live up
>to your end of the bargain, you're outta here!
While what Tom describes here certainly is true, it has two faces, one of
which does not seem to me quite related to ethics.
Understanding business relations as contracts that each actor has to
respect imo belongs to a larger ethical domain than merely work, so the
advise looks just fine. Yet should we all become zappers ? In fact the
rudeness of this world is not unknown to teens. At least in my
neighborhood, the world view that most talks vehiculates is around
unemployement, globalisation, homeless people. And our teens know and
incorporate this.
My hope is that these upcoming generations will not adopt the
zappers'mentality, that discards those who are not top performers. Who can
claim he never needs the right to make a mistake, or to put it softly, to
be 'forgiven' for some mistakes ? Can't mistakes be considered as a fine
means to evoluate ? Is not this zapping mentality leading us to restrict
our relations with 'perfect people' ?
I know that these questions will look weak in front of the harshness of
business life. They are no arguments, rather the feeling that our
societies need to developp another ethic than the mere zapping,
materialistic one that pervades all our liberal economies. So, I would
hope that we would be able to developp the sense of human values while
being aware of what Fred Nichols said : >dealing with the world the way
they find it, especially if they're bent on changing it. The biggest
mistake they can make is to deal with it the way they think it ought to be
or the way they've been told or led to believe it is.
We should urge our teens to be aware of how the world 'really is', and
also never let its defects infect their will for a better world. For the
power of ethics might be able to change this 'reality'
Regards
--Frank BILLOT <fbillot@avignon.pacwan.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>