The 'Right' Thing

[TranaGreg]

So then, if I may, the best way to advance our society would be to make becoming a parent a privileged rather than a right, so that we might have the least toxic teaching the future citizens of the world?

I mean doing otherwise seems to be about as an effective plan as dancing down the street singing a Doris Day song

It's not an all-or-nothing proposition - why isn't it a good idea to work with parents-to-be to make sure they are better informed, about what to expect, and parenting best-practices ... while not taking away their right to procreate?

It's the same answer as to your previous question "If the majority of Right vs wrong is taught--How will we, as a society, ever advance past petty prejudices?"

Teach better.

[Gregg]

But we live IN the world, not alone in our house with our family. So we should just accept that we will never live in a place where Hate and Ugliness does not exist?

Accept does not mean defeated or giving up.

Self, children, family, community, state, country, world. Multiply the good.

What sins do fathers pass on to their kids?

Am I passing on bigotry, anger, selfishness? Or am I modeling peace, grace, love, forgiveness? Am I teaching my kids to serve or to demand to be served.

Do I demand justice, or can I forgive and give grace?

[Gregg]

It's not an all-or-nothing proposition -How will we, as a society, ever advance past petty prejudices?"

Teach better.

And if needed use words.

[GwynnInTheHall]

OK so just to set the record straight, I initially believed we Innately know right from wrong and in some cases I think that's correct, but have come to think (thanks to your input) that the vast majority of our 'Morality'is learned and then becomes second nature. So first off, thank you all for broadening my horizons.

Now, I have been posing questions in pretty rapid succession to move the conversation, not to disagree with anyone.


So as It stands, we have agreed that doing the 'Right' thing is taught for the most part. That this social evolution takes time.

I guess my next set of questions are these:


If you have 2 or more conflicting positions of what is right and those positions keep teaching their children and those around them their version of 'Right' how can there ever be progress made without someone, Govt, stepping in and doing something about it?

Slavery in this country ended only because it was deemed Illegal and we had to go to war over it and even after almost 200 more years of legal and social wrangling, African Americans are not treated equally by all.

Will they ever be?

I could post similar examples for Women and members of the LGBT community.

Outside of 'teaching our children well' is there anything we can do?

Does criminalizing hateful behavior really change anything?


I think over the past 10 years we've actually taken backwards steps in these areas and the current climate is more about doing whatever you want to do and to hell with the 'Right'thing. Am I missing something that would incline me to believe otherwise?

[TranaGreg]

But slavery didn't end, and women didn't get the vote, and the LGBT community didn't get equal rights (granted it's a work in progress) just because laws were passed; they changed because of the thousands of people working behind the scenes over decades to inform and educate people as to the horrors/lack of justice/inequality that were being experienced. I view the actions of the gov't as largely simply representing the will of the people. Women didn't get the vote until a critical mass of the populace agreed that it was just and necessary.

Regarding doing what you want vs. the right thing, I don't believe that things are that dramatically different than they were 10 or 20 years ago. It's really hard to look at this objectively - we all view the world through our own lenses and overemphasize events that connect with us at some level. Plus of course age and experience influence how we view things.

On the whole human rights are more engrained than they have ever been. I personally think communication - largely the internet, and television before that - have played an enormous role in informing people. I know it's easy to be cynical about stats, but here are a few from an article I read on vox the other day ...

The number of people living at $1.25 per day or less declined by roughly 1.1 billion people between 1990 and 2015. The number of war deaths per 100,000 people worldwide has increased in the past three years, owing largely to the war in Syria, but is still far lower than it was even 20 years ago. Average global life expectancy worldwide was 48 in 1950; it was 71.4 in 2015.

also from that article, a great quote ...

roughly as many Americans are killed per year by their own furniture as they are by terrorists

[B-Fly]

I think over the past 10 years we've actually taken backwards steps in these areas and the current climate is more about doing whatever you want to do and to hell with the 'Right'thing. Am I missing something that would incline me to believe otherwise?

I don't know about this. If you look at gay marriage and transgender issues, we've moved forward so fast that what you're probably taking notice of is the reflexive backlash to what is ultimately and historically a very positive culture shift. To some extent, I think that may well be the case with race and immigration as well - a backlash triggered by the election (and re-election) of a Black president and dramatic Hispanic population growth and integration into more and more places within American society. If that backlash produced Trump, then I think and hope you're seeing the backlash fizzle and I suspect we'll continue to make progress. You can interpret the widespread rejection of race-baiting, anti-immigrant, homophobic positions by young voters optimistically or pessimistically. Pessimists will interpret that we become more bigoted as we age. Optimists like me will say that it reflects a culture shift and that the acceptance and embrace by the young of gay marriage, transgender expression, racial justice, etc, will stay with them as they age and be passed down to their children and grandchildren.

[TranaGreg]

There's another phenomenon going on that's worth mentioning. The move from the industrial age to the information age which has really accelerated over the last 25 years due to rapid technology is leaving a huge gap in the middle class. Cities that were stable for several generations have been gutted with the disappearance of the manufacturing base, leaving a heck of a lot of disenfranchised people to turn very angry, predictably. The rust belt is the poster child but it's happening all over. And when they see immigrants come into the country and be successful in the new economy, well, the result is again predictable. In that light, the current election campaign isn't as incredible as it might seem.

I'm sure the idea of figuring out what the right thing is is not as straightforward for a lot of those impacted folks as it sounds for us here.

[Kevin Seitzer]

also from that article, a great quote ...

roughly as many Americans are killed per year by their own furniture as they are by terrorists

Radical Islamic furniture, no doubt. I don't know why we refuse to call it that.

[Gregg]

Nicely played.

[Lucky]

There's another phenomenon going on that's worth mentioning. The move from the industrial age to the information age which has really accelerated over the last 25 years due to rapid technology is leaving a huge gap in the middle class. Cities that were stable for several generations have been gutted with the disappearance of the manufacturing base, leaving a heck of a lot of disenfranchised people to turn very angry, predictably. The rust belt is the poster child but it's happening all over. And when they see immigrants come into the country and be successful in the new economy, well, the result is again predictable. In that light, the current election campaign isn't as incredible as it might seem.

I'm sure the idea of figuring out what the right thing is is not as straightforward for a lot of those impacted folks as it sounds for us here.

I think this is spot on. Part of the problem, I believe, is that the displaced workers, like the 50-year old guys who worked in the steel plant all their adult lives, do not want different jobs. Either they are not qualified, they are unable for whatever reason to train for new ones, or they are simply unwilling to give up the idea that they are "steelworkers". I understand and don't totally blame them. If I had lost the ability to practice law at 50, I would have been totally screwed. Who wants to hire a broken down 50-year old? And lots of these steelworkers were not in the best of health after that many years in the plants.

So you have institutional unemployment, or at best institutional underemployment, brought about by a number of factors which in a macro sense constitute economic progress as we advance technologically. It's sort of like the coal miners now.

It makes me think a little of the guys in the car plants, whose job it was to install the running boards, when they showed up one day and saw the new models.

[Moonlight J]

Getting new informational skills is insanely expense for the average person. Trades are easy to pick up with experience but good paying informational jobs require certification and training that everyone doesn't have the means to do. Meanwhile, we can have people come over here from places where they've acquired the necessary knowledge for free or next to free and hit the market place on visas and/or become full-time citizens. The same people that went to college for hundreds of dollars a semester (or free) in the 70's are mostly the ones that are now whistling past the tuition graveyard today.

[Gregg]

Accept does not mean defeated or giving up.

Self, children, family, community, state, country, world. Multiply the good.

What sins do fathers pass on to their kids?

Am I passing on bigotry, anger, selfishness? Or am I modeling peace, grace, love, forgiveness? Am I teaching my kids to serve or to demand to be served.

Do I demand justice, or can I forgive and give grace?

From a Christian perspective:

Matthew Henry writes, “It is the duty of Christ’s disciples to serve one another, for mutual edification.” A true leader leads by example, never asking others to do something that the leader is unwilling to do himself. He does not seek leadership in order to have power and authority over others, he leads in order to do good for other people. The leadership function you perform, no matter how large or small it might be, is characterized by such service.

[TranaGreg]

If I had lost the ability to practice law at 50, I would have been totally screwed. Who wants to hire a broken down 50-year old? And lots of these steelworkers were not in the best of health after that many years in the plants.

An aside - as a techie working in the justice world, you were definitely in the "lucky" generation; in the next 20 years AI & automation is going to radically change things ... there will in fact be a lot of unemployed 50-year-olds from the legal world, including the judiciary looking for alternatives.