A High Ethical Principle

If it feels good do it, or so the saying went. What if it doesn't feel right? What if something in you flashes yellow and yet the world in which you live is lit by flashing lights of green and fireworks of joy? Do you brush away your apprehension and get on board, after all a million of your peers couldn't all be wrong...could they?

Some things just don't add up and when common sense asks to be recognized we would be wise to listen to our conscience and turn the floor over to voices of reason. It is "hope" and "eternal optimism" which keep our attention off of reality and justify our self interest decisions to sacrifice the greater good for personal gains.

Daniel Ellsberg wrote about the attitude of his fellow employees in his book Secrets A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. There was unmistakable evidence of the futility of continuing and expanding the war for his fellow military analysts at Rand Corporation in 1969. Maintaining and expanding was good for employment and horrific for the combatants and resident innocent people. Ellsberg wrote about his company in 1969, the words I could not find to describe my sentiment toward my industry forty years later.

"...But the proposition that what is good for my personal income is automatically good for (my industry) and for my country is hardly a high ethical principle."

Whether the strategy is failing in military terms or economic terms, lies and deception only hide the truth allowing more suffering by innocents long enough for the principals to dig their deeper hole. Be careful and cautious. Go with common sense. Some things just don't feel right.