Today it happens it is the same
to be decent or a traitor
To be an ignorant, wise, a pickpocket,
a generous person or a swindler
All is the same, nothing is better
They are the same, a fool
and a professor
There are no failing grades or hierarchy,
the immoral people have caught up with us.
If one lives in deceit
and another, in their ambition, steals.
It’s the same if it’s a priest,
a mattress maker, a king of clubs,
a rascal or a stowaway.
Currently this seems to be the world we live in, and everywhere we turn, there’s another story to prove it. You don’t need to dig in too deeply to find that there are issues with ethics and power all around the world. The US, Latin America, the UK, Africa, Myanmar, the list goes on and on. You would be forgiven for thinking that the state of affairs has never been worse and deciding that it’s better to accept that this is the way things are and there is nothing you can do, and not bother anymore.
But putting our heads in the sand won’t make it go away, it won’t make anything better either. When we feel hopeless, there are a few things worth reminding ourselves:
Do not stall
In the business world, there are many things we can do to help. First of all, do not freeze. Do not stall. Keep moving, actively decide where you want your organisation to go and where you want it to be in the short and long term. Not thinking about it, not planning for the future and not taking action is a decision in itself, but probably not one that will help you. You can start now, where you are, with what you have. If you don’t move, you are going backwards.
Being prosperous is not unethical
With so many cases of unethical behaviour in governments, businesses, and other organisations it may sometimes seem that the only way of running a financially successful operation is by wrongdoing. But it is not. There is no shame in running a prosperous business –even in times of crisis. It is not unethical. If what you do helps someone else solve a problem or a need, you are in a good business. A business that doesn’t do well, that goes out of business is not good for anyone. The more prosperous a business is, the better for its employees, its community and its leaders. A business that thrives buys more from its suppliers giving more work to others. Running a good, prosperous, ethical business is a way of advancing and creating opportunity for others to move forward also.
Get perspective
Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and author of the new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress says: “Contrary to the impression that you might get from the newspapers—that we’re living in a time of epidemics and war and crime—the curves show that humanity has been getting better, that we’re living longer, we are fighting fewer wars, and fewer people are being killed in the wars. Our rate of homicide is down. Violence against women is down. More children are going to school, girls included. More of the world is literate. We have more leisure time than our ancestors did. Diseases are being decimated. Famines are becoming rarer, so virtually anything that you could measure that you’d want to call human well-being has improved over the last two centuries, but also over the last couple of decades.”
The words at the top of this post are an amateur translation of lyrics written in 1934. They perfectly apply to the current conditions, but so they did to the 1930s and many other times in history, for sure. The words are from a tango called Cambalache, you can listen to it here.
Remember everybody lives by selling something.
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