Moral compass
My views of right and wrong exist in an idealistic world that is mostly an illusion. It's a lovely illusion, but one that isn't very realistic.
This sort of dreamland got its first major crack six years ago when I was 20, right after I had graduated from college. I was working at my first post-college job and was easily the youngest in a position of authority. I was more or less the "second in command" organizing multiple lectures, workshops and events all day, on a walkie-talkie and cell phone simultaneously, running around to fix foreseeable and unforeseeable snafus.
One of our biggest events was the talent show. Each school had at least one entry, not to mention the staff and student counselor performances. Welllll, the student counselor performance that year walked a fine line, with a few metaphors and homonyms that had some semi-inappropriate double meanings (whether intended or not) and the senior staff member in charge of the talent show flipped her shit. I was back stage at the time the sparks started flying. I stepped in between the two groups to try to calm things down, which ended the talent show lady storming from the stage and the gal student counselors breaking into tears. I was stunned at the staff member's reaction, thoroughly unnerved that she could lose it so easily and over so trivial a matter. While it certainly did have some innuendo, it wasn't that bad and certainly didn't merit the explosion it received.
That was the most clear-cut example of my faith in adulthood getting threatened that week. Someone flying off the handle and not thinking through to the consequences of their actions (she certainly got reprimanded for it when we got back to the office). There were many other cases of complaining, under-cutting and blame-shifting I beared witness to throughout the week that I couldn't process at the time. It was an intense time and further contemplation on these events would have resulted in a lowered capacity to deal with all the shit that went down that week. Kids skipping classes, getting injuries, sneaking into each others' rooms, trying to drink and do drugs; adults railing about their lack of resources or doors to classrooms being locked; schedules to amend, re-print and distribute to 80+ staff members; briefs before breakfast and de-briefs after all the students have finally been accounted for at night; high school students, college students, college personnel, foundation staff members, board members, VIPs; basically dealing with the unexpected and rolling with it.
When I got home after the program was done and over with, I walked into my apartment and broke down, bawling, finally letting all of the stress from the week leak out through my eyeballs. A wise woman once told me that there are three salt waters that relieve stress--sweat, the ocean, and tears. I tend to do the tears option most often as it's the most immediate relief and my body (like the rest of me) isn't much in the way of patience. And such was the case after ACE. I realized that adults really don't have it together the way I thought they did when I was a child. I always assumed adults had it made, they were smart, they knew what life was about and had all the answers. This was the first time that I well and truly realized that it was merely an illusion, nothing more than a fantasy created by adults to make children trust and obey. I had always been that trusting and obeying child...well, for the most part, anyway. I'm the target audience for authority. Those anti-smoking and skin cancer commercials that were created by the government here seriously work for people like me. I am a target audience (well, except for the fact that I don't smoke).
Anyway, back to present day. There are smaller rights and wrongs that I encounter on a daily basis. Well, not exactly rights and wrongs, more personal considerations and respect. As in I'm walking down the sidewalk when a group three or four abreast approach. I move over to my side of the sidewalk to allow for some extra room but they continue in their straight line, not moving to allow me or anyone else to pass by comfortably. Oblivious in their own worlds. (Though it's not the most civilized act, I've started dropping my shoulder and walking straight in.) Or people cutting in lines or standing directly in front of you while waiting on an uncrowded train platform. Cat calls in the streets. Rude customer service people. Restaurants who add charges between the itemized receipt and the signing receipt.
They're small things that irk me, that tell me that people are unaware of other people around them. They exist in their own little bubbles. This serves them very well and may, in fact, be an enlightened mode of thinking. However, it's also inconsiderate and disrespectful.
Then there are bigger things. Marcus got home from a work function last week with a moral conundrum. Well, less a conundrum since he had already dealt with the situation, but he was made to question his decision. Here's the story. He was at an industry golf day with a bunch of other law firms in town. Each of the other firms were playing in teams of four except for Marcus's firm. They were the singular team of two and figured they were disqualified from any of the competition anyway, and fudged their score cards, making a big joke of it all. Little did they realize that their scores would be counted and they would win one of the competitions. My dear boy, being the wonderful man that he is, went to the front of the room of 100+ lawyers to say that they couldn't accept their prize, that they had made up their scores and the prize should be given to the next closest score. Instead of having a laugh about it (as one would assume they would), the room filled with silence and a few evil-eyes. One person even piped up with a, "So you lied." Nice response. So instead of just realizing it for what it was, a simple misunderstanding that resulted in Marcus doing what I believe to be the right thing, people reacted in a way to make him second-guess himself and question whether he should have just accepted the prize. Here were all of these industry people that would remember him as "that guy" from the golf day. The guy who lied. That just seems silly to me, why should someone be looked down upon for doing the right thing? Especially over something so trivial.
This led us into a discussion of right and wrong and the fact that our moral compasses seem to be set to a very different place than the general population. We believe in telling the truth and doing the right thing. But is our version of "the right thing", being an uncommon opinion, actually not the right thing? We asked ourselves that and Marcus considered this a bit more seriously than I did. But I firmly believe in telling the truth. I mean really, who wants to live a lie? Don't all people get that awful feeling when they tell lies and take advantage of people? Clearly they don't, but why don't they? Did they not have someone tell them the difference between right and wrong? Were their examples different than mine? Was religion part of the difference?
Because I'm in Australia and because I have an arguably negative view on quite a few things in this culture (I admit it), I'm forced to wonder if this isn't an "Australian trait". However, when I compare it to other countries I've traveled in (corruption in South America, apartheid and ever continuing racism in South Africa, cruise ship companies owning Haitian islands), this sort of questionable morality is actually slight. I think my problem is that because Australia is so similar to the U.S., when there are differences I have a very difficult time processing them. It's like when I learned German in college. I thought that because English and German are so similar, German would be an easier language to learn. That was a bad assumption. In fact, German was one of the most difficult languages I studied because it was so similar to English. The gender was extremely difficult and required much rote memory rather than rhyme or reason. Some structures were so close to English while others didn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I felt frustration because what I was expecting to be so similar was in fact different. False expectations...
Anyway, I find my moral compass to be set a bit differently to many of the other people I meet here. This isn't something I have encountered previously in quite this same way and it's a bit unnerving. But we persevere and try to keep the faith, especially in ourselves. We also need to live in our own little bubble and continue making, what we think, are the right choices. Choose the right. It's actually not a bad motto. Now where is that CTR ring... :)
This sort of dreamland got its first major crack six years ago when I was 20, right after I had graduated from college. I was working at my first post-college job and was easily the youngest in a position of authority. I was more or less the "second in command" organizing multiple lectures, workshops and events all day, on a walkie-talkie and cell phone simultaneously, running around to fix foreseeable and unforeseeable snafus.
One of our biggest events was the talent show. Each school had at least one entry, not to mention the staff and student counselor performances. Welllll, the student counselor performance that year walked a fine line, with a few metaphors and homonyms that had some semi-inappropriate double meanings (whether intended or not) and the senior staff member in charge of the talent show flipped her shit. I was back stage at the time the sparks started flying. I stepped in between the two groups to try to calm things down, which ended the talent show lady storming from the stage and the gal student counselors breaking into tears. I was stunned at the staff member's reaction, thoroughly unnerved that she could lose it so easily and over so trivial a matter. While it certainly did have some innuendo, it wasn't that bad and certainly didn't merit the explosion it received.
That was the most clear-cut example of my faith in adulthood getting threatened that week. Someone flying off the handle and not thinking through to the consequences of their actions (she certainly got reprimanded for it when we got back to the office). There were many other cases of complaining, under-cutting and blame-shifting I beared witness to throughout the week that I couldn't process at the time. It was an intense time and further contemplation on these events would have resulted in a lowered capacity to deal with all the shit that went down that week. Kids skipping classes, getting injuries, sneaking into each others' rooms, trying to drink and do drugs; adults railing about their lack of resources or doors to classrooms being locked; schedules to amend, re-print and distribute to 80+ staff members; briefs before breakfast and de-briefs after all the students have finally been accounted for at night; high school students, college students, college personnel, foundation staff members, board members, VIPs; basically dealing with the unexpected and rolling with it.
When I got home after the program was done and over with, I walked into my apartment and broke down, bawling, finally letting all of the stress from the week leak out through my eyeballs. A wise woman once told me that there are three salt waters that relieve stress--sweat, the ocean, and tears. I tend to do the tears option most often as it's the most immediate relief and my body (like the rest of me) isn't much in the way of patience. And such was the case after ACE. I realized that adults really don't have it together the way I thought they did when I was a child. I always assumed adults had it made, they were smart, they knew what life was about and had all the answers. This was the first time that I well and truly realized that it was merely an illusion, nothing more than a fantasy created by adults to make children trust and obey. I had always been that trusting and obeying child...well, for the most part, anyway. I'm the target audience for authority. Those anti-smoking and skin cancer commercials that were created by the government here seriously work for people like me. I am a target audience (well, except for the fact that I don't smoke).
Anyway, back to present day. There are smaller rights and wrongs that I encounter on a daily basis. Well, not exactly rights and wrongs, more personal considerations and respect. As in I'm walking down the sidewalk when a group three or four abreast approach. I move over to my side of the sidewalk to allow for some extra room but they continue in their straight line, not moving to allow me or anyone else to pass by comfortably. Oblivious in their own worlds. (Though it's not the most civilized act, I've started dropping my shoulder and walking straight in.) Or people cutting in lines or standing directly in front of you while waiting on an uncrowded train platform. Cat calls in the streets. Rude customer service people. Restaurants who add charges between the itemized receipt and the signing receipt.
They're small things that irk me, that tell me that people are unaware of other people around them. They exist in their own little bubbles. This serves them very well and may, in fact, be an enlightened mode of thinking. However, it's also inconsiderate and disrespectful.
Then there are bigger things. Marcus got home from a work function last week with a moral conundrum. Well, less a conundrum since he had already dealt with the situation, but he was made to question his decision. Here's the story. He was at an industry golf day with a bunch of other law firms in town. Each of the other firms were playing in teams of four except for Marcus's firm. They were the singular team of two and figured they were disqualified from any of the competition anyway, and fudged their score cards, making a big joke of it all. Little did they realize that their scores would be counted and they would win one of the competitions. My dear boy, being the wonderful man that he is, went to the front of the room of 100+ lawyers to say that they couldn't accept their prize, that they had made up their scores and the prize should be given to the next closest score. Instead of having a laugh about it (as one would assume they would), the room filled with silence and a few evil-eyes. One person even piped up with a, "So you lied." Nice response. So instead of just realizing it for what it was, a simple misunderstanding that resulted in Marcus doing what I believe to be the right thing, people reacted in a way to make him second-guess himself and question whether he should have just accepted the prize. Here were all of these industry people that would remember him as "that guy" from the golf day. The guy who lied. That just seems silly to me, why should someone be looked down upon for doing the right thing? Especially over something so trivial.
This led us into a discussion of right and wrong and the fact that our moral compasses seem to be set to a very different place than the general population. We believe in telling the truth and doing the right thing. But is our version of "the right thing", being an uncommon opinion, actually not the right thing? We asked ourselves that and Marcus considered this a bit more seriously than I did. But I firmly believe in telling the truth. I mean really, who wants to live a lie? Don't all people get that awful feeling when they tell lies and take advantage of people? Clearly they don't, but why don't they? Did they not have someone tell them the difference between right and wrong? Were their examples different than mine? Was religion part of the difference?
Because I'm in Australia and because I have an arguably negative view on quite a few things in this culture (I admit it), I'm forced to wonder if this isn't an "Australian trait". However, when I compare it to other countries I've traveled in (corruption in South America, apartheid and ever continuing racism in South Africa, cruise ship companies owning Haitian islands), this sort of questionable morality is actually slight. I think my problem is that because Australia is so similar to the U.S., when there are differences I have a very difficult time processing them. It's like when I learned German in college. I thought that because English and German are so similar, German would be an easier language to learn. That was a bad assumption. In fact, German was one of the most difficult languages I studied because it was so similar to English. The gender was extremely difficult and required much rote memory rather than rhyme or reason. Some structures were so close to English while others didn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I felt frustration because what I was expecting to be so similar was in fact different. False expectations...
Anyway, I find my moral compass to be set a bit differently to many of the other people I meet here. This isn't something I have encountered previously in quite this same way and it's a bit unnerving. But we persevere and try to keep the faith, especially in ourselves. We also need to live in our own little bubble and continue making, what we think, are the right choices. Choose the right. It's actually not a bad motto. Now where is that CTR ring... :)
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