Learning to act right, and some right actions (2)… what’s a right action?

Learning to act right, and some right actions (2)… what's a right action?
Torrey Orton
February 24, 2010


Compare Tiger Woods apology and our government's apology to the Stolen Generations. Which one is a model of right action? The Woods event is the most recent of a series of high profile apologies in the US – a couple of governors, a mightabeen presidential candidate, a rapper - all remarked for their variable credibility. Rudd's statement was well received at the time, but the follow-up is seen to be patchy on various fronts. Which will we remember – the performance action or the action performance?


Acting right is where doing the right thing takes form and is turned into action out of right intention. Often the fulfilment of one's intentions depends on their recognisability to others. This is why understanding of one's own and others' cultures is essential.

For example, a Chinese laugh in a moment of seriousness may be a recognition of that seriousness by them while being felt as clumsiness, if not insult, by Westerners. It is a laugh whose other face may be anger at having been put without warning in such an emotionally unguarded position as exposure to others' anger, damage, hurt, etc.


Manners and politenesses are traditionally the facilitators of respect for ourselves and others. As such, they are the leading edge of right action in many situations. Some of us disregard them for their repetitive and unimaginative forms, justifying our disregard by the ease of their dissimulation in formalities. In multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial societies like ours, the opportunity for misinterpretation of actions is large, and the underlying awareness of this is part of what fires worry about foreigners, whoever they may be for us.



Social formulas of ethical competence


Acting right is doing what we should do under certain conditions – the 'right thing' we all know about implicitly, though often through its absence. Right actions are the media of doing the right thing. They are social formulas of ethical competence, failing which we may not actually do the right thing. These formulas provide the clarity (its specific object(s)) and credibility (the intent) of action(s). Their authenticity arises from their personal character expressed in tone, pace, rhythm and volume.


We now know anew what's always been known – that humans have a capacity for being in the minds of others. This is a capacity for a kind of action at a distance by intrinsic understanding of another's situation and the typical intentions and reactions that are humanly appropriate to it. This is the neurological foundation of ethics and observational learning. While exciting to the neuroscientists, and re-affirming to other humans, this discovery has always been implicit in the basic ideas of individual and social formation, deformation and reformation. We need action models to embody our collective understanding of what's right. This includes, of course, when the models are wrong, which is where this venture started for me.


'How do we learn 'right action'?'


The main source of right actions is the live or virtual (theatre, film, TV, etc.) modelling of others, mined by observing them in action. We have a two-handed word for this - witnessing – through which we express the possibility that to witness another's action is also to give witness to it. Witnessing partners with giving an account to make a complete version of events. Giving an account of oneself provides deep interpretive meaning through thorough picturing of the context(s) and complexities of an event. From this fact arises much of our constant dissatisfaction with the two dimensional reporting of many public media.


The flight simulator training standard revisited

 As I said recently, we live in times where it is regularly proposed that ethical lapses or outrages can be prevented by training courses for companies and ethics units in MBAs. Consider by contrast what training really means for serious skill acquisition – the flight simulator in which pilots are regularly and persistently grilled in high pressure challenges. Perhaps learning to act right can be speeded up with some simulator-lite training. But to the level of automatic competence which must underlie ethical reliability? …that's another thing.


Or, consider how much video time it takes to represent one man's ethical growth in late life arising from the pressure of his standards on his prejudices – see Gran Torino if you haven't yet. The exposure to models required to build our standards and prejudices is a lifetime's task for all of us. And then we have to field test them in unpredicted, as well as foreseen, conflicts of appropriate (and, eventually, inappropriate) degrees of difficulty. The learning cannot be done if we are protected from potential failure. The fact that there's a legal distinction between adult and child reflects our society's minimum expectation of the learning required to be held fully responsible and accountable for our actions – about 18 years.


Important and discretionary rule actions – times they are a changing


For a view of how what's right is changing, and how that change occurs, a look at current TV shows and films is a good starting place. These reflect and promote emerging changes in what's right, especially at the manners and protocols level of life – the points where fashion and propriety run together. Body coverings from clothing to tats are a steady study in this run.


But it is not only fashion that's changing. Foundations are, too, as we discover that ethical options are conditioned by material circumstances. Tsunami and earthquakes are type immovable circumstances. Another is shifting material resources. These lead to a kind of general social triage where life critical and sustainable (as defined by those in command) criteria are applied. We can see this happening in health care and education most obviously.


Invitation to share…again.

 Learning to act right, and some right actions will be a host to investigations of actual ethical learnings across generations, genders, cultures and a full range of classical ethical dilemmas, great and small. The following pieces in the series will be devoted to single ethical learning events. I welcome your participation by offering pieces or suggesting domains which you would like to see explored. If the theme develops I see a publication not far off. In the interim, thanks to a discussion with one prospective contributor, I may start a new blog, or wiki, devoted solely to ethical learning matters and resources. Or, we may start it!

Appreciations (20) … Hopeful helping

Appreciations (20) … Hopeful helping
Torrey Orton
Feb 19, 2010

"Plan for the worst and hope for the best…"

Presenter at Transition Decade 2010 launch

at Melbourne Town Hall, Feb. 14, 2010

Rising hope…anticipations of hurdles jumped


My work is doable because I can approach anyone (so far!) with a view to their potential for personal development. I look for and find that potential, usually through an undergrowth of blockages and false directions which make the potential and pathways to it inaccessible to themselves, and others. I understand this attitude, and its behavioural expression, as what Carl Rogers called unconditional positive regard.


It seems so far, too, that everyone who comes within my therapeutic reach intends to develop for comprehensible reasons. This is not always true in group settings, where the participants may be present because the management has dragooned them (for comprehensible reasons, again, but…not the individuals'). Their development intentions cannot always be revealed with confidence that they won't be used against them in some perceived breach of organisational values – explicit or, more dangerous, implicit ones!


My hope has an inner directed aspect, too. To be hopeful for others I have to be hopeful about myself being able to help. Apart from my natural risk fascination (if there's a challenge in a domain of my competences, I'll bite on it.), therapy, and many other learning settings, repeatedly present opportunities to discover that I do not know what I am doing for one specific person or group. I fail to connect or sustain.


It could be that hope is a variant of optimism, or nestles in the same family. I don't think of them together because I am not optimistic in the usual sense of the term. Where I am not in control, I check the dangers first. Perhaps we all do so, some more knowingly than others. Certainly the constant drumming of the 'don't be negative' acolytes of positive psychology reminds me of my position on the other side of a somewhat temperamental divide.


Challenged, wavering, and rejuvenated hope….scraping knees learning to walk


My hope is challenged and wavers as novelties of personality, history and self-construction arise unexpectedly in my work. These require a personal response – most notably where the therapy / learning has not developed far enough to have shared intent and frameworks sufficiently in view of all participants. Our tasks, objectives and bonds are still under construction.


In fact, a special hope jag is often necessary for me to step up or back from a present novelty, those moments when I have to design interaction on the run. This is akin to the role of faith in taking action towards a novel future (an unpredictable one) which I discussed a few posts back. My underlying competence is intuitive creation of appropriate action options, which generally take 2-3 minutes if I am really puzzled by a significant deviation in the path we had been pursuing. If I miss the need to reframe or reshape the process, it can stumble along for some sessions. There may be a series of such phases in the total process.


Waning, fading hope…a life process running down


There comes a time in some therapy where we are not getting anywhere. This time is often forewarned by repeated events of stillness settling on the process. It not the kind which arises in meditation or some flow experiences. Rather, there is an energy gap or attention lapse. The language content and focus fades. Boredom is about to jump up. Disconnection is in the room, with disengagement threatening in the doorway of awareness. There are two pathways at this time – one of wasting decline and the other of conclusive achievement.


Withdrawing hope…the premature end


Time to stop, when the end has not been reached, often arrives in interruptions of the preceding routines – routines of times and procedures. Patient clients come late, miss sessions and I look forward to the sessions with declining energy. It can take a session or some months of them to unroll.


Or, confirming hope...the agreed closure


I often say to patient clients that they will know when they have finished our time together, know when they are well, or better or improved to the level they need. They will take charge of hope in the room by increasingly commanding the direction, depth and intensity of sessions. They will be checking the coverage of their various agendas and looking forward to support systems (internal and external) to sustain their achievements. They will know that they will be challenged again in the areas and ways that brought them to therapy in the first place. The task of primary hoper is theirs, and that of their social worlds.


I imagine that these phases / stages are something like what we will encounter repeatedly over the life of the climate change struggle. Perhaps many participants from many perspectives will do so, and this may be a potential common ground to be built on!!

Rectifications (21) – Nefarious NAB – “Sign up to fight unfair banking”!!

Rectifications (21) – Nefarious NAB – "Sign up to fight unfair banking"!!
Torrey Orton– February 16, 2010

"Sign up to fight unfair banking"!!

… sighted on Burnley train platform, 11 Feb '10

I shouldn't have been but I was astounded by the above. Then I was mildly outraged that the bank which always takes and never gives but for a take elsewhere in the shadows at least the size of the give...the people with no people to talk to, the people who you can't even get their computer generated customer service voices without myriad seldom used numbers…all the garbage of postmodern productivity..the people I know I cannot escape by going to the competitors who also use the same spin to gain slivers of edge on each other…Arrgh! By writing this my mildness is overtaken with teeth gritting anger.


This is not dog-whistle. It's Orwellian distortion of natural orders.


"When you sign up for our everyday account there are no monthly account fees ever with no strings attached. It's just one of the ways we give our customers more." (NAB website) Plus you get NAB Visa Debit Card (and in four colours!!) at no extra cost and access to expanded range of ATMs. So where is the money made in this? In the transactions, of course. Do they say that in the adverts? No.


So, who are these banalitists ? Who pays for and who executes, apparently shamelessly (since the right to speak is on their side legally – but not morally!), the spinning of the bank's reputation for sneaky, self-interested, obscure profit-making by turning it on its head to suggest the bank is an institution committed to social and personal justice??


And when will they release the report(s) which led them to make this move towards social justice? Will these reports show that they have been scamming us in various ways for days, weeks, months, years, decades (choose your preferred standard )? Will they specify the means of scamming and the profits made from them? Will they show that the profit increments achieved by scamming are a slight proportion of total profits? No, none of these will occur because it's all commercial in confidence of course. And, if they did, their shareholders of institutional size will have a rather shady look, too. Especially the Board level ones.


Maybe it's just a counter-offensive to Westpac's bringing back the branch managers ploy? Who's the greater fake customer servicer? Anyway, they have no shame about substantive things like their dependence on public support (even our wonderfully regulated banks benefitted from such considerations last year). This isn't mentioned here as elsewhere in the international community of finance. Where the king is naked and no one sees, there's little lost by disregarding the facts.


And so, good night.

Learning to act right, and some right actions (1)

Learning to act right, and some right actions (1)
Torrey Orton
February 9, 2010
When I was a rising '60's adult I was known as the preacher, and earlier in boarding school as "Straights" (straight arrow – an accusation of excess rectitude which I am pleased I failed to honour in full, but I understood the dubbing*). I had a leaning towards moral certainty and confidence in the rightness of my ethical insight, which I also felt free to share whether an audience was willing or not. More recently, I've been told by some of my peers that I am intimidating in similar ways. I am about to preach and certainly want to get your attention.
A few months ago I wondered to myself what habits our younger generations might be picking up from the world as we now know it. Habits are the products of real efforts directed at the same outcome over significant periods of time. Some of them are essential to successful conduct of important aspects of life – they are, in a sense, life-making for us. The various evidences of moral/ethical slippage in our times make the shortage of appropriate habits increasingly noticeable. An overall theme of inappropriate habits in the industrial economies is excess. That a principle source of this slippage (landslide?) is my generation amplifies my concern.
'How do we learn to be ethical?'
I think this new theme is 'How do we learn to be ethical?' It will capture some of the complexity of real moral situations. Only in a lifetime punctuated by such situations – often unpredictable – can acting ethically be learned. The ethical response has to be a gut response in the first place - automatic, systemic and heartfelt. It is this which tells us serious life altering opportunities are before us, or all around us.


Lacking that feeling, applications of 'rational thinking' will not make up its absence. A lifetime spent, on the other hand, in the bonds of disregard for any question of limitations except religious ones yields potential membership in a fundamentalist sect, or in nihilist occupations with a faith-based tinge. Gambling comes to mind.
For the rest of us, those bonds are already systemically supported because their organisational exponents – churches, sects, etc. - don't, with honourable exceptions, take on serious social matters at the grassroots level. The fading public participation in middle of the road religious organisations in lands of plenty expresses their lack of convincing and binding day to day directions for living.
The flight simulator training standard
We live in times where it is regularly proposed that ethical lapses or outrages can be prevented by training courses for companies and ethics units in MBAs. Consider by contrast what training really means for serious skill acquisition – the flight simulator in which pilots are regularly and persistently grilled in high pressure challenges. Repeated failures in simulators can be fatal to careers, as they should be.
What would a finance industry executive simulator look like and who would pay for it or bind the participants through untouchable assessments open to public view??? Not bloody likely, I hear whispering in the night airs. Where would we get our corporate Sullenbergers? Certainly not at B Schools devoted to the tastes and touches of our times. Those without them could not hope to survive in the corporate sector. Can the corporate sector survive without them? They shoot whistleblowers don't they?
A good place to start is with a look at my own learning of ethical responses, and my failures to learn! I am also moved to try out this recall to remind myself of the prevalence of opportunities to engage, and my inclination to avoid, ethically demanding situations. This should amount to a conscious effort to re-energise or sensitise my moral faculties, as they were once called. There are so many places to start. Late boarding school came to mind a few days back…
* But I also, all those years before, used small powers I had to assist less interested classmates to survive the rigors of boarding school disciplines - a fact also recognised by some of those who titled me "Straights". It was always a source of wonder among us that anyone could have thought I was an appropriate person to put in charge of Sunday church attendance records for the whole school. It seemed as if there were some in power who accepted my public image. On the other hand, I now realise, perhaps they understood the complexity of daily life through which we have to both accept responsibility and decide how and where it is best applied. So appoint a 'straight' guy to a discretionary rule monitoring task!? Who would think to question the outcomes?
Important and discretionary rules
This was also the period in which I practiced the difference between important rules and discretionary ones. E.g. – not drinking, smoking and such (a broad grouping) were rules which we all (the boarders) knew were relatively groundless, or seriously debatable – that is, just generational, hence discretionary, even if also with standing in the statute law of the period. Others, important ones like truth-telling, were more foundational; even we could see some sense in them for the structuring of our daily lives, the coherence of relationships and their reliability. I, like some others of my leading peers, broke the circumstantial rules wilfully (smoking being the main candidate for breakage, with alcohol a quieter second – this was 50 years ago!).
How we got away with smoking in our dorm room in year 12 is also a wonder, as I now know that smoke hangs around with a half-life of months for non-smokers. Our in-room ashtrays were the four hollow steel legs of the bunk bed - about five feet long by 2 inches square – capped with a removable cover. Probably our main salvation was the resident floor master (a single male teacher with rooms on the floor), a thoroughly compulsive smoker himself, to whom a cig's olfactory half-life was imperceptible. On the other hand, we were daily modelling the discretionary nature of many rules for the year nine kids on the floor we ran! Our class had the reputation as the most "negative" in living memory (the 15 years post WW-II); not that we knew it but the cynicism and rigorous doubting of foundational values was persistent and extensive.


Invitation to share…
Learning to act right, and some right actions will be a host to investigations of actual ethical learnings across generations, genders, cultures and a full range of classical ethical dilemmas, great and small. The second and following pieces in the series will be devoted to single events. I welcome your participation by offering pieces or suggesting domains which you would like to see explored. If the theme develops I see a publication not far off.