The Rule of Love

Many of you have responded to my blogs wondering what you or we can do about the issues presented. The answer is more than you may think. The people who most benefit from the status quo want you to feel that you can’t make a difference. It’s called learned helplessness. It’s a lie. No matter what you choose to do, how big or small, each of us matters. We are part of the tipping point for a better future. For instance, I donate a great amount of time teaching and speaking to students, non-profits and community groups about our individual leadership opportunities to help change our world right where we are. This is just one way I try to make my difference.

Last Monday I taught a class in Corporate Social Responsibility to a group of young executives at the University of California San Diego. On the subject of ethics I mentioned that 20th century U.S. culture descended into embracing the lowest level of classical ethics. The result is that our government now routinely enables large companies to sell us poisonous products. You see the bottom of the ethical barrel is the “Rule of Law.” It basically confirms that if something is legal, it’s ethical, even moral. But it’s often not. In fact when a country enshrines the “Rule of Law” as their standard of morality it unleashes a tidal wave of lobbyists corrupting lawmakers to make their special interest desires become legal. For instance, many of our antipollution laws are written so that it’s legal to pay a relatively inexpensive fine rather than clean up the brown field and stop polluting. As a citizen, this pygmy view of ethics puts us at increasing risk of being poisoned by the Frankenstein chemicals in common products and food. When our nation was founded we agreed that life, that is, its reasonable protection, was an “inalienable right,” a fundamental right. But lately our government has increasingly decided to sell its responsibility to provide for our safety to the highest bidder. The result is we still have cigarette companies figuring out how to make their death weed more addictive while they kill 400,000 Americans a year even as the FDA becomes a barrier to our children’s safety.

The latest ethical failure recently came to light when it was revealed that the FDA has ignored over 100 studies showing that BPA, a common chemical in plastic bottles and the lining of canned goods, pose a significant health risk to babies. Babies! Turns out sterilizing plastic bottles causes BPA molecules to get in milk that later stimulates breast.and prostate cancer. Canada has banned BPA plastic, and Japan banned its use in canned food 10 years ago. But in the land of the brave we’re on our own. Yes the chemical companies produced two studies showing the health risks were minimal and since we now have the best FDA money can buy, our safety regulators let it slide. It seems it’s not their responsibility to protect American babies. I wish I were making this up, but the Government Accounting Office just released a report stating that our Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency have been systematically compromised by government contractors and special (business) interests. Turns out over the past eight years these agencies, established to protect our health from the unrestrained gravity of greed, have been taken over by the industries they are supposed to regulate. So the cancer screening reviews of ten common chemicals that you and I are frequently exposed to in our households and consumer products have not been conducted due to internal restrictions on the scientists that you and I pay to protect our children (EPA Undermined on Health Dangers, Investigators Say).

Since the dawn of history merchants have railed against regulation. They always claim individuals right to choose is more sacred than health and safety rules. They always claim that regulation will cause economic collapse. English business tycoons in the 19th century claimed that capitalism would fail without child labor. Slavery was justified for 150 years as an economic necessity. And American carmakers in the 1960’s and 70’s said that government regulations mandating seatbelts and pollution control technology was completely unnecessary. “If the people choose, the market will dictate what is best for us” is always the cry. Using human choice and the marketplace as the mechanism for what is safe to sell is nothing more than a weak attempt to morally justify unrestrained self-interest.

I told the class that there is more to ethics than what’s “legal.” A higher level is the “Rule of Justice.” It’s based on the Golden Rule. It asks chemical company executives and scientists to ask themselves, “What kind of bottle do I want my children drinking from?” If we could just achieve that standard as our ideal we could restore integrity to our entire society. But the highest level of ethics is even more inspiring. It is call the “Rule of Love.” It challenges us to ask, “How much good can I do?” Imagine a world where that was the common question in a business meeting. It’s the concept of Greatest Total Value. What is the Greatest Total Value we can provide to our customers, employees, society? I have found the exciting result of asking this question is it unleashes people to think of previously unimagined value innovations. Innovations that lead to higher quality, less waste, and unique products and services.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with capitalism. It’s morally neutral. The problem is with us. Only humans can make our businesses and government moral. Are we really willing to poison our own babies rather than demand genuine moral leadership? We are better than this.

(Effective Regulation is one criterion of American Dream Project’s America’s New Agenda. To found out more and add your ideas, click here.)

Your single voice matters. It matters because you’re not alone. Your voice can be a part of a chorus, inaudible to you but very noisy to the world. Speak up. Most especially, go to Write Your Representative or Congress.org to get your Congressperson’s email address and write him or her in reasoned but passionate tones (For Congressional letter writing tips, click here). When enough of us do, they will listen. We are changing the world either by staying silent or by speaking out. I send emails to the Presidential candidates. Of course they respond with requests for donations, but no matter, I still express myself. Write someone today. It matters. If you agree with what I am saying, pass it on. This is not my day job. I am doing this for my grandchildren. We all need to do something because we can.
Will Marre, founder American Dream Project

To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.

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