atw: Re: WARNING: Recruiter advertisements are ONLY trawling for resumes for tender responses!
- From: "Christine Kent" <cmkentau@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:46:21 +1000
Warren said:
?Our society works because for centuries our ancestors built a cultural
system around morality and honesty. The justice system we have built our
society upon requires a commitment from everyone to maintain and live by the
standards of honesty and morality our ancestors fought and died for. The
Australian Constitution was written relying on the fact that our society
enshrined fundamental understandings of the Westminster, Judeo-Christian
system of morality and honesty. ?Tell the truth? is one of them ? even if it
doesn?t make you look all that good.
If we simply let people behave amorally (making decisions based on what is
right for them at the time) within the constructs we have been ancestrally
provided then we are going to erode all that we have been given, and others
have sacrificially defended. If you want to live in a community that says
?Its right if I think it is right and it benefits me to do it this way now;?
then we are going to have a big fail on our hands? By saying ?it?s the way
it is; just swim with it? you are letting people get away with deceit and
lying.
Where does it end? It ends with losing fundamental rights. Someone doing
something because it suits them at the time may not be illegal, but that
does not make it right according to fundamental tenets of honesty and
integrity.
Solzhenitsyn said we must question everything those in authority do ?
otherwise they will take our right to question away.
By highlighting the problems we can actually make an effort to prevent the
slide down a very slippery slope. It is up to us all to demand expected,
acceptable standards of honesty and integrity from everyone else in society.
United we stand, divided we fall. Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you. I don?t like being used by deception. Do any of you?
My further two cents worth.?
Christine says ? Oh dear, oh dear. Hasn?t the horse already bolted? I was
told, sometime in the 90s, by a junior staff member I was managing at the
time, ?You?re JUST an idealist?. It took me a few moments to register that
being an idealist had gone from being something to attain, to being an
indicator of naïve foolishness. I am STILL JUST and idealist, but I don?t
see many of my breed around any more; people who care, people who get upset
when some basic principal of decency is breached, and even more importantly,
people who are prepared to stand up and be counted when their ethical
standards are betrayed.
When does this EVER happen in the workplace anymore? When does anyone
getting a salary EVER confront the unethical behaviour of an employer and
refuse to conform to their amoral standards? I do, but does any other
single living human being stand up for what they believe to be right,
despite the inevitable consequences of doing so? I personally still try to
attain those ideals of humanity that elude us much of the time, because
every attempt takes us that little bit closer to the ideal. I still live by
those standards, but my ?friends? sigh in despair at my patent stupidity
??take the money and run?, they say; ?why couldn?t you just button up and
say nothing??; ?no-one is going to thank you?; ?what do you think you will
gain by putting yourself out on a limb like that??. And of course, they are
right ? except for one thing ? my eyes still sparkle. Theirs do not. My
integrity is (mostly) still intact.
Even in my current work environment, where they talk about a corporate
?ideal? of being ?Decent?, all too often decent means polite and slick
without actually emotionally giving a damn. For many years now the culture
has been shifting from perhaps being a little rough around the edges, but
delivering the goods when they are needed, to being slick, being seen to
deliver, but not actually doing anything worthwhile. It has gone from
function to form, and we are now only rated on our ?form?. Just so long as
you are seen to be decent, it doesn?t actually matter if you ARE decent or
not.
If we want to put a stake in the ground for what we believe in, then I
personally believe we have to withdraw from being comparatively junior (if
aged) players in the main game, where we cannot hope to turn around the
lumbering giant of creeping amorality, to creating our own space. The young
boys with their start-ups are doing just that for their own reasons, so why
are we not starting our own start-ups using our wealth of skills and
experience, and basing them on the ethical values that we want to see on our
headstones when we are gone? ?Here lies a brave soul who lived and died by
her ideals.?
Is Warren the only other emotionally honest human being left on the planet?
Any other takers? Anyone else prepared to risk the recruiters we love to
hate, who lurk on this list, see who we really are? Dare we risk them
seeing us as passionate, emotional and sometimes angry human beings with
standards we insist on maintaining.
Or will you all continue to present that slick, if bored and dull exterior
that tells a recruiter and a potential employer, ?I am a truly compliant
zombie who will happily drop my own standards as low as you want me to go??
Christine
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