The Ethical Lexicon #44: For your words to have real impact, keep it clean

"If you don't have anything nice to say, say it in Yiddish."

The unique blend of Hebrew and German produces some delightful expressions of exasperation without having to resort to cursing.

And that's something worth celebrating.

When you really lose it with something or someone, it's easy and often natural to draw on your reservoir of four-letter words.

But we have better options, especially when those blue words become so overused that they completely lose their meaning.

The Ethical Lexicographer never tires of citing George Orwell’s observation that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Have you ever wondered how those words come into being in the first place? Understanding the origins of profanity will help us appreciate why we might serve our own best interests by self-censoring censorable expression.

Understanding the origins of the word "profanity" might motivate us to consider cleaning up our own language.

That's why this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon is:

Profanity.

Please click to read the full article:

Highlights from last week:

??Edmund Burke purportedly said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Martin Luther King famously said, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

"Rabbi Abraham Kook said, "I don't?speak?because I have the?power?to speak; I?speak?because I don't have the?power?to?remain?silent."

What Dante adds is the weight of consequence. We aren't merely responsible for allowing evil free rein. We are accountable as well.

But if we can be the enablers of evil, imagine how much we can accomplish as the enablers of good.

It's reassuring that so many leaders, organizations, and governments have been willing to take a stand against unbridled evil, to speak out against malevolent violence without equivocation or apology.

It's terrifying that too many others can't bring themselves to do the same.

We live in a complicated world. Rarely is either side in a conflict 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong.

But when the preponderance of guilt rests with one party, it is morally irresponsible not to stand in defense of the other.

What will you do to bring good into the world today?

??I'm going to do something I've never done and suggest listening to Bernie Sanders.

Thank you to CNN's Dana Bash for framing the question:"How should Israel destroy Hamas without hurting women and children when Hamas is hiding behind them and putting them in danger? How does that work?"

The depth of Bernie Sanders's confusion exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of anti-Israel protestors everywhere:

"That is exactly the right question to ask the military experts, of which I am not one."

"Israel has a right to defend itself, and Hamas has sworn to destroy them."

"Hamas has got to go."

"But there's got to be a better way."

To summarize:

Israel has a right to protect itself from being destroyed. There can be no peace as long as Hamas is in power. It's the job of military experts to figure out how to get rid of Hamas. Bernie is not a military expert. But Bernie knows they're doing it wrong and they have to do something else.

Thank you Senator Sanders! With a roadmap for success like yours, how can we possibly go wrong?

It's easy to criticize others for taking action.

It's comforting to sit on the sidelines and condemn decisions made in the midst of crisis.

It's convenient to claim the moral high ground by decrying choices that don't immediately produce ideal outcomes.

It's also childish, arrogant, and self-serving.Leadership is the quality of making decisions when they need to be made, taking action when it needs to be taken, and accepting responsibility when there are no good options.

If you aren't cut out to be a good leader, at least be a good follower. You accomplish nothing by sitting in the safety of your living room and spouting opinions on subjects about which you know nothing.

We should never tire of quoting Teddy Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually?in the arena."

??If we can't trust the media, how can we be informed?

If we aren't informed, how can we hold opinions?

If we can't hold opinions, how can we condemn evil and fight for good?

This is the quandary the ethics panel takes up when ?? Anne Nevel, CAE, ?? Mark O'Brien, and Jolanta Pomiotlo join me on this week's episode of Grappling with the Gray.

When a hospital in Gaza exploded two weeks ago, headlines on CNN and the NY Times both parroted Palestinian claims that Israel was responsible. The BBC simply reported it as fact. All of them were wrong. But many still believe the accusation.

This kind of misinformation has been going on a long time. In October 1996, the celebrated columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in Time Magazine:

“As fighting raged in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza late last month, Israel's opening of the now infamous Jerusalem tunnel was denounced from Turtle Bay to Timbuktu as a desecration of the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. It took nearly a week and fully 70 dead before the truth began to trickle out: the charge was a lie… an easily provable lie.”

Mr. Krauthammer continued:

“If NPR had covered the blood-libel-inspired massacre of the Jews of Munich in 1286, imagine what they might have written: ‘Leaders of the massacre claim that the Jews had killed Christian boys and used their blood for religious rituals.’ For balance, I suppose, NPR would have added, ‘The Jews deny this.’"

On the one hand, we shouldn’t expect – or even want – journalists to be overly clinical in their reporting. But when their personal biases clearly impair their objective reporting, they become tools of the wicked by lending legitimacy to villains and perpetrators and prolonging each crisis.

Assuming that journalists truly believe they are serving the public interest, why are they so prone to error and one-sided reporting? Why does it seem to be getting worse, and what can we do about it?

#ethics #communication #perspective #language #values