To a fellow Conference Speaker

Dear friend

I have no knowledge of any criticism you might have incurred regarding your chairing of the panel, although in truth, this does not surprise me.

I am outspokenly critical of corporate ethics and have been for many years - to my corporate clients and to others.

I am outspokenly critical of most other institutions that so perversely turn from inconvenient truths.

I am also outspokenly critical of us, the general public, who rapaciously buy the goods & services of the corporations we condemn for greed, hypocrisy and mendacity. We, the people, who ridicule politicians for having no values and thinking only of their selfish little careers yet cast our votes on the basis of whether their policies favour our selfish little ambitions. We, the great British public who collectively demonstrate so little integrity in so many small, and sometimes big, ways.

I am also very aware of my own dubious integrity, my espoused actions versus my actual behaviour, and my selective inconsistencies. I energetically work towards greater alignment.

If you wish to believe that you see the current condition of our world as rather worse and more urgent than me, then do so. Indeed, you may be right, but a debate on who has the more gloomy view of our society’s social and environmental predicament does really feel a little pointless don’t you think? Perhaps even embarrassing, or worse?

Lastly, did I accuse you of creating a 'them & us'? I don't think so. You did define the situation in this way. You asserted the view that all business leaders are corrupt and all business immoral to an audience who were very suggestible to such a view. You played to the crowd and got your laugh. I observed this, publicly reflected it back, and asserted that I found it unhelpful, polarising, and ultimately a tired road that takes us back to a comfortable sense of our own moral rightness - a dead end. I could have pointed out that over the last twenty years you have successfully made an awful lot of money coaching these same moral degenerates, but thankfully I chose not to. I had no wish to rub salt into an already open wound.

Those of us that stand upon stages must surely be responsible for the views we express and the degree to which we simply mouth a different kind of bigotry. This path has been walked before many times, and it has successfully got us to where we stand now.

With a wry smile and some bemusement,
Mac

https://macmacartney.com/blog/2014/10/to-a-fellow-conference-speaker