Ethics Newsline®

A reader responds to Rushworth Kidder’s commentary last week on the doping problems plaguing the Tour de France race:

Your commentary on the Tour was right on. I agree with your point of view and you expressed it wonderfully. I wonder, though, whether or not society at large is really the “victim.” My sense is that we are society and we get what we create.

We live in a world where winning has become everything. From capitalism down to the attention we pay to how we stack up against our neighbors, we have come to equate our self-esteem with winning — at the neglect of doing the “right” thing.

For me it comes down to choices that I make about how to engage the world from an ethical perspective. Sometimes “systems” can be very coercive and encourage the wrong choice; we have all experienced that in our lives.

Commentaries like yours help everyone sharpen the focus of what we are really doing and creating.

– James D. Showkeir
Phoenix, AZ