And so we'll see what we've learned today...

Oh jeeze. It's the "what have I learned so far post". This is always a fun one, mainly because...

Well, ok, I'm entirely certain why exactly it fall under the category of 'fun' but it does. Maybe because I like to wax poetic about the expanding of my brain muscle. Maybe? I dunno.

We just got done reading the book The Seven Layers of Integrity (it even has theme music in my head when I say that. Sort of a daunting, powerful da-dadada! Impressive, no?), and I'll be honest, I'd never considered the world of ethics to have that much detail. Good is good, bad is bad, do the good and not the bad and you're ethical (and occasionally there a little gray area thrown in for kicks which makes for great debatings!). Ok, maybe that's a little bit of an over-simplified version of my thoughts on the concept, but the point remains: seven layers? For real?

But, it makes sense. You've got all these interconnecting bits and pieces that sort of tie in together or glance of one another in passing or completely clash and a person has to figure out what to do. Like, say, what if your job wants you to do this, but you think it's wrong? What's a person to do? That my friend, is like a 10 car pile up on the ethics super highway.

I think the chapter that I've enjoyed the most so far, and got the most out of, was the chapter on moral values. And it's not because, as I've often joked, I've sold my morals, unused, on eBay to pay for school. Actually, I liked the fact that the authors talked in plain language about how everyone has different morals and spiritual values that are going to shape their views and their actions and they didn't mince words. So often it seems like the idea of holding a set of values or personal spiritual beliefs that might clash with someone else's is so taboo that it can't even be talked about. The authors stated staight out that Bob is going to believe something completely different from Jim and Jim's got another view than Suzy, so deal with it. Ok, maybe they weren't so rude, but I'm a casual writer by nature.

But they didn't stop there. They pointed out that by having a set of ingrained moral and spiritual values, it actually set a person up for how they would respond to the other six layers, sort of like a domino effect.

Another interesting observation: Everything builds on one another, from morals on up. You can follow the letter of the law or a contract without necessarily following your morals, but if you follow your morals, you're set up for the interactions with your personal relationships, community, and on up the ladder.

I'm still trying to figure out what impact this has had on me personally, because when I get into school mode I tend to get a little cerebral and distant and don't necessarily notice if I'm actually applying things I'm learning right away. However, I can say that I found it all very interesting and I'm certain that sometime down the road I'm going to smack my forehead and go "DOI!" and realize why I changed something or adjusted a behavior pattern or something.

K