Well, friends, I hope you’ll bear with me for some good ol’ Monday angsting. As we all know, it’s tempting to navel-gaze, but I think that my questions for you just <\/i>manage to miss the self-indulgent mark (I hope?)…<\/p>\n
Some would say you’re only as good as the company you keep. If that’s truly the case, would that mean our moral or ethical report card gets a poor mark when our friends act against our personal standards of “righteous” behavior? Or are we meant only to accept, not judge, our friends for their different opinions and actions? <\/p>\n
For the most part (the 99.99% mark that is), I’m happy to be held by the standard of the company I keep. I am incredibly proud of my friends, not only because of their success, intelligence or charm, but also because of what I would consider their high ethical and\/or moral standard. <\/p>\n
That said….I don’t have any overtly racist friends, or for that matter, covertly racist friends. But at times, there have <\/i>been remarks about race, joking or otherwise, that I feel supremely uncomfortable simply overhearing. While I don’t laugh or encourage such remarks, I also rarely do more than pooh-pooh them. <\/p>\n
Another personal example, I have a friend who routinely runs down others, far more than the occasional pettiness. We’re talking nasty remarks, judgmental remarks, back-handed compliments and front-handed insults. By not correcting his\/her behavior, am I condoning it? Or am I simply minding my own business?<\/p>\n
For so long I’ve adopted a type of laissez-faire attitude to my judgment (or non-judgment) of those around me. “To each their own,” I’d shrug. “Who am I to judge?” is my internal reminder when I hear or see someone acting in a way I find reprehensible.<\/p>\n
To be honest, I often fail myself in upholding this attitude. I admit to occaaasionally <\/i>ranting over dinner or drinks to my closest friends when others fail to meet my standards of behavior – though a part of me is flinching with each smug, self-righteous word.<\/p>\n
Yet most of us would agree that there is some type of universally understood definition of bad behavior, wouldn’t we? Calling someone fat and ugly to their face = bad. Attributing criminal behavior to a person purely based on the color of skin = bad.<\/p>\n
Is my personal ethical credit report tarnished when I tolerate such behavior, or is it actually the opposite (which is what my instinct seems to maintain) and I tarnish myself when I judge other people by my own beliefs? <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, friends, I hope you’ll bear with me for some good ol’ Monday angsting. As we all know, it’s tempting to navel-gaze, but I think that my questions for you just manage to miss the self-indulgent mark (I hope?)… Some would say you’re only as good as the company you keep. If that’s truly the case,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-padmini-mangunta","category-personal-ethics","category-social-ethics"],"yoast_head":"\n