Don’t Let Them Bully You

Stick to your values.

Sometimes it seems like the entire world is made up of unethical people.  People who are out for themselves and who are taking unethical short cuts. If you want to get ahead, do you need to take shortcuts too?

No!

If you have to be talked into doing something, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. This goes for jobs, sex, relationships, investment opportunities and more.   Business ethics are personal ethics.  If something isn’t right to you, it isn’t right. So don’t let people bully you or try to convince you that your ethical instincts are wrong.

Do be open to learning new facts, but if the facts seem unethical to you, they are probably unethical.

And if you really are dealing with bullies, ethical or otherwise, learn how to get them to leave you alone using science with the book: The Bully Vaccine - https://humanistlearning.com/the-bully-vaccine-book/

What does it mean to be ethical?

To be ethical is to be moral. And that’s a loaded term.

Morality is about values. What we think is good or bad. It’s judgements we make about ourselves and about others. Generally – if something is good for us – we think it’s good and if it’s bad for us – we think it’s bad.

People with more developed sense of values will extend their concern for benefit or harm to other people. Most often family members or members of our tribe. Humans are tribal animals. The way this works is – if it is good for our tribe, it is good. If it is bad for our tribe it is bad.

This is why people who may be very ethical to members of their peer group don’t see the problem with being unethical to people deemed to be outsiders.  This seems hypocritical and it is. If something done to you is bad but the same thing done to someone else is ok – the thing being done isn’t inherently bad, you are just judging it to be so based on how you personally are impacted. Hence, the accusation of hypocrisy.

But what is really happening when people think and behave this way is that their sense of ethics and morality is not fully developed. They limit their moral reasoning to themselves or their tribe, however that is defined (politically, racially, religiously, etc).

What makes Humanism so important is that it is a reminder that we need to extend our circle of compassion and concern to everyone.  Humanism is an explicit rejection of tribalism.  If it hurts me, then it probably hurts other people and even if I don’t know those people, it’s still wrong.  Instead of being ethical in a hypocritical way, we strive to be more consistent in our application of ethics equally to everyone.  I say strive because our instinctual tribal impulses make that hard to do.

Regardless, if you find yourself reveling in the hardship of others (the other tribe, or political group or whatever), please stop. Remind yourself they are human too and that you should apply the same compassion to them as you do to yourself. To me, that is what it means to be ethical.

If you want to learn more get my book: The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom  This book will help you better understand how and why to integrate your ethics more fully into your everyday decision making.

If you are looking for professional or personal development programs that will help you actualize these principles in your daily life – consider taking these 2 courses:
https://humanistlearning.com/socratic-jujitsu/

https://humanistlearning.com/generationaldivide/

Both of these courses will help you rethink how you approach conflict with other people.  Or – if you want a more indepth course of study about applied Humanism – take my course; Living Made Simpler http://humanistlearning.info/livingmadesimpler1/

Ethics requires courage

As a Humanist parent, like all parents, I want my son to succeed. More importantly, my hope is that he will become ethically courageous. I know that he will be well served if he can become confident in himself. 

Whether it is dealing with bullies or doing the right thing in a difficult situation, the problem seems to be one of confidence. If they are confident in themselves, they will have the courage they need to stand up and be ethical.

The problem with this is that teaching kids to be confident doesn’t help them. That is because confidence isn’t something you can teach. It has to be earned. The real question we should be asking is how to encourage kids, and adults for that matter, to learn the skills they need so that they can overcome the challenges they face so that they can become confident as individuals. The answer is in the root of encourage. And that is courage.

With my son, our biggest challenge is to get him to try. He has fears and in order to teach him new skills, we have to help him overcome those fears. Even learning to ride a bicycle required him to overcome the fear of falling. Our job is to help him find the courage to try and try again until he succeeds. As he succeeds, he gains confidence.

The same holds true to being an ethical person. The will to be good is there. The challenge is to be courageous enough to stand up for what is right. There are no shortcuts that work.

Part of being a Humanist is to choose to live life courageously. We don’t expect things to be easy. We expect to have to work to overcome the challenges we all face in life. So don’t focus on helping your child to be confident. Help them to be courageous instead. Having courage will serve them better throughout the course of their lives than being overly confident will.

How do you find courage? How do you help your child overcome his or her fears to become courageous? 

Ethical Reminders

We need to remind ourselves to be ethical. It isn’t something that happens automatically. We have to think about our ethics in order to be ethical. This is why Humanists are always encouraging people to think before you act.

I know for myself, my initial gut reaction to things I experience can sometimes be quite negative. In order to be ethical, I have to interrupt my negative thinking and replace it with more ethical and compassionate thinking.  I have to remind myself to behave in a more ethical way.

This isn’t easy to do because it requires practice and, well, thinking. And it’s hard to think well when we are experiencing negative emotions.  This is why we need to be reminders to be ethical. This is why it benefits us as humans to talk about and discuss ethics with each other.  Every time we read about or talk about our ethical values, we are reminding ourselves to do better and to try harder to be the best most ethical person we can be.

The reward for our ethics is that if we can bring ourselves to behave better we will not only get better results, we will also feel better about ourselves in the process.  Is it hard? Yes. Do you have to constantly remind yourself to be a better person? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.