Be Good: How To Navigate The Ethics Of Everything (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
Easy-to-read ethical questions and answers from NYT columnist Randy Cohen. Do I have to pay a dead relative's debts? Does a doctor have to tell a juvenile patient his diagnosis? Should I turn in a vendor who takes cash payments to avoid taxes? And lots more. Nice format - most stories fit easily onto a single page, so you can keep moving along. He begins with an interesting assertion - that people know instantly what they should do, but spend their time thinking up a justification for it that they can enunciate if asked. Cohen cuts through the mire and gets to the fundamentals, which makes his answers look self-evident. Most of us need to hear/read the thought process to get there on our own. When I was in college, I wanted to take a course in Ethics, and was surprised to find that my University (USC) didn't offer one. It's always been a subject of interest to me, so when I saw this book on display at my library I grabbed it. I had never heard of the column "The Ethicist", not being a New Yorker/East Coaster, but applying ethics to everyday situations sounded like an interesting idea. "Dear Abby" with an ethical slant. It actually reminded me of Isabel Dalhousie's "Journal of Applied Ethics."Anyway, it was an interesting book, written with humor, and though I didn't always agree, I found most of the author's arguments for his decisions made sense. With one exception. One writer, a computer technician, had found pornographic images on his boss's computer, and some of it appeared to include images of children. He wondered if he should call the police, but was worried for his job. Cohen's advice was to do nothing, because, although we must always protect children, if it came out that this man had child pornography on his computer, it might ruin his life. He could lose his standing in the community. He might have to go to jail, and jail terms for those who look at illegal pornography are so draconian. Besides, men who look at child pornography rarely act on those impulses. Better to just pretend this never happened. Say what?!!? It sounded like something written by officials of the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church - way more concerned about how to protect the adult perpetrator at the expense of the child victim. Cohen of course took a lot of flak for this particular column, and reprinted some of those angry responses in the book. But he maintains that his "sources" (who remained unnamed - are they members of the Man/Boy Love organization or what?)assured him that men who look at child porn usually only "look", they don't act. Following that logic, men who look at heterosexual porn, or homosexual porn, or whatever, also only "look." I don't buy it. Perhaps, as Cohen argues in the book, someone else had downloaded those materials onto the boss's computer, perhaps there's an innocent, or at least logical and legal explanation. If so, when the police were notified, the boss would have an opportunity to explain - he wouldn't necessarily go to jail. If I was that technician, I couldn't live with myself if I just did nothing. It was decidedly NOT ethical to do nothing.
What do You think about Be Good: How To Navigate The Ethics Of Everything (2012)?
I'm really enjoying this collection of ethical choices and advice. Witty, and informative.
—zyra
Mostly a collection of columns. Nit very original, but fairly entertaining.
—Ferni17
