Susan Liautaud - The Power of Ethics: How to Make Good Choices In a Complicated World

How to Make Good Choices in a Complicated World

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2021 by Susan Liautaud

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2021

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Interior design by Lewelin Polanco

Jacket design by David Litman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-3219-4

ISBN 978-1-9821-3221-7 (ebook)

To Luca, Olivia, Parker, Alexa, Cristo, and Bernard: This is for you.

And for all of you who try hard to make ethical choices: my deepest admiration and hope that this book will support you and give you the courage to create your best stories.

Introduction THE EDGE OF ETHICS

T he young woman was in her early thirties, tall and dark haired, with a direct and unwavering gaze. As she walked down the hall toward me, I could see the deep scars and broken facial bones that had never properly healed. Someone, maybe a partner or family member, had done that to her. I extended my hand in greeting.

It was 1989. I was twenty-six, studying law at Columbia University and leading a student public-interest advocacy group that raised funds and then dispensed small grants to nonprofit organizations. An inspiring local agency that assisted abused women in danger was a potential grantee. We had read about their programs and, if memory serves, that evening we invited this brave woman to come and tell her story.

As she and I neared the door to the classroom where we had all assembled, I paused. Can you please give me a minute? I said. I just want to make sure everyone is ready.

Inside, I looked at our small group gathered and explained that our speaker that evening had suffered more than we would likely be able to understand and more than would be appropriate for us to ask about. I wanted to prepare my classmates for the gravity of her injuries. For the next hour we listened as she recounted her story.

Somewhere between the letter of the law and the enforcement of court orders, the legal system had let her down in a life-threatening way. We learned that her main legal recoursea restraining order against her abuserwas difficult to obtain until after she reported significant physical injuries on several occasions and endured severe emotional distress. Having to prove she had been harmed to obtain legal protection against being harmed: that seemed illogical and unjust to me. I struggled to understand how this could be.

I grew up believing that by and large the rule of law protected and guided usfairly, effectively, and even compassionately. I was only beginning to understand that even where the law is clear and the courts are accessible, the legal system can still fall short. I also started to see that even where the law does offer protection, it is on all of us to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

I wasnt calling it ethics at the time, and I certainly wasnt thinking about a career in ethics, but I was searching for a way to improve the choices we make, individually and collectively.

For many years, my mantra has been: Ethical decision-making tethers us to our humanityit helps us keep human beings front and center at all times. My sincere hope is that The Power of Ethics will enable every reader to make human-centric choices that they can be proud of, both now and in the future.

We find ourselves at a pivotal moment, where the stakes for ethical decision-making are higher than ever. The importance of integrating ethics into our decisions affects all of daily life in the twenty-first centuryfrom whether we follow expert recommendations to protect our own and others health to our responses when we or a friend stumbles ethically. Our world is one in which ethical errors (and successes) are amplified. Misconduct spreads more widely and unpredictably, embeds itself more stubbornly, and entangles more individuals and institutions than ever before. Yet as counterintuitive as it may seem, we actually have more opportunities than ever before to make ethical decisions. To seize these moments, we have to appreciate what drives ethics on the edge.

Although I didnt realize it then, that meeting at Columbia Law School helped define my early thinking about the ethics edge. The edge is the line where the law no longer guides and protects us, leaving ethics as the lone standard by which to gauge our behavior. The edge is dynamic, and the space in which ethics becomes our only guide is expanding. In this zone, people, companies, innovations, and phenomena we may have never imagined would, could, or should intertwine in fact do. For instance, social media can connect us to our families, to friends, to job openings, and to learning about other cultures. It can also be a source of inaccurate medical information, hate-mongering, and bullying that spreads far and wide.

Why does the edge move, and why do unanticipated interconnections occur? First, the law lags behind the fast-moving changes in technology and innovation. Second, we face multiple global and systemic risksfrom climate change to the advent of fake news to pandemics. Third, new technologies and global risks join forces to amplify both modern and age-old dangers: Populism and extremism fuel threats to democracy and long-held democratic institutions, and societal ills like racism and sex trafficking emerge in technologically turbo-charged forms.

If we can integrate ethics into our everyday decision-making, we can better think about our place in the world. We can positively affect our relationships and our impact on the society around us. On the other hand, a failure to integrate ethics into our decisions is the most dangerously underestimated global systemic risk we facewhether as individual citizens, leaders, organizations, or nations. It is the existential threat at the source of so many others.

I have been teaching ethics courses at Stanford University since 2014. On the first day of my Ethics on the Edge class, I start with one question: Whats the story? What is really going on in the countless dilemmas we see in the news, at work, with our families and friends, and in the world around us? If we dont understand the forces driving ethics failures, we have little chance of preventing and remedying themand limited ability to create (and inspire) ethics successes.

Then, on the last day of class, I end with one question: Whats your story? Because I believe the degree to which we integrate ethics into our decision-making and ground it in reality determines our stories and impacts the stories of everyone else whose lives we touch, many of whom we may never meet.