Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Do Not Live an Authentic Life - Live a Moral One

Do Not Live an Authentic Life - Live a Moral One -- is a blog post about acknowledgment -- kind of a corollary to recognition and empowerment in transformative mediation. The take away line is: "The important point is to acknowledge what the real trade-offs are and who will be hurt the most by the alternative choices—especially when there is an inequity in power."

Too often it is tempting to be self-indulgent and call it authentic when what we are doing is exploiting an imbalance in power to make others unhappy and ourselves happier. Too often people look for excuses to do something other than live a moral life, for something that is more valuable than integrity.

Caveat: the essay springs from another discussion at Feminist Mormon Housewives about a situation where I don't know the answer to the problems discussed. "I only wish I knew the answers" was my final comment on the matter. But I wanted to take away what I found important about the discussion, the need to recognize when we are exploiting power in a relationship and calling it something else.

If you can't tell, while I've bought six more copies of McKay's Integrity, I'm now part-way through Terry Warner's "Bonds that Make Us Free." I'm behind the other people in the Bloggernacle who have read it (e.g. http://www.mormonmomma.com/ and http://naiah.synthian.org/ , but find it very interesting and thought provoking, especially in the context of McKay's book.

Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves
Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves by C. Terry Warner (Hardcover - Sep 2001)


A link to a cute cartoon about being authentic, etc.: Ethically sourced?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please stop the exploitation of loss.

Stephen said...

How would you suggest that I do that?

I'm afraid there isn't much that can be done.

Sigh.

Stephen said...

Thanks for the suggestions, I've posted on the exploitation of loss, with any luck that will help those that need to be stopped or responded to.