Comment by speedplane
6 years ago
The good news is that very few people are at the top. Most are in the middle, and it's entirely possible to be ethical and in a good middling position.
6 years ago
The good news is that very few people are at the top. Most are in the middle, and it's entirely possible to be ethical and in a good middling position.
How can you justify your work in the middle as ethical, if it directly supports a rotten apple at the top? Your life's work turned into a support system for a beast, wonderful!
Are you making reference to this? https://goo.gl/images/2UmYrg
I suppose it depends how you view the system and the rotten apple.
A properly functioning complex system should be able to tolerate a few bad apples, limiting the harm that they can cause. If you work in such a system and there are bad apples, you can justify the ethics of your work if there are checks and balances that limit the leader's ability to harm.
The obvious analogy is the current U.S. political system. It's quite possible to see the United States as generally striving for a more fair society, and generally good, and yet to be disgusted by Trump's cruelty and inept. The only way to square those two competing ideas is to acknowledge that even though Trump is a miserable rotten apple, he doesn't really have all the power. As bad as he is, he won't last forever, and the principals of the U.S. will long survive him.
The psychopaths at the top are a lucky minority of a mass of psychopaths, most of which prosper a bit less at middle levels in organizations. Only low-functioning psychopaths are exposed and thrown out, and usually only by chance because of specific incidents.
No way. The psychopaths at the top of the top are a different breed, by an order of magnitude. It takes a different "type" of person to run for U.S. President than to run a large organization or company. Consider the president of GM, who worked her way up over 30 years from bottom to top and had to learn everything in between. Compare that to either Trump, who basically staged his election as reality TV episode that went wrong (he just wanted ratings, not to run the place). Also consider Obama, who was so smart, well spoken, and charismatic, probably only heard people telling him would be president from 18 onwards. Also Ted Cruz, who would happily accept a role of enforcement of the "US Moral Compass" as his pre-ordained right/duty.
My point is that there are plenty of folks at the top of their company that are not physcopaths, they inched their way up over decades of sweat and tears, and even if they aspired to lead on their way up, they knew they had to prove themselves in every aspect of the business first. CEOs of GM and Merck are decent examples. Then there are folks who believe they were chosen for the job before their birth. I'm scared of them.