Matter of Self-Esteem

Prof. R.F. O’Neil’s commentary (“A Front-Page Ethics Guide,” Dec. 1) revealed with uncommon candor how much ground our business and public worlds have lost in the battle between “success” and morality. Unfortunately, O’Neil’s approach to and solution of the conflict are less than persuasive.

For the professor, “ethical scandals are very much a part of our history . . . they are as American as apple pie”! (emphasis mine). What a mischievous concept! Either O’Neil intends that such “scandals” are typically American behavior --and thus acceptable “as apple pie”--or he has abused the literary function of analogy. I suspect the latter, for he seems genuinely to want to rid the country of such scandals and offers a “means test” to do so. Sadly, his test is simplistic and depressing.

O’Neil advises us to answer the following: “Would you be embarrassed if (your potentially scandalous act) appeared on the front page of tomorrow morning’s newspaper?” Presumably, a business or public person ought measure his/her contemplated (potentially scandalous) act against this question, or, as the professor puts it, “this litmus test.” I suppose that if the answer to the question turned the individual’s face red with shame or white with fear, the intended act would be dropped, forgotten, swept away by pangs of guilt or washed clean by waves of truth. If none of the above occurred, no problem. The intended path of action was safe, honest, acceptable. In such simple, uncomplicated fashion will each decision be made between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood.

I submit that Professor O’Neil’s “litmus test” will tell us more about thickness of skin than depth of honesty, more about response to peer pressure than commitment to truth, to laws that civilize, to decency, to human dignity, to the myriad standards and values that are the bedrock of our nation--all of these the products of our God-given gift to distinguish between right and wrong.

I would suggest to Professor O’Neil that a more effective “litmus test” is not tomorrow’s headline, but today’s moral conscience, not the degree of embarrassment but the destruction of self-esteem. In the battle between right and wrong, the stakes must be matched; loss must, at the very least, equal gain. Embarrassment is but petty payment, temporary and merely uncomfortable. Self-abhorrence, on the other hand, is ugly; it scars, it is permanent. Let the business or public person measure his/her act against a love that is greater than the love of success. The question that ought to be asked is, “Will my action in any way deceive my loved ones, my teachers, myself and--if I am a believer--my God?” Potentially corrupt behavior might well melt before such holy flames.

RABBI ERWIN L. HERMAN

San Marcos