Conduct risk my foot! Feeling as if everyone has forgotten principlism – and spotting a common thread

The approach of winter and less daylight brings us all indoors and we read more and expose ourselves to more television and radio.  I am observing the swing of the pendulum in all manner of issues.

There was always a tension between humans who were principles based in their thinking, from medical staff to researchers and teachers to law enforcement (even bankers), so that their codes of conduct were always driven my higher order considerations (do no harm, etc); and the advocates of detailed proscriptive rules of behavior.  Laws and regulations and codes can be exhaustive in their precision, but seem to break down in even the most obvious situation.  I think of the preventable disasters of the past few years, where simply following proscribed protocol could have saved lives. The current news flow is filled with stories of rules broken or ignored and the consequences.

The pendulum has indeed swung.  All the debates appear to concern the details of rules and codes and the level of enforcement or sanctions or retribution. The miscreants devote their efforts to tailoring the rules in such a way that they can be manipulated, and well intentioned advocates believe that a good video and record of actual events is all you need to modify the bad behavior.  Once again, correlation does not mean causality.  Wrong behavior will turn to detailed fiddling with the rules.

Principles based foundations to behavior, regulation, oversight, and reaction is what is missing. We all realize what is wrong.  What to do about wrongdoing is the issue, and as long as the answer dives deep into minutia of rules-making the underlying behaviors may never change.

In my humble opinion the discussion and debates might consider the starting point to be a statement of what is wrong.  Genocide, for example, is wrong; so the rich and powerful should combat all that enables genocide.  Allowing conditions to develop leading to improper death and destruction is wrong, and those conditions should be reversed.  Deliberatively deceptive behavior in pursuit of risky profits is wrong – full stop.  More rules on environment or finance or drugs or armed force will become mired in their own complexity and not solve the problem.

Feeling quaint, I believe I am suggesting that every controlling organization reinvigorate its code of conduct (writ large or small).  If individuals or groups cannot comply with the essence of an agree code of conduct they cannot participate in the activities of that organization – full stop. Conduct risk my foot!  If the behavior is egregious, then legal penalties could be pursued, but all must agree from their entry into public activities (whether for a public or private entity) on the desired mission and conduct expected. The costs of non-compliance, spelled out early on, would be dismissal, forfeitures, and claw backs –penalties so severe as to hopefully modify behavior. Of course the implementation details are complex, but we have to start with the principle.