Spirituality in the Workplace: Dealing with a Dysfunctional Culture

Mohan Vilas, a Hindu monk at Govardha Ecovillage, spoke at Harvard’s Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025. He had gone from the world of financial derivatives to worshipping Krishna. Once he had fulfilled his “lower needs,” he looked for more. After obtaining a M.B.A. and while working in finance, he was hungry for knowledge beyond the world of business. So he studied ancient Vedic culture. His talk at the conference was on being an idealist surrounded by strategists. He addressed the question of whether the world allows individuals to practice virtue. Even when a person is not in a dysfunctional workplace or in a hostile society, the human mind struggles, Vilas said, to apply ethical virtues. Plato’s dictum that to know the good is enough do the good, and thus to be good, may be wildly optimistic, considering the instinctual force of urges in our nature to act immorally, even though other people are harmed as a result. It is even more difficult to get into a habit of doing good while “swimming upstream” in an ethically compromised workplace or an aggressive societal culture. An ethical Russian or Israeli soldier in the mid-2020s, for example, would have a lot of trouble refusing to bomb hospitals in Ukraine and Gaza, respectively, and, moreover, invading another country and withholding food so to starve an occupied group. Such a soldier would be intolerable to both Putin and Netanyahu, respectively. Vilas’s question is the following: What happens when a person who is good is put into a selfish society? Must an ethical person finally inevitably exit a culture that rewards narrow selfishness, passive-aggression and deception?

The full essay is at "Spirituality in the Workplace."

Business and Religion: Financial Ethics Found Lacking in the Vatican's Institute of Religious Works

In probing corruption leads in the Vatican Bank, Italian financial police stumbled on to a plot back in July 2012 to smuggle €20 million into Italy.[1] The alleged culprits include a monsignor, a financial broker, and a former member of Italy’s secret service. For his part, the cleric is said to have had people pretend to have given him donations of €560,000 so he could furtively pay the financial broker for his role. Crime, Italian politics, and the Vatican Bank—hardly a novel discordant tune. That not just any bank, but that of a Church, could stray so far from what would reasonably be expected from a bank whose formal name is the Institute of Religious Works boggles the mind. Even so, the intersection of ethics, religion and business is fraught with complexity.  A religious verdict from ethical premises is possible nevertheless.

The full essay is at "Business Ethics in the Vatican."

Christianity and “Social Capitalism”

The SEC charged Ephren Taylor with a fraudulent $11 million Ponzi scheme in April 2012. According to Reuters, “Taylor fraudulently sold $7 million of notes said to bear 12 percent to 20 percent annual interest rates, to fund small businesses such as laundries, juice bars and gas stations.” He “had conducted a multi-city ‘Building Wealth Tour’ in which he spoke to congregations” on the importance of “giving back.” He called himself a “social capitalist.” In actuality, he used the money on himself and his wife’s attempt to become a singer.

The congregants’ susceptibility to Taylor can be understand from grasping the larger historical trend within Christianity wherein the prosperity gospel—in which it is believed that God rewards “true believers” with material wealth—had replaced the anti-wealth view wherein being rich and saved is like a camel getting through the eye of a needle. In other words, the shift in historical Christian thought from a close coupling of wealth and greed to an outright rejection of such a linkage made it more likely that the lay Christians would view investing in “social capitalism” as sufficient to justify having wealth beyond subsistence living.

Secondly, Taylor’s assumed conflation or mixing of Christianity and social performance in business enabled the congregants to open their wallets presumably for religious purposes in line with a social conscience. It is worth pointing out that camel is not given a pass for using wealth in a socially responsible manner. In other words, if simply having wealth is indicative of underlying greed, how one uses the wealth is not sufficient to undo the linkage and justify having the wealth in the first place.

Moreover, fidelity to a social norm such as corporate social responsibility is not religious. Even though Unitarians maintain that certain social structures are the object of their faith, the religious domain contains a transcendent referent.  That is, faith in a religious sense is oriented to an object that lies beyond the limits of human cognition and perception.  Specific social structures do not qualify because they are in our human domain.

In fact, to advocate a particular social norm is not to justify ethically with ethical reasons.  That is to say, corporate social responsibility is not business ethics.  The difference can be explained by referring to David Hume’s naturalist fallacy, which holds that what “is” the case cannot justify what “should” be. In other words, you can’t get ought out of a melon. You need ethical reasons, such as “it is fair because x,” to justify what one should do. To advocate a social norm is not to provide an ethical reason; more would be needed to provide support for why a certain norm that can exist should exist.

Therefore, I question Taylor’s linking “social capitalism” to religion (and Christianity in particular). The application cannot even be justified under the rubric of religious ethics. In addition, the congregants were too gullible because they had applied or bent Christianity too far from its native turf.

See: God's Gold, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Source:

Jonathan Stempel, “SEC Charges Ephren Taylor II ForAllegedly Bilking Churchgoers In $11 Million Ponzi Scheme,” The Huffington Post, April 12, 2012.

Rousseau on Inequalities in Society: An Instance of Kantian Enlightenment?

Kant defines enlightenment as “man's emergence from his inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.”[1] By making public use, Kant means “that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public.”[2] By sufficient freedom, Kant means that ideas that threaten the power of the guardians of institutional or societal rules are not excluded.

Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century philosopher famous for his duty-based ethics.

For example, an enlightened Roman Catholic priest would publish ideas questioning and even criticizing Church dogma when he is acting as a scholar, even though he would fulfill his duty in his conduct as a priest by defending those very teachings. A priest could thus go public as a heretic as long as he does so on his own time as a scholar and member of society, and an enlightened bishop would tolerate the scholar’s freedom to think and publish outside the box.

Rousseau would object to Kant’s prescription for how to become enlightened and Kant would object in turn to Rousseau's preference for the state of nature over society and the associated expansion of reasoning. Does Rousseau fit Kant's concept of enlightenment even though Kant would object to some of Rousseau's ideas?

Rousseau was a “heretic” of sorts. Writing to people living in societies, he was critical of the very existence of society itself, and thus of the power of its guardians. In his essay on inequality, he contends that the unnecessary, or artificial, sources of inequality stem from humans living in society rather than in the state of nature. “Every inequality of institution must increase the natural inequalities of the human species.”[3] Accordingly, “the origin of society and of the laws, which increased the fetters of the weak, and the strength of the rich; irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, fixed for ever [sic] the laws of property and inequality; changed an artful usurpation into an irrevocable title; and for the benefit of a few ambitious individuals subjected the rest of mankind to perpetual labour, servitude, and misery.”[4] By thinking freely and publishing the results, the citizen of Geneva aimed a lethal arrow at not only human society, but also its guardians. Rather than coming from the guidance of guardians, his ideas on the impact of them, as well as the defended institutions, properties, and laws arose from his own reasoning. He was free thinker, enlightened in Kant’s sense of the word.

This is not to say that the content of Rousseau’s essay on inequality conforms to Kant’s prescriptions for how more people or a people can become enlightened. For example, Kant laments that the constrained use of reason that had become second nature to the vast majority of people in his day who astonishingly were “virtually incapable for the time being of freeing their use of reason.”[5] According to Rousseau, however, the increased use of reason stimulated by living in a society instead of in the state of nature engenders self-love, and therefore pride, jealousy, and increased as well as technologically more severe warfare. Antipodal to society itself, “it is reason that makes man shrink into himself; it is reason that makes him keep aloof from everything that can trouble or afflict him; it is philosophy that destroys his connections with other men.”[6] Living in society is self-contradictory with respect to the impacts of the expanding and more complex reasoning.[7]

In short, the Prussian professor claims in his essay that a greater use of reason is part of becoming enlightened, whereas the citizen of Geneva advocates in his essay a reduction in the use of reason to that level and simplicity that is natural for human beings (i.e., in the state of nature). That Rousseau's published ideas on reason conflict with the significance of reasoning in becoming enlightened does not mean, however, that Rousseau's reasoning about reason in the state of nature versus in society is not an instance of enlightenment. That is, Rousseau's own use of reason can fit Kant's definition of enlightenment rather than the lesser reasoning that Rousseau prescribes. Put another way, Rousseau was a philosopher who claims in his essay that philosophy destroys a philosopher's social connections.

As a professor of philosophy at a university, Kant undoubtedly defended and protected the discipline institutionally; that is, old Kant was a guardian of some things not present in the state of nature—namely, professorships in philosophy, the discipline of philosophy, and philosophizing itself. Rousseau's published ideas critical of the artificial sort, or excess, of reasoning that is the root, trunk, and branches of philosophizing thus evinces freedom of public thought beyond the guidance of institutional guardians such as Kant; the philosophical establishment (e.g.,  tenured professors) would have been inclined to discredit or even ban Rousseau's threatening ideas. In writing published texts in philosophy, Rousseau was doing the very thing that he argues in his essay should not be done; he was doing Kantian enlightened public thinking.

Furthermore, Kant claims that people “will of their own accord gradually work their way out of barbarism so long as artificial measures are not deliberately adopted to keep them in it.”[8] A society’s guardians determine and defend such measures. Although Rousseau too is critical of the artificial measures and their societally rather than naturally powerful enforcers, he advocates a return to the state of nature (including barbarism) rather than moving toward an enlightened society.

Therefore, Rousseau would oppose Kant’s advocacy of an enlightened prince who considers it his duty in religious matters not to prescribe anything to his people as a means of encouraging more people to become enlightened. Under his rule, “ecclesiastical dignitaries, notwithstanding their official duties, may in their capacity as scholars freely and publicly submit to the judgment of the world their verdicts and opinions, even if these deviate from orthodox doctrine.”[9] To Rousseau, who is less concerned in his essay on inequality about the religious domain than is Kant in his essay on enlightenment, the various forms of government, including monarchy, “owe their origin to the various degrees of inequality between the members, at the time they first coalesced into a political body.”[10] The solution to the increased societally-based inequalities is to return to the state of nature, rather than to count on an “enlightened” prince, who is actually compromised by power and position (i.e., inequality). So Rousseau criticizes a governmental means by which a people can become enlightened in a Kantian sense, but in doing so, he demonstrates that his freedom of public thought was not constrained or guided by a prince.

Therefore, Kant would have to obey his own reason in counting Rousseau among the enlightened as per Kant's own definition, even while rejecting and perhaps even attacking Rousseau's ideas that would detract from such enlightenment if put into effect. To the extent that Kant himself was not enlightened, he would hardly have been able, at least for the time being, to tolerate such ideas even as he would have had to admit that Rousseau was enlightened. Put another way, being both an institutional guardian and a philosopher, Kant would have been in a tight corner. Generally speaking, we can conclude that enlightenment exists uneasily with the lack thereof in a society, especially if the lack pertains to the guardians. Accordingly, I suspect that a society is at ease only if the vast majority of people, including most or even all of the guardians, are enlightened.

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[1] Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (World ebook Library).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Harvard Classics, Charles W. Eliot, ed., Vol. 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1910).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Kant, An Answer.

[6] Rousseau, Discourse.

[7] Interestingly, Kant’s first version of his categorical imperative, a criterion useful for assessing whether a given act is ethical, logical contradiction in a maxim being universalized such that it holds for everyone indicates that the act is immoral even if performed by one person rather than everyone. We are rational beings, so a logical contradiction means bad news. Therefore, does the logical contradiction in universalizing an increased use of reason in society to everyone resulting in everyone impeding society itself mean that living in society is unethical? Perhaps Kant would say that society would have to be impossible rather than merely impeded for there to be a logical contraction.

[8] Kant, An Answer.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Rousseau, Discourse.

Cardiologists as Ethicists: On Cheney’s Heart Transplant

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had a heart transplant on March 24, 2012, "after five heart attacks over the past 25 years and countless medical procedures to keep him going. Cheney, 71, waited nearly two years for his new heart, the gift of an unknown donor.”[1] At the time, more than 3,100 Americans were on the states’ waiting list for a heart. Of the roughly 2,300 heart transplants performed in 2011, 332 were over sixty-five. On average, heart failure was killing 57,000 Americans a year at the time, so just a fraction of those who could use a heart get one. One might question, therefore, whether the 332 recipients who were over 65, and Cheney, who was 71, should have been allowed to avail themselves of the relatively short supply of available hearts.

 Dick Cheney was noticeably thinner after his 2010 heart attack. 

“The ethicists will get into this case.” Eric Topol, a cardiologist in California, wrote this line in reference to the question of age.[2] Specifically, should someone who could be expected to have ten years left take a heart that could otherwise allow someone else to live twenty or thirty more years?  Over 70% of heart-transplant recipients live at least five years. It could be argued that Cheney had been able to live 71 years so it is not fair for someone who is 50 or 60 to not be able to do likewise for lack of a transplant because someone Cheney’s age has it. On the other hand, Cheney could argue that because people were living into their 80s and even 90s, he could expect to do so as well. In other words, he could look at someone who is 81 and say, “it is not too much to ask to try to live that long.”

To be sure, my primary applications of ethical theory are in business, government, society, and religion. I do not have the background in biology and medicine to be an expert in medical ethics. So this essay can only be cursory. It is odd to me, therefore, when someone who has not even studied ethical theory wades in as a pseudo-ethicist. An undergraduate degree from a medical school (e.g., the M.D.) does not qualify a cardiologist as an ethicist.

Yet William Zoghbi, the incoming president of the American College of Cardiology at the time of Cheney’s transplant, said on that very day concerning Cheney’s age, “It is not too old. Age is really not a factor.” To be sure, he was referring to the medical condition of the patients. However, he went on to overreach, opining “I don’t see any ethical issues here,” given how weak Cheney’s heart had been.[3] Just because a non-ethicist does not think there are any ethical matters involved does not mean that this is so.

From my standpoint as a business ethicist, I believe an ethical issue is indeed involved in hospitals, as businesses, giving hearts to older applicants, especially if they are powerful or wealthy people who can “skip” in line by having a dedicated donor. More generally, using the utilitarian ethical theory of Bentham, it could be argued that giving hearts to older applicants violates the greatest good (in terms of pleasure) for the greatest number. Older recipients tend not to live quite as many years on a new heart, and they have already lived to be a ripe old age while someone with heart disease at 50 has not. Enabling as many people as possible to reach 71 would go a long way in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number.

Admittedly, I must qualify my conclusion due to my lack of medical knowledge. For instance, I do not know how the older recipients fare medically relative to younger ones. Ideally, a doctor of ethics who has an undergraduate degree from a medical school should be decisive here. For a cardiologist without any formal education in ethical theory to venture an ethical conclusion suggests a certain educational immaturity, if not arrogance. I doubt that William Zoghbi had even heard of Bentham’s utilitarian theory and yet the cardiologist presumes that no ethical issues are involved in Cheney’s case.

In a society in which the profession of medicine is valued a lot, people might enable medical practitioners to get away with such an over-reach with impunity. No doubt Dick Cheney really wanted to keep living. This natural urge—the life instinct—can easily succumb to a medical practitioner’s artificial desire to over-reach in terms of what is entitled by the undergraduate degree granted by medical schools.

1. Kasie Hunt, “Dick Cheney Heart Transplant: Former VicePresident Recovering After Undergoing Surgery,” The Huffington Post, March 24, 2012.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Justice as Fairness: Writing Down Greek Debt

In 2012, 80% of Greece’s private creditors agreed to “voluntarily” convert their Greek debt into debt of a bit less than half the face-value (plus a lower interest rate). With such a proportion having agreed to the swap without triggering credit default swap insurance payouts, Greece could get the E.U. to agree to force the remaining 20% to involuntary write-downs. That would trigger the credit default swaps, at least in theory.

Because any write down of Greek debt by other E.U. states or the E.U.’s central bank (equivalent to the Federal Reserve) would be tantamount to additional aid to Greece, the E.U.’s basic law would again need to be amended (which must be unanimous). So the E.U. (and the international IMF) exempted themselves even as they pushed for “voluntary” write downs by private debt-holders. This hardly seems fair. Moreover, any pressure from the E.U. could have been sufficient for the credit default swaps to be triggered. To be truly voluntary, the write downs would have to have come from the private bondholders themselves rather than from governmental pressure. Even so, that 80% agreed, it is only fair that the remaining 20% be forced to capitulate. Otherwise, holding out could be a strategic competitive advantage financially. Refusing to compromise while other similar parties do is unfair whether between private creditors or governments.

In my view, Greece should have secured the E.U.’s approval on instituting the collective bargaining statute in order to get all of the state’s private holders of Greek bonds to take a write down. It would have triggered the credit default swap insurance claims, so the bondholders might actually have preferred being forced even if more of their Greek debt was written off. Furthermore, E.U. officials should have subjected the E.U. states to join the private bondholders. At the time of the 80% voluntary agreement in 2012, Greek debt in 2020 was forecasted to be at 120% of Greece’s total economic activity.[1] This is still quite high, particularly given the recessionary impact of the continued Greek austerity. Unfortunately, the (excessive) power of state officials at the E.U. level meant that a conflict of interest interfered with amending the E.U.’s basic law to permit the state governments and the ECB to take write downs.

In terms of ethical theory, one could apply John Rawls’ Theory of Justice here. In this theory, there is a veil of ignorance concerning where one will be in the system for which one is making rules. Not knowing whether one would represent a government or private bondholder, for example, one would not be likely to add the rule in which only the private bondholders write off their Greek bonds. Not knowing which E.U. state one would represent, one would not add a rule favoring Germany and France over Greece. Not knowing whether one is an official of the E.U. Commission or a member of a state legislature such as the Bundestag, one would not make a rule allowing the states to protect their interests at the expense of the E.U. Rawls adds that because of the veil, any rule would see to it that the position of the least well situated is improved. So it would not be the case that Germany could dictate to the E.U. or so successfully protect German interests at the expense of Greece. Indeed, the bias would be in seeing that the people least well off in the least well off state are not further downtrodden as a result of any proposed rule. This might be part of Rawls penchant for redistribution, however. At the very least, we could say that the rules enacted under justice as fairness would be in the interest of the system itself rather than any particular part thereof. In terms of the writing down of Greek debt, the E.U. could have been fairer in how it went about designing its rules. There was not exactly a veil of ignorance on the vested interests that were in a position to protect themselves at Greece’s expense.

1. Charles Forelle, Stelios Bouras, and Alkman Granitsas, “Greece Passes Key Debt Test,” The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2012.

Plato’s Justice: On the Conflict of Interest in Google’s Search Engine

“Google’s popularity was built on its ability to help people find just the right Web pages. Then came the social Web, led by Facebook.”[1] Then came the “fledgling Google Plus social network,” the content of which Google then included among other search results at its search engine. The idea, ostensibly, is to “personalize” internet searches.[2] In addition to expertise on a given topic, relevant comments and even pictures posted at Google’s social network may be listed, especially if from a friend. The added utility is debatable, however, particularly as content from other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter is more in demand, according to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. I question the relevance of even that content to a search on Google, given my searches up to now, though of course it is possible that someone’s post on X could be helpful if information on X is otherwise hard to come by. At the very least, Google ought to make it very easy for users to turn off the feature while at the search site.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. Claire C. Miller, “Google Adds Social Network to Search Results,” The New York Times, January 11, 2012.

2. Ibid.

Conflicts of Interest: A Kantian Explanation

In a conflict of interest, either two duties conflict or a duty conflicts with self-interest—whether the “self” be an individual or an association of individuals (e.g., a department or an organization). Where two duties conflict, that which corresponds with the wider “constituency” is presumed to be ethically superior to that which is relatively narrow. For instance, a duty to society is typically thought (admittedly by the public) to ethically supersede a fiduciary duty to stockholders. This assumption is problematic because property rights are not charged with putting society first. Therefore the question of which duty is superior ethically-speaking may come down to one’s vantage-point. To be sure, the duty that is further from one’s self-interest can be said to be superior in most ethical theories with the notable exception of egoism. That theory defeats the typical ethical take on conflicts of interest even where a duty is pitted against self-interest itself.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.