On my honor?

Do you remember the days when giving your word of honor actually meant something? When your word of honor was a BIG DEAL. When contracts were sealed with a handshakes and a promise was all it took? With no contracts, no lawyers, no signatures anywhere in sight. What happened to those days? Will we ever get them back? I wish.

Now that I am a "grown-up", apparently the hardest distinction to make in the professional world is the one that separates these two things. 1 - What we have the right to do. and 2 - What is the right thing to do? They are not always the same.

What happened to morals and a code of ethics? Maybe if we all had honor we wouldn't need a Board of Ethics to help us determine what is right. Apparently now we get to choose between 3 ethic 'approaches'.

1 - Focusing on the end result --- "what's going to happen if I do this?" or aiming to maximize good consequences instead of bad ones.
2 - "science of duty" --- doing what we feel we ought to do.
3 - Acting on the kind of person you want to be --- developing into a 'virtuous' person because of the actions you've already taken.

I'd like to thank Karl G. Maeser for having a word of honor, and keeping it. And saying this quote that makes everyone else want to keep their word of honor:

"I have been asked what I mean by my word of honor. I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls-- ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground - there is a possibility that in some way or another I will escape; but stand me on a floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of the Circle? No. Never! I would die first."