A slippery slope

Morality is different in the first person. When it is you, things stop being black and white. Take a step back and you will see things differently. When you are too deeply involved, you don't even realise that you are stepping out from the light. You rationalise. You say, "Everybody's doing it. This is not even wrong! It is justified." Before you know it, you are doing things that are not even falling in the grey. But, and herein lies the nub, you don't even realise it! You think that things are still pure and white. And they had long since stopped being that. First you were stepping into areas where it was grey. And your eyes started getting used to the dim light and you convinced yourself that it is still the light of day - because you can see just as clearly. And from then on, it is just a question of going deeper and deeper into the darkness. Following the scent of money like a bloodhound, you don't realise that it is taking you deeper and deeper into a forest where you lose your way. Where it is so dark that the light never has shined. Not for many years. But by the time you realise it, it is too late.

This is the story of every deal that I've read about. Once it gets out, people wonder how things were allowed to the way they did! Think Enron, or the 80s wall street events or any other deal that has gone wrong. For every one that has come to light (no mixing of puns intended here with my earlier example), a hundred still lurk in the darkness (yes - i lied earlier. Or I hadn't intended to use it then). When you follow the journey, in each case, you will find that the first few steps are so delicately, even daintily, stepped out of the clear and narrow path. The steps become bolder and bigger with time. And with the growing appettite that each deal fuels. But there is, in every case, a really big step from the grey into the realm of the really black - the completely illegal, the morally reprehensive. But reading along, and having followed the move from white to grey, you almost find yourself nodding along to that move to the black. Until suddenly you realise - OMG! That is illegal. But the players lose that ability. Because they are there, immersed in that grey sludge that sucks them in through the power of greed. 

I sympathise with a Ken Lay. But not a Fastow. I sympathise with Bud Fox, but not with a Gordon Gekko.  But then again, you would admire a Gekko, but not a Bud Fox. Ah - such is the lure of money. And it is a very slippery slope once you start stepping down onto those grey slippery slopes.

Btw, the same holds for personal ethics too. Not just professional ones. I will discuss that at length later.

ubergeek, the