Over the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to speak to many, many people in the profession.
Some of who hold positions of leadership and authority, some who are very, very clever; much more clever than I will ever be and in one of the conversations I was introduced to a concept that I had never heard of which is principle versus good sense.
It was explained to me in that conversation that, while it is fine to uphold your principles it has to be balanced against good sense and unfortunately I have never been accused of having good sense!
I was always described as ‘Colin, he has no common sense’ or ‘They don’t teach common sense at University’
I see the world as quite absolute, as right or wrong and for things that are wrong I think they should be corrected until they’re right. I think we have the ability to do that in most cases.
Of course I understand that there is a balancing principle here and if you watch the pictures on television of the Ebola crisis in West Africa you might just sell your house and go to try and help the people there. If you watch the killings in Nigeria you might just want to go there to help the people who are suffering there. The same thing applied to the Tsunami and any number of humanitarian disasters. It may no make ‘good sense’ for me to up sticks and individually try to fix what is happening on another continent. Closer to home though, may be a little bit different.
While I understand there is a balance, there is also the opportunity to hide behind ‘good sense’ as an abdication of responsibility and a form of cowardice. At what point does the board tip? At what point do you stand up? At what point do you put your hand up? At what point do you shout “this is not right anymore”
At what point do we stop allowing other people to take the responsibility for the problems we see and start taking responsibility collectively ourselves? I guess that happens to most people when the problem becomes closer, when the proximity of the explosions is nearer, when it happens to someone you love or care about or someone you like, when it gets ‘too close for comfort’, when it gets to the ‘but for the grace of God, it would be me’. Only at that stage and when it happens to enough people does the concept shift to a position where to uphold your principles and to be see to uphold your principles become good sense.
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