Let's Not Be Too Hasty in Our Criticism

Like many of you I found my emotions being manipulated by the movie Inside Job. After all--that is the purpose of the movie and the people involved in the production are experts. However, I have lived long enough to know that things are not always quite as black-and-white as ideologues would like us to believe. For me, the financial collapse is a study in arrogance--but not necessarily a lapse of ethics. While I do believe that there are evil and conspiring men (and women) in the world, I do not think that there are very many people who are as evil as the Joker in Dark Knight. Yet that is the impression I was left with as I left class today. When I get that feeling, I always try to stop and reflect on my personal experience with people. My experience is that most people are generally trying to do their best within the limitations of their experience and their physical capacity. Let's be honest, we all have our own set of weaknesses and, yes, even moral lapses. If every decision we made and every action we took was subject to the intense scrutiny of an investigative reporter who was strategically cutting and pasting together his/her version of our life story we could all be made to look stupid, arrogant, lazy, immoral, etc. I am not suggesting that there wasn't some form of ethical lapse by many people who were involved in the collapse of the financial system. I do believe that many people are greedy--and that greed is a by-product of arrogance and self-righteousness. I do not believe greed is specifically restricted to people who work in the financial sector, or who participate in market exchange systems. Greed is not a function of the political sytem or the systems used to make and distribute goods and services--but rather is a manifestation of a deep human "flaw" that is manifest in small and large ways in every society and in every person. I really wish that I was not subject to these moral lapses in my own life--but alas I catch myself in the clutch of human weakness way too often to be too critical of others. For me the take away from the movie is that I need to increase my personal commitment to apply the timeless, universal and self-evident principles embedded in the Private Victory to my own choices and actions. After all, society is just a collection of individuals. Shouldn't our tendency to be critical of others be informed by a healthy skepticism of those who want to point out the weakness of others without ever turning the lens of inquiry on themselves? Who do you think paid for the movie Inside Job to be produced? What do you think the motive was for making the movie? Was it really produced as a public service to help us better understand the complexity of this issue--or were there more devious motives involved? I don't know the answers to any of these questions--but I do know that the world is very complex and when I feel my emotions so effectively manipulated I try to stop for a moment and engage the more critical thinking dimensions of my brain. This approach has never failed me in the past.