There are not one but two versions of Bleak House playing on Amazon currently. Some authorities believe that the Dickens Novel is the best of all the Dickens novels. I strongly recommend that you read the novel and then watch one of the film adaptions.
Bleak House is in the public domain and can be found at Project Gutenberg at the following location:
This is one of the Dicken’s novels I haven’t read. So, I journeyed on the Internet to Wikipedia for a synopsis, and they provided not just a good but a very good and lengthy one. So, I will probably see one of them, maybe both.
But as a Business Ethics writer something caught my attention. The novel is in large part about a very, very long legal battle over an inheritance. And he based the story on a real case, Thellusson v Woodford, a very significant case about the accumulation of value during the life of a trust.
It took its sweet time but pressure developed on policy makers to fix the law at the basis of the novel. And if you know anything about the law, you know reform both in Great Britain and the United States proceeds at a snail’s pace. But change happened and it was propelled by a novel, a piece of literature, a book of significance.
We shouldn’t be surprised that literature can have legal impact. Literature changes many things. The novels of Jane Austen made it clear that the intellect and observations of women were far more significant than the science of that era held possible.
Perhaps, today and now, one of my kind readers is creating an essay, a short story, maybe even a novel, that will result in a changed and improved America.
(Indeed it does! An Illustration from the book, “The Wonder Clock.”)
There was once an older woman who was asked to invest in a gold mine. She did so and lost all of that money. Her attorney asked her why she didn’t ask him about the deal before investing as he was on retainer and it cost nothing to ask his opinion. And she said, “I was afraid you’d tell me not to do it.”
Facts keep us from doing all kinds of things. For instance, countless young beautiful women want to be my friend on Facebook. The facts of online scamming and the reuse and actual theft of pictures would lead one to believe that there is usually a financial angle to these beautiful women. And all of life is like that. Many things that appear at first glance to be attractive and seductive are in the long term deeply painful.
We want to do stuff but facts prevent it because we would be injured. We also use them to make decisions and these decisions are often criticized as “cold-blooded.” Sometimes I suppose that is so. For instance I once had a girl friend who was pretty and smart and crazy. I ended the relationship in spite of the good looks and intelligence because crazy (and it wasn’t a little crazy) is bad. I am sure I was right but I do miss her from time to time.
Often we are given permission to act and think on our worst impulses. The Internet outrage machine is opposed to facts and human judgment and intelligence in general. What do I mean by the internet outrage machine? Well, many web sites like Facebook are designed around rage and anger as the most effective ways of getting clicks.
So, if you search for “Angry Karens,” you will get first a few and then a flood of angry Karen posts. They want you angry because anger is a strong emotion that enables you to act in foolish and counterproductive ways in voting and buying.
I want you know that Facebook or any other web site where people can post content could just as easily have been designed around love, strong relationships, artistic merit and peace keeping. But there was more money in rage and hatred. And if you were to suggest that the originators of these sites must have been very cold blooded. You are right. They still are.
Manipulating people with emotion and conspiracy theories is very profitable and even though profitable, very wrong. Nevertheless, based on emotion people buy the most awful useless things and are ripped off on a truly epic scale and it is happening right now, moment by moment.
Not only are we manipulated by the Internet and a variety of scammers and conspiracy theorists we have actual totalitarians who have an extreme contempt for facts. They live in a world of feelings that they believe supersede facts. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Tojo all had a very high level of contempt for facts. They essentially lived like a good many American politicians in a world of myth and legend (not the good ones). The current hideous myths are the foolish ideas of a mythic American past particularly the glorification of the 1950’s. And so, when we do things like multi-culturalism which runs against the values of the “Jim Crow” era, they react with unreasoning hatred and rage.
I am a member of the reality based community. I admit right now that I do not understand why everyone doesn’t rely on facts to make decisions and live their lives. It seems to me obvious that this is the most likely path to lead to success.
Right now, our current national leadership appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, bragging about imaginary accomplishments and threatening to arrest and destroy his domestic enemies. He lives in a world of lies and nonsense which he is forcing on the rest of us.
He might succeed. There are a great many people who see monetary benefits from this set of lies and fake mythology. But the facts, the ones they have not managed to obscure and distort, remain. And we who have lived and want to live in a reality based world are still here.
Raising children under the current regime when every vestige of morality and ethics has been swept away be the greedy and the ruthless is very difficult. You want your child to do right and to believe that doing right is a worthy part of a well lived life, but everywhere you look, America has become the land of the grifter and influence peddler.
Once upon a time, there was an author who believed in righteousness, heroism and a well told story about the struggles faced throughout history when you want to do what is right.
His name was Howard Pyle.
Here below is one of his book plates. He is a very famous illustrator and he wrote many books.
(A Howard Pyle book in the public domain downloadable at Project Gutenberg.)
Above is a link to the book site and it is several different formats for different machines and capabilities for download. Below is the Wikipedia article on his life and work. (Full disclosure: I have given money to support Wikipedia, admire its design and purpose, and when teaching in class and online always allowed my students to use it as a source in anything they wrote. I consider the people of Wikipedia to be my friends.)
Pyle was widely respected during his life and continues to be well regarded by illustrators and fine artists. His contemporary Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother Theo that Pyle’s work “struck me dumb with admiration.“[12]
All of Pyle’s principal works are available and a good number of books in which he is the illustrator. His pictures are quite beautiful.
During these times of troubles I can recommend without reservation, his work as something you can give to your children to teach them some of the great lessons and legends from the story of Western Civilization.
If they are very young, you might print it off for them, I recommend you begin with “The Wonder Clock,” a collection of 24 stories, one for each hour of the day. The illustrations are quite original and delightful. Older children can use desktops, etc., to see the many books and illustrations online.
As a parent or guardian, we have responsibilities to teach our children the story of our culture and how we have arrived at what we consider right and wrong.
I hope this helps. If you use these stories and others like them at an early, impressionable age, they should have maximum effect.
I was watching a recently made documentary on the Mt. St. Helens eruption. It has been some twenty years.
I was astonished to see many interviews of people who believed that the scientists’ warnings were just nonsense. “Nothin’ is going to happen!” Stated one skeptic firmly.
(A cathedral of France now long gone.)
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Americans have questioned science and technology all during the various developments. My favorite anti-science rant was a doubter who did not believe that trains could ever reach the fantastic speed of twenty miles an hour because the air pressure of such a speed would make it impossible for humans to breath. That was from the 1820’s but I still see this sort of thing. Recently, I’ve seen new stories about not ever being able to settle Mars, or travel to Proxima Centauri, or break the light barrier. And they might be right, but we have accomplished so much that in the past seemed impossible.
I have always had a soft spot for science and scientists. They are truth seekers and I very much respect truth seeking. It is an almost holy endeavor, the truth. And we live in a time where lies and misconceptions are elbowing many well know facts out of the way.
For instance —
Societies that function on merit based leadership and advancement are completely superior to societies based on connections and relationships. Loyalty is important but only up to a point. Greater loyalties to one’s nation or the concept of righteousness are important to a well lived life. I consider those facts and I think I can prove them if called upon.
And because I believe in these things, I keep posting, although it often seems to make little difference.
Well, let us cast our bread upon the water having faith in the better angels of our nature.
I did some internet searches on the topic. And it is still germinating. Karoline Leavitt says it is all “manufactured outrage.” No, I don’t think so. People are in pain over the loss of part of their heritage. Maybe to her and to her regime, this is just a piece of property, but it is not. Like the battlefields of Gettysburg and Yorktown, the White House is in a real way, sacred ground.
I believe that that outrage is building and it just starting. Why would I believe that? Because of how I feel. After dealing with this continual parade of stupidity, lies and the carefully organized theatre of cruelty that is this administration, it was hard to surprise me. But they managed it. I didn’t see this coming.
And it hurts. Maybe this will delight the standard MAGA follower, the fact that it hurts me to see American history so casually destroyed and then to see it used as filler for a golf course. I guess denying food and medical care to millions isn’t enough when it come to owning the libs, a little historical desecration is necessary to pile on the pain.
The administration, once again, Karoline Leavitt, says renovations are normal in the White House. Really? If I renovate my kitchen I might get new countertops and a better microwave, that’s renovation. What they did more resembles carpet bombing from the Second World War, that is, total destruction. And total destruction is what we have.
I’m angry. What do I want? I want every last brick and every last bit of gold plated poor taste of that new ballroom utterly demolished just like they did to the East Wing. I want every single change this administration has made to the Peoples’ property reversed and erased. I want every evidence of that man’s lack of taste, his concept of some gold plated European bordello as a matter of style, gone and gone forever.
But we must remember with great care and precision, the enablers, the cowards and corporate scum who are paying for this ball room. They are also responsible for these crimes against the American people, against our history and against our glorious past. They have to pay for their crimes. Their moral failures and their pathetic desire to please our alleged leader is now clearly on the record.
When this regime is done, there must be hearings, there must be trials, there must be investigations and people must go to prison, must go to jail, must pay fines and must lose their reputations and livelihoods. Our suffering must have meaning and that meaning will come only when justice is done.
Here is a news article listing the pitiful moral failures who are financing the ball room.
I’m not going to put the list up here but read the article and read through the list of cowardice and shame.
When do these horrors end? I don’t know. But I have faith in America and in the path of justice. There will be a reckoning for these evil people and their crimes.
No Black Lives Matter T-shirts and no Kamala Harris coffee mugs demands Director General of the BBC.
(From the children’s book, The Wonder Clock.)
So, what the BBC is apparently going for is a silent, reserved stance in which it is understood in some subconscious, perhaps in a meditative spiritual way opposed to racism.
It would seem that overt statements affirming racial equality are offensive, and we all know how easy authority figures in Great Britain are offended by any mention of the nation’s racist past. We don’t want to ruffle feathers or suggest that tolerance is an important value just a quiet, low priority one.
Racism is like Voldemort. It must not be spoken of.
Let me quote from the article.
The BBC director general also said his “number one priority” was “trying to navigate a course where you are impartial” and that required “elements of diversity”, adding that “socioeconomic diversity” was something that “hadn’t been talked about enough”.
He added: “It is absolutely a big battle, and I’m getting questions: ‘Why are you giving a voice to Reform?’, ‘Why are you doing this?’ We’re not giving a voice, we’re covering – covering what people are interested in, covering the reality of what people feel.”
Perhaps I’m mistaken but what I take from this is that he expects the BBC to do the stenography thing and have no view as to the right or wrong of an issue, to suspend their moral judgments.
This is an abhorrent environment to create in a news service because it puts outright evil and monstrous people on the same reporting plane as the righteous and good. Imagine covering the statements coming out of the Third Reich as substantial and normal as the statements of the democracies opposing them.
All he is asking is for reporters to suspend their critical judgment. If that isn’t wrong, nothing is.
Neutrality in the face of evil is also a decision and it is the wrong one.
In these terrible times, calls for respect and good behavior seem almost surprising. We are literally being drenched in Administration insults and lies.
And yet, the Milwaukee Brewers issue a statement sublime in its simple call for human decency and good public behavior.
Someday, we may have public servants, even Presidents, whose first response to an opponent isn’t a slur or an obscenity. Someday, decency, eloquence and tolerance may once again become factors in public discourse.
But not now.
Let us hope and pray for better days to come.
James Alan Pilant
Here is the story and the public statement put out by the sports team.
“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark.”
(I just liked the picture. It is hard to find a non-copyrighted picture of an airport or the controversial video. JP.)
When you think of Oklahoma, it is common to believe the State a hotbed of Trump sympathizers. Yet, that does not appear at least in this single case to be true.
Risking the wrath of the Trump Administration has frightened law firms, colleges, universities, multi-national corporations and a literal horde of Republican politicians of which Oklahoma has many, and yet Oklahoma airports are standing up in defiance.
It gives you some faith in humankind to find courage and a backbone even in Oklahoma where right wing politics and reactionary Baptists rule.
As a business ethics issue, the airports are looking at possible liability under the Hatch Act for presenting a partisan video. That is very wise. The current administration will not last forever and these kinds of violations can be punished for some years.
So, while certainly decisions requiring courage, there is also a question of legal liability.
A reflection.
When I was a young man, I spoke to a number of Republicans running for office and from time to time voted for them. At no time, did I suspect that they did not have my best interests in mind and I was right about them. They loved the United States and they valued my vote and my interest in their campaign. They were good and fine human human beings.
I miss those days.
The News Story this column (blog post) is based on.
Here is the link to the news story about the airport’s decisions to not air the video. I have also included a brief quote.
This week, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem distributed a video to be played in airport security lines, across the country, blaming Democrats for travel delays during the shutdown.
“We will continue to do all that we can to avoid delays that will impact your travel,” Noem says in the video. “And our hope is that Democrats will soon recognize the importance of opening the government.”
Some experts say the video violates the Hatch Act, a federal law banning executive officials from using their titles for partisan activities. It also bans the use of federal resources to help or harm individual political parties.
Along with dozens of airports across the country, Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City is not displaying the video.
Two Million More People Participated than the Last One
(A great day for American Patriotism!)
Today was the day of days, when American came together to voice their discontent with our increasingly corrupt and incompetent government. I can’t convey in words how proud and hopeful today’s events make me.
Will Americans be able to stop the march to a fascist state that is quite some distance along? I don’t know. But the marchers today put a marker down that obedience and compliance are unlikely if the oppression continues. Americans are putting this administration on notice that they will not sit idly by while our liberties are trampled on.
Let the work go forth that we are patriotic Americans, the bedrock of the nation and we stand together.
What is particularly striking about these demonstrations, these marchers, is the disparity between the message they are sending and the text messages sent between Young Republicans that were exposed just a few days ago.
We see on the streets a sea of patriots and believers in American democracy while in the chat rooms of the future leaders of the Republican Party, the denizens laugh about gas chambers, joke about killing and raping their enemies, ridicule minorities and praise the Third Reich.
You tell me which one of these is the future of the United States, an excited committed group of patriots or the dregs of a once proud political party drifting into a sort of happy fascism? I know which one I want.
And if you want to claim that a group of Young Republicans who had to be 18 to 40 years of age to be on those chats were just a bunch of naive kids, I’ve got swampland in Florida or I can sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, whichever appeals to your lack of judgment.
In the last few days we’ve seen two different Americas. If God is kind, we will follow the righteous and good path.
Here is the latest news about the march and the participation.
Organizers for the event said that nearly 7 million Americans around the country attended ― two million more than the first “No Kings” protest in June.
“With more than 2,700 lawful and peaceful protests across all 50 states, today’s mobilization was 14 times larger than both of President Trump’s presidential inaugurations combined, marking a historic moment of unity and resistance,” a statement from ‘No Kings’ organizers said. “From rural communities to major metropolitan centers, the message was clear: America will not be ruled by fear, force, or one man’s power grab.”
And in case you’re curious about what the Young Republicans posted, here is a link to the original article and a bit of text.
Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
This week marks sixteen years of me owning and posting on this Blog, Pilant’s Business Ethics.
When I started I was teaching both online and in the classroom. My son was a teenager and I was still married. It seems a whole world away.
And now, the world seems so dark and dangerous as American democracy is under attack and whether or not, our representative government survives will be seen in the next couple of years.
But I should just bask in the fact that I have persevered so long and with some success.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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