Originally Posted by
Street garbage
Thank you for the link to this story.
It puts exactly into context the ills of our time. Apologies for three posts...This one has been waiting to be written for a while and bears no resemblance to any person
Imagine growing up poor. Imagine seeing your parents struggle in lower class employment, in a country that over its history has been stricken by poverty, trapped by its oppressors and at times starved.
Imagine being an intelligent boy watching your parents struggle. Struggle for you and your siblings. It is quite possible the grey skyline matched your parents mood. Like all parents they laboured for their children. Hoping that the next generation fared better than they. That is largely what peace loving people the world over long for: to leave it better for those you love. It is highly probable that a sense of community, a sense of looking after each other was ingrained very early on. Together you got through.
That boy learns his lesson. He gets educated, He finds the way out! He finds his way to aviation, not through flying, but in the office. He leaves the grey skyline, arrives in the other side of the world.
He rises to CEO. A big achievement.
The forlorn hope of the community of the airline (the greatest team sport there is) is that you will bring humility, you from your humble roots represent a departure from the old greed. Hopefully you will remember that every one of those people depends on you. This is your chance, show the company, show the community, you are a big man. Big of deed.
Missing in this story is empathy.
But let's try for empathy – or at least inquiry. Let's try, for a moment, to imagine ourselves in this situation. Imagine you've just made $32,000 for an hour's work, filling out a few forms for an 86-year-old lady. Now – best case scenario – let's imagine that the old lady actively wanted this plan, and that you genuinely believed your advice would be to her advantage.
Without empathy, any connection to your fellow community is lost. Sure you can insulate yourself, surround yourself with those who tell you it is all fair. Empathy though is something that drags you back, it reminds you people all need each other. No one is perfect, so you ended up being more of the same. Sad really, you could have changed it for the better.
Society is used to dealing with individual bad behaviour. We have systems – legal, social, emotional – to understand it, punish it, and recover from it. But we're far less certain about how to feel about – and what to do with – group wrongdoing. We know something has gone awry in this story – and with much of the behaviour we're discovering at the Royal Commission – but what? Psychologists, philosophers and ethicists have all sorts of theories. The banks have only one. They call it "culture".
When you set the culture and the culture is still wrong, it takes a big man to say it.
Qantas still need a new fleet