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When Greg Smith exposed how his company was bolstering profits by giving clients wrong advice, everyone on that conscience-deficient Wall Street immediately denounced him as 'disloyal'.
How would you define loyalty? How important is loyalty on the landscape of life? Sure, it is great to be loyal to your country, but then even the Mafia demands unequivocal loyalty.That quality of being faithful is very restrictive. Loyalty to one entity by definition excludes others. When one chooses one value over another, it is then the mettle if a person shows up. Smith chose honesty. I am not surprised that it is Wall Street that is touting the 'loyalty line'. It takes a rampant kind of moral decrepitude that allows such a distorted versions of values. Loyalty over honesty? Certainly not copacetic.
Loyalty, by itself, may be the least honorable of the noble values. It is self- serving by it's very nature. Loyalty actually says 'me and mine are above you and yours'. And that cannot be acceptable. Loyalty is appropriate as long it does not infringe on an other values . It is an honorable value only if it is in conjunction with other higher ideals like love,honesty, kindness, or justice.
I cannot think of any other quality that engenders groupism as much as loyalty does. White collar groups, corporate executives, the police 'blue wall', feminism... the list goes on. Everyone thinks they are doing the right thing by banding in a group they belong to. Great, but not at the cost of truth, or even openness. It bothers me when women band together for no other reason than that they have a different chromosome. I do not support Hillary Clinton because she is a woman, I support her because she is brilliant. I do not cry for victims of acid-throwing because they are women, I cry because of the injustice and pain. And would shed the same tears if it was a man whose face was burnt. Women who add the cause of feminism to issues like this are negating the horror of the crime itself.
I am sure Iranians are being loyal to their country by calling us the Great Satan but it is both untrue and mean. Dick Cheney was being loyal to his shareholder friends by sending young Americans to an unnecessary war, and that certainly is the opposite of every human ideal we can imagine! I am sure a lot of us have been a loyal friend by supporting or ignoring something wrong the friend is doing. Oppressors all over the world get away with their crimes because of teams of people who are simply being 'loyal' to them.
Being loyal to friends, family, and country is admirable of course, but eventually loyalty to your own moral propriety is all that matters .
1 Comments on Being Loyal, last added: 3/29/2012
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very well written sarah. You are right, unfortunately it depends what people perceive as royalty. We all have different morals, and can only answer for ourselves. In today's society we have lost morals and are pushing these boundaries more and more.