Grappling with the Gray
Are you ethical? Join Rabbi Yonason Goldson and his panel of thinkers as they grapple with a new ethical challenge each week. Only by contemplating all sides and every angle can we improve ethical decision-making, build more trusting relationships, and help create a more ethical world.
Grappling with the Gray
Grappling with the Gray #143: Is it possible to be too polite?
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When does too much sugar stop being sweet?
That's the question that drives the conversation when David Fink, Monica Kreuger, and ☘️Mark O'Brien join the ethics panel to Grapple with the Gray.
Here is our topic:
After a recent visit to Urgent Care, I vented to my wife how annoyed I was by the doctor. It wasn’t that she was ill-mannered or curt. Just the opposite.
“If it isn’t too much trouble, may I ask you to please remove your glasses?”
That’s 15 words for what could have been said in four. And if it were too much trouble, what wouldn’t be?
“Please lean back for these eye drops. I don’t want to stain your lovely shirt.” I was wearing the same shirt I’m wearing now. Plain white. Professional, but hardly lovely. She even repeated the comment.
Within minutes I was grimacing the way you do when someone puts too much sugar in your coffee.
“It’s better than being rude,” my wife replied. She’s right, of course. But is there a middle ground between being too polite and not polite enough?
When politeness feels contrived or insincere, doesn’t it end up having an effect opposite to what’s intended? Or is it enough that someone is making the effort to be polite even if they may be doing it imperfectly?
One of the principles of ethics is to presume positive intent. But is intent alone ever not enough?
Meet this week’s panel:
David Fink is a litigation attorney, rabbinic scholar, author, lecturer, educator, and moral philosopher.
Monica Kreuger is founder and CEO of both Global Infobrokers Inc. and Praxis School of Entrepreneurship. She also chairs the board of Luthercare Community and is TEC Canada Chair in Saskatoon.
Mark O’Brien is founder and principal of O’Brien Communications Group, a B2B brand-management and marketing-communications firm — and host of The Anxious Voyage, a syndicated radio show about life’s trials and triumphs.