Maintaining Faith, Stamina and Courage in Pursuit of our Vision for Our Country and the World

 

About three years ago, in summer, 2019, I read a splendid little book, on democracy by E.B. White.  I had read his essays collected in the Points of My Compass decades ago. White was born in 1908.  I find his writings from 60-70 years ago to be uncannily relevant today as we find democracy under challenge in our country and around the world. As we'll see, the challenges are not new nor is the need for courage and stamina in meeting them.

In the 1940's White wrote this:  " The pesky nature of democratic life is it has no comfortable rigidity; it always hangs by a thread, never quite submits to consolidation or solidification, is always being challenged, always being defended.”

 

Writing before the entry of the US into World War II, as Hitler’s reign creeped across Europe, he wrote:  “I just want to tell you, before I get slowed down, that I am in love with Freedom and that it is an affair of longstanding and that it is a fine state to be in, and that I am deeply suspicious of people who are beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators merely because they are succeeding in war.  From such adaptable natures, a smell rises.  I pinch my nose.”

 

What an apt description of how I felt about the Trump presidency and Trump himself as he is revealed by the January 6th Commission (and how I feel about Putin's invasion of Ukraine today).  

“My first and greatest love affair was with this thing we call Freedom, this lady of infinite allure, this dangerous and beautiful and sublime being who restores and supplies us all.”

 

Writing in 1943, advocating the world coming together in a government, White writes:  “Were we ever to get one (a world government), it would impose on the individual the curious burden of taking the entire globe to his bosom—although not in any sense depriving him of the love of his front yard.”

 

“A world made one by the political union of its parts, would not only require of its citizen a shift of allegiance, but it would also deprive him of an enormous personal satisfaction of distrusting what he doesn’t know and despising what he hasn’t seen.  This would be a severe depravation, perhaps an intolerable one.  The awful truth is, a world government would lack an enemy and that is a deficiency not to be lightly dismissed.  It will take a yet undiscovered vitamin to supply the blood of man with a substitute for national ambition and racial antipathy; but (White I fear far too optimistically concludes) we are discovering new vitamins all the time, and I am aware of that, too.” 

 

Eerily anticipating our own time, and commenting on the FCC’s regulation of radio, White writes, “This country is on the verge of getting news-drunk; the democracy cannot survive merely by being well informed, it must also be contemplative, and wise.” 

 

Never so much today as in taking the time and the care to try to understand the other point of view and what truth really is. 

 

In October 1952, White writes, “We doubt that there ever was a time in this country when so many people tried to discredit so many other people.” 

 

Well, he ought to be around today. 

“About a year ago, we started to compile a handbook of defamation, but the list got too big for us and we abandoned the project as both unwieldy and unlovely.  Discreditation has become a national sickness for which no cure has so far been found, and there is a strong likelihood that we will all wake up some morning to learn that, in the whole land, there is not one decent man.  Vilification, condemnation, revelation—these supply a huge part of the columns of the papers, and the story of life in the United States dissolves into a novel of perfidy, rascality, iniquity and misbehavior.  The writing of this lurid tale commands more and more of the time of the citizens.”

 

In June 1960 in the midst of that presidential campaign, White writes that he has read the books and published speeches of many of the candidates for president, including Kennedy, Chester Bowles, Nixon, Stevenson and Rockefeller.  He observes something that I’ve felt for at least the last eight years.  “They speak of new principles for a new age, but for the most part, I find old principles for a time that has passed.  Most of the special matters they discuss are pressing, but taken singly or added together, they do not point in a steady direction, they do not name a destination that gets me up in the morning to pull on my marching boots.  Once in a while, I try a little march on my own, stepping out briskly toward a reputable hill, but when I do I feel that I am alone, and that I am on a treadmill.”

 

For my money, President Obama described a vision worthy of “pulling on my marching boots.”  It was a vision of inclusiveness, of living our nation’s highest values embedded in living to a fuller degree our nation’s founding principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence.  But sadly his administration, impeded by Republican opposition aimed at making him a one-term president, didn’t in the end fulfill that vision.  We were not united as a country.  And President Trump divided this nation more than ever. 

 

Therein lies the greatest need for our next president, I wrote months before the 2020 election. We can’t just be driven by what we’re against even though the commitment to ensure that Trump doesn’t have another four years is correct.  We must anchor our vision and the plans to carry it out on the future, together united.  

Sadly, we remain far from realizing this vision. We remain divided,  and angry with those who disagree with us.Yet, we cannot falter in our pursuit of this vision. Just as in the past, we must retain the commitment and energy to keep going, recognizing in the words of the Talmud, we are not required to complete the task, but nor are allowed to desist from

it. 

Words to Live By--from Joseph Conrad

 “What one lives for may be uncertain; how one lives is not.  Man should live nobly, though he does not see any practical reason for it, simply because in the mysterious, inexplicable mixture of beauty and ugliness…in which he finds himself, he must be on the side of the virtuous and the beautiful.”

Looking Ahead to the Long Term--Russia's Place in the World

I believe Putin, and those supporting him, have put Russia on a course which will  be unsustainable over time. An isolated Russia--economically, politically, now even culturally --can probably survive--but it will not thrive. 

Relations with China and India and other non-aligned countries may help but they cannot begin to replace the value of the relationships with the West including the U.S. 

This will become clearer and clearer to the people and leaders of Russia just as it did at the end of the Communist era in the 1980s.

 How long this will take I do not know. It almost certainly will not happen in my lifetime. It will require new leadership. 

But in time, I  believe it will happen. The historical cultural roots and proven economic benefits of a healthy relationship between Russia and the West --as uneven as they have proved to be--are written large over time and will be equally important in the long term future. 

 So too, the West will recognize it must deal with Russia for many reasons--economic and cultural and most urgently its nuclear capacity. 

In the meantime, it is imperative that we continue to take all the action necessary to support Ukraine in preventing Russia under Putin's leadership from denying Ukraine its sovereignty. 

"The Only Guide to a Man Is His Conscience--Winston Churchill

 This is from a eulogy which Winston Churchill offered on November 14, 1940 in honor of a man he had bitterly opposed only months before, former Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

"History, with its flickering lamp, stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and candle with pale gleams the passion of former days. 

What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is his rectitude and sincerity of his actions. 

It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor". 

Or as I pray.."for the wisdom to know the right thing to do, and the courage and perseverance to do it".

"I Never Felt I Would Live to See The Day, Yet There Remains Room for Hope"

Like so many who have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, who have come to have many Russian and Ukrainian friends and admire Russian and Ukrainian culture, I  never thought I would live to see the day when the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

 

I thought Vladimir Putin was more prudent than that.  I thought that he would see the risk as too high and the likely damage to his own country too great.  That, of course, is not the way it has turned out.  That brutal reality—and the resulting deaths, displacement of millions of lives and the economic devastation which has resulted from it—they are a source of unspeakable pain and regret. I never felt I would live to see this day.

 

And yet…I am also reminded that I never thought I would live to see the day when the Soviet Union would peaceably dissolve as a collective body of nations committed to Communism and to the prosecution of a Cold War with the West.

 

I never thought I’d live to see the day when I, then President of Procter & Gamble, along with thousands of others, played a role in creating a business and organization in Russia, not that long after I had chased Russian submarines around the North Atlantic as part of the U.S. Navy.

 

No matter what the future brings, I will always be incredibly proud of what our P&G Russian men and women achieved. 

 

What do I hope to demonstrate with this sequence of events which I never thought I would have lived to experience?  What perspective, if any, might it offer for the future?

 

Several things, I believe.

 

It forcefully underscores that history is not inevitable.  That it does not proceed in a straight line.  That it encounters unexpected dramatic changes. 

 

It cautions us to not give up hope.  Situations that have looked borderline hopeless in the past have turned around, gotten better, more often than not in ways we did not anticipate. 

 

Above all, for me, it highlights the importance of individual agency. 

 

I do not believe that the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union, accomplished in the face of the great threat of it being violent, could possibly have happened if it were not for the person of Mikhail Gorbachev.  To be sure, there were underlying factors, importantly economic and the openness of communication that allowed Russians to see what was happening to the West.  These were foundational realities that helped prompt dramatic change in Russia.  But the evolution of this change in the peaceful way in which it occurred was by no means certain.  There were other Russian leaders, who I encountered first-hand, who would have fought the dissolution of the Soviet Union tooth and nail, with great loss of life. 

In much the same way, one can explain Vladimir Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine and trace it back to certain historical decisions, particularly the expansion of NATO and the failure to grasp the slim opportunity that existed at the turn of the century to bring Russia into a Pan-European security network.  As I wrote in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, there is “enough blame to go around.”

 

However, make no mistake.  The decision on how to respond to the perceived (or actual as Russia saw it) risk that Russia’s security posed by NATO was singularly dependent on the decision by Vladimir Putin, as he called on his army to invade Ukraine.  The decision to do this without even obtaining an even halfway accurate idea of how the Ukrainian people would react to this invasion also rests squarely on Vladimir Putin. 

 

So there we have two of the most unforgettable events in my entire 80+-year life that I never thought I would see the day to experience. 

 

This view of history leads me to the hope that there will again be a shift of power and belief system in Russia which this time will offer the opportunity for Russia to take its place within a broad European security network.  For decades, I firmly believed this is where Russia belongs.  Yes, bringing its own unique cultural history and belief systems but still part of Europe and the West. 

 

Having had the benefit of being close to Russia and Russian people for over 30 years and having studied its history and culture, I firmly believe that its natural place in this global spectrum we inhabit is part of a broader Europe.  There are already major differences between countries in Europe:  between Germany and Italy, France and the U.K., Poland and Spain.  Russia, too, will have its own unique characteristics.  But while it didn’t participate fully in The Enlightenment, all you need to do is read Russian literature and experience its music and its art and know its people to see the place it occupies in Western culture. 

 

The fact that this will not happen in my lifetime, with my now being over 80, is disappointing but it is not personally deflating.  I know history is long. No set of  experiences shows how it can change more than what we have experienced in Russia over my adult lifetime.

 I am conscious that achieving this end will not happen on automatic pilot.  It will require many things which I cannot pretend to know, but three I can:

 

1.     People in  Russia, as many are right now, standing up bravely, at risk of their lives, to argue for and  commit to advance as best they can,  a liberal way of life. People who do not give up hope in a better future.

2. That the people of the world at large and of the West in particular not "blackballl" the Russian people generally as evil and as "enemies" but rather recognize that this tragic decision to invade Ukraine was very much the decision of its leadership. And recognize further that in the long run--and the short run too for that matter--that working with Russia, without expecting we will see everything alike, is in the interest of the United States, Russia and the entire world.

3..   Ultimately, the emergence of a Russian leader who can gain the confidence of the Russian people and play the positive role that Gorbachev did over 30 years ago, and Lech Walesa did in Poland, and Nelson Mandela did in South Africa, and Abraham Lincoln did in the United States and that this leader will be matched with leaders from the West who are prepared to work together to achieve common existential goals. 

 

Troubled Times-- In Pursuit of Truth

 I can’t recall being more worried about the state of our world and the state of our nation than I am right now. 

 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response to it (the U.S. and NATO) continues to escalate, with not only no end in sight but, from my perspective, no credible exit in sight.  Putin is feeling increasingly “cornered”. There is no telling what he might do in order to avoid humbling defeat.The words we are employing aren’t helping.  Secretary of Defense Austin declaring it our ‘intent” to degrade Russia’s military and a thinly disguised commitment to regime change. In truth, I  believe this is the only path to a better future for Russia and a lasting peace for the world but our insisting on it  publicly isn’t going to help achieve that outcome; it plays into Putin's hands.

 

I wrack my brain for a “peace settlement” now that both Ukraine and Russia could sign on to.  I can’t imagine Ukraine agreeing to cede any new territory (apart from Crimea) to Russia, and it’s hard to imagine Russia agreeing to anything not involving some added territory.

In our own country, and in the world for that matter, I’m most troubled by the utter disrespect for truth.  The willingness to lie flagrantly and get away with it.  Kevin McCarthy, who aspires to be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, denies making the statement that he felt Trump should resign after January 6, only to have a tape of his voice saying exactly that appear the next day.  With all of that, he appears before the Republican Caucus and gets a standing ovation. 

 

Putin tells lie after lie to the Russian public and, for still a majority, his words are believed. 

 

I’ve sometimes been asked:  “What is the most important thing you took away from college?”  My answer, starting over half century ago to this very day, is:  “The respect I gained for seeking truth and the importance of being open to new learning to determine what truth is.” 

 

When I’m asked what it is that led me to stay at Procter & Gamble rather than going to law school after my  first year, which is what I anticipated, the reasons I give always include, “It was my discovery that the search for truth in P&G was what I had experienced and loved at Yale.”  Yes, the search for truth.

 

Twenty-three years ago, I went to the Miami University campus to give a talk to the students.  Its title was:  “Does character count?”  When that topic had first been suggested to me, I dismissed it, saying the answer to this question was too obvious to merit a full-blown talk.   The faculty member I was talking to told me I was wrong.  It was a very live question in students’ minds.  He wanted me to address it.  And so I did. 

 

I began my talk with these four words:  ‘Without character, nothing counts.’”  

I continued:  “What is character?  I don’t know if there is a final answer,” I said.  “But for me character expresses integrity:  ‘Being as one.’ ‘Being as one’ in the sense of being faithful in action to your most important core values, to your promises, to your words.’ ‘Being as one’ in saying what you mean and meaning what you say and of being faithful to other people, especially when they are not present.”

 

I went on:  “Integrity manifests itself in a quality I’ve come to appreciate more and more:  ‘Authenticity.’  I love to hear it said of someone:  ‘What you see is what you get.’  No matter where this person is, no matter whom they are talking to, no matter whom they are talking with, they are the same, because they are just being themselves.”  

This kind of integrity, this commitment to truth as best we know it, this is the predicate for a functioning democracy, for a functioning company, for a functioning family, for a functioning relationship of any kind. 

I recall the chilling words of Goebbels during the Nazi era. In  so many words, "If you keep telling people a lie, again and again, many will come to believe it".

George Orwell in his all too prescient book, "Animal Farm", writes this: "Totalitarianism demands..the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run demands a disbelief in the very existence of truth".

 In times past, I believe there would have been broad, if not totally universal agreement to the commitment to truth even as we recognized our imperfection in carrying out this mandate.

 

What worries, indeed what scares me today, is that this commitment to integrity, to telling the truth, is up for grabs.  It has being flagrantly abused and the abusers are getting away with it.  This is true in our country; it’s true globally. 

 

What has happened to the aspiration for ideals we have held dear?  

With all this cause for deep concern, there are rays of hope and inspiration. We see Liz Cheney standing up to her Republican party's continued allegiance to Donald Trump and his outright lies. Above all, we see the Ukrainian people  and their President Volodymyr Zelensky pursue truth—freedom—at the risk and sacrifice of their lives. 

No matter which way the winds are blowing, we have only one choice. Do what we believe is right. Continue to pursue truth as we can best understand it. 

The Moral Responsibility of Business

 The current controversy involving the Walt Disney Company and the State of Florida led me back to this blog I posted over 6 years ago. My views have not changed. 

THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF BUSINESS--WHAT IS IT AND WHAT IS IT NOT?

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

The Moral Responsibility of Business

Some time ago, we were presented with a real drama in the States of Indiana and Arkansas, as legislation was adopted and then quickly reversed which proposed to give license to business organizations to refuse service based on their religious principles to gays and lesbians.  A broad array of business and business leaders objected to this, including the nine leading businesses in Indiana, WalMart, Apple, and many others.  New legislation was quickly introduced (and that in Arkansas modified) to explicitly indicate that this “religious freedom” legislation could not be used to discriminate against marriage preference. 

This is a very tricky area.  To what extent do businesses have the right and indeed the obligation to voice their position on moral or ethical grounds to sway public policy?  How does business strike the right balance between its values and abiding with an existing social policy, imbedded in law and perhaps embraced by a large percentage of the population, including its employees or customers?

Getting down to cases, as CEO in 1995, I reached the position that Procter & Gamble should provide equal benefits to individuals who are in a codified same-sex partnership.  We did this at a time when the majority of Ohioans opposed same-sex marriage.  We were not taking a position that these individuals were wrong in their belief.  We were taking the position that the same-sex partnership as it was codified made it right in the name of fairness to accord our employees in such a partnership the same benefits as a married couple.  It proved fairly controversial, but I believed it was right to do.  We were not making a moral pronouncement on same-sex marriage at this time.  We were saying that in the name of fairness there was no reason to deny individuals in this relationship same-sex benefits.

A related issue being discussed here relates to the “personhood” of a corporation.  Is a corporation a “person” or not? 

Many, perhaps most, would say, no, a corporation is not a “person.”  As one columnist said, a corporation won’t be a “person” until it is capable of being executed in the State of Texas. 

Where do I stand on this issue?  It depends on what you mean by “person.”

I would say that business has a “responsibility” as part of society to advance positions that are consistent with what as a corporate body (leaders, board of directors, best understanding of shareholders) represent correct and moral values.  I say this because I believe corporations have a major role to play in forming the cultural and value-based character of a society.  I do believe that corporations need to be humble and circumspect in taking on an issue.  They have to recognize the practical need to balance the interests of those it serves -- its consumers, employees, shareholders and the community. 

In other words, if a corporation took on a value-based position that would destroy its business, it would end up serving no one in the future.  Would there ever be occasions where it would have to go this far, to almost literally have to go out of business?  Yes, if its being in business meant threatening the life of consumers or anyone else.

When I say a corporation must be circumspect and humble, I mean that it must avoid becoming sanctimonious or in any way believing that it has a role of being a priest or prophet in its times.  It must speak judicially, though sometimes bravely, and it must avoid failing to do the good it can do at a given point in time because it cannot achieve perfection. 

Take the situation of Procter & Gamble in Saudi Arabia many years ago.  There was a social mandate that men and women could not work together in the same office.  P&G might have, given its commitment to gender equality, said that it would not do business in Saudi Arabia at all.  Or, I guess it could have taken the position it would violate the laws, though that would not have lasted long.  What did we do?  We set up separate office locations where women would work and where men would work and they would communicate between the two offices.  We did this on market research work.  We also pushed to change the social norms and the laws.  We felt that was right to do, not only morally; we knew it would be better for the business to have people working together in that way.  We felt advancing gender equality was right for the business and right morally.  We kept advancing this goal.

This raises a question:  is the test for a company taking a position on a moral or social issue whether it is relevant to the success of the business itself in the long-term?  Put differently, should businesses only weigh in on social and moral issues that bear directly on having the right (and by “right” I include being morally correct) business and working environment long-term?  I think the answer is yes, but I’d underscore the importance of taking a long-term view.  For example, I believe the commitment to achieve a sustainable environment is one that businesses should advocate, even beyond the immediate benefit of that for the business itself.   Why?  Because I believe businesses should understand that having a world in which they or any other business could operate long-term requires a sustainable environment.

I believe that a business has social and moral obligations that go beyond simply making money in any short- or medium-term measurable sense.

At the same time, I believe its judgments and pronouncements must be measured and put in the context of a business’s doing what is right and fair for its employees, its shareholders and its consumers, recognizing there will always be different points of view on what is right and fair.  While always seeking to do the “right” thing.  It must avoid being self-righteous or over-extending its role in advocating for what it sees as the common good.