A random act of kindness

For this post we were asked to do a random act of kindness and document it. Now a random act of kindness isn’t new to any of us. It doesn’t have to be a large thing, it can be the small daily things that we do like holding the door for the person behind us, picking up someone else’s trash, or giving to the homeless. I understand the motive behind random acts of kindness as well. As Martin Seligman “the father of modern positive psychology” put it: the highest level of enduring happiness comes from altruistic activities that are fun and done solely for the benefit of someone else. It gives us a greater sense of self, affecting us for days, and even weeks, after the event.

So why then do I refuse to do this post, and actively go out and do a random act of kindness and document the proof of my good deed? Well in short: because going out and doing a premeditated act of random kindness defeats the purpose. Virtue based ethics tells us the right action isn’t right within itself; it is right because of the reasons we’re doing it. Going out and doing this acts for points and a grade defiles the act itself. It’s no longer random and I hardly think it’s kind if we are doing it solely with the expectation of being rewarded. To back this thought up here’s a definition that was covered in class of authentic leadership. Authentic leaders act in accordance with one’s own values as opposed to acting simply to please others, attain reward, or avoid punishment through acting falsely. This blog asks us to do just that: act falsely in order to attain a reward and avoid punishment.

This class is about leadership and taking action based on our values. In the last blog post that I made I talked about moral mutinous, knowing the right thing but not doing it. My example was getting a false grade on a test that I didn’t deserve but I said nothing and kept the better grad fearing punishment. A fellow class mate called me out saying that she too had done this once, but the pain of being untrue to her wasn’t worth it and that in the future she always did the right thing regardless of the consequences.

That’s why I won’t be posting proof of my random acts of kindness even if it means losing points for me. It isn’t right and I won’t defile the act or myself by going out and doing a premeditated act of self-gratification then documenting my good deeds. Like I said this class is about leadership about knowing your values and living by them.  

Moral Muteness

There are time when we know the right thing to do but we don’t for whatever reason we turn away or walk on by, what do these moments say about use and are values and morality?

For me it’s hard to think of a time that I was morally muteness in the recent past. I truly try to do what I feel is right. However I guess there is one example that I can think of, it’s actually rather close to home as far as moral muteness events go. I got a midterm back from one of my classes this particular class also goes over the midterms in class, to see what you got right and wrong, as we were going over it, I noticed that I had missed 18 points out of a 100 on the paper but my carmen grade for the class states that I got a 87 on the exam. Clearly the points had been entered in wrong and for me the morally right thing to do would be to notify the teacher, I didn’t earn those points and since the class is curved my higher grade would in some small way affect the class curve for that test, but I didn’t I said nothing and kept the grade.

It does bring into question my values I value honest as one of my top three personal values however I didn’t follow through with it, why? For me I think that we hold are values to a certain degree but that values come into question when we are presented with a situation that is self-importance where we will be harmed or helped depending on whether we keep in line with our value.For me in that situation the harm was to great and I compromised my values in order to avoid the harm of losing the points. 

In general I think there are situations that test are values where we abandon them either do to a lack of understanding of the situation in which we don’t realize he have compromised our values. Or a situations where we know we must compromise are values to avoid pain, and are forced to weigh that pain against are value.

my baises

The first bias that I decided to test was my biases around fat individuals and thin. Going into the test I expected that I would have a bias against those that are severely overweight. After completing the test I was given a result of moderate automatic preferences for thin individuals over fat. Looking at my past and some of the ideas that I have around weight support and reinforce this bias, when I was in high school do to my own inactivity and disregard for my body I gained a large amount of weight, at my heaviest I weighed 240 pounds, I hit a point where I had to change and I did, I lost 50 pounds. For me there’s no real excuse for not getting your weight and health under control because it’s totally within your ability to control, I also find thin people to be more sexually attractive, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s natural to select more fit and healthy partners. So as far as my bias against fat individuals I don’t see anything wrong with it as long as I don’t disqualify people based only on their weight.

The next bias test that I took was preference towards gays vs straights, I expected going into this to be neutral do to the fact that I have a number of gay friends and I work down in the short north which has a large number of gay men and women, however after the test I found out that I actually have a slight preference for straight over gay. When looking at these results I guess I can believe that I’m straight I don’t have any gay relatives and didn’t have any gay friends until my 20s so I guess I can still have some unconscious biases from my early childhood.

Finally the last bias that I looked at was race primarily white vs black. My results stated that I have a moderate preference for Caucasian vs African American. I don’t see any surprise in these findings I come from a small rural area that was predominantly white and had a general distrusts and racial stigma against African Americans, I myself didn’t escape that environment without picking up a number of racial biases, those biases do to my focus have been reinforced over time.

In conclusion I found the tests that we conducted on are biases to be very interesting and gave a grate insight into are unconscious minds.

blog 2

For this post I’m exploring the leadership theory of relational leadership which is a five part model that consists of Purposeful, Inclusive, Empowering, Ethical, Process oriented. I’ll be examining it by looking at a move film clip and relating the main components of the relational leadership theory to it.

The film that I picked to examine is a clip from the 2009 movie invictus starting Morgan freeman playing nelson Mandela the current president of south Africa and matt Damon how is playing François Pienaar the captain of the national rugby team. In the clip we see the first introduction of the two men and get an insight into the two men’s views of leadership. Both men are driven and through the movie they have a combined goal of not only winning the 1995 rugby world cup but of uniting a nation that has been torn apart by decades or racial segregation and classism. Playing off of this theme of uniting the nation and the mixed black and white rugby team we can see that both of their leadership styles revolve around Inclusivism as the main point of the move is to unit a divided nation As the seen goes on nelson Mandela asks François Pienaar what his views of leadership are he replies that leadership should be by example that if you want people to believe that they can achieve it you yourself must demonstrate it to me this speaks highly of organizational empowerment because the leader sets the example for his team and expects them to raise to that standard and meet the challenge.Ethical leadership is a slightly more obscure trait to distinguish from the clip but I believe that it can be seen in the fact that François Pienaar believes in leading by example this requires a large amount of transparency if his actions weren’t also in turn ethical I doubt that his team would fallow him.Finally we see the overarching trait of progress achievement as the team and nation come together as a whole putting aside their racial differences to reach the vision that nelson Mandela and François Pienaar first had in that room of uniting the nation.