Thomas L. Friedman Quote
The first line of defense for any society is always going to be its guardrails—laws, stoplights, police, courts, surveillance, the FBI, and basic rules of decency for communities like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. All of those are necessary, but they are not sufficient for the age of accelerations. Clearly, what is also needed—and is in the power of every parent, school principal, college president, and spiritual leader—is to think more seriously and urgently about how we can inspire more of what Dov Seidman calls sustainable values: honesty, humility, integrity, and mutual respect. These values generate trust, social bonds, and, above all, hope. This is opposed to what Seidman calls situational values—just doing whatever the situation allows—whether in the terrestrial realm or cyberspace. Sustainable values do double duty, adds Seidman, whose company, LRN, advises global companies on how to improve their ethical performance. They animate behaviors that produce trust and healthy interdependencies and they inspire hope and resilience—they keep us leaning in, in the face of people behaving badly. When
The first line of defense for any society is always going to be its guardrails—laws, stoplights, police, courts, surveillance, the FBI, and basic rules of decency for communities like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. All of those are necessary, but they are not sufficient for the age of accelerations. Clearly, what is also needed—and is in the power of every parent, school principal, college president, and spiritual leader—is to think more seriously and urgently about how we can inspire more of what Dov Seidman calls sustainable values: honesty, humility, integrity, and mutual respect. These values generate trust, social bonds, and, above all, hope. This is opposed to what Seidman calls situational values—just doing whatever the situation allows—whether in the terrestrial realm or cyberspace. Sustainable values do double duty, adds Seidman, whose company, LRN, advises global companies on how to improve their ethical performance. They animate behaviors that produce trust and healthy interdependencies and they inspire hope and resilience—they keep us leaning in, in the face of people behaving badly. When
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About Thomas L. Friedman
Friedman began his career as a reporter and won two Pulitzer Prizes in the 1980s for his coverage on conflict in Lebanon and politics in Israel, followed by a further prize in 2002 for commentary on the war on terror.
His later work as a political columnist has been criticised for both weak writing style and a gravitation towards voguish positions.