Originally published in the Unashamedly Ethical newsletter, July 2024.
Václav Havel, the playwright who became president of a country emerging from decades of authoritarian rule, once asked a question that has stayed with me:
“What if the [brighter future] has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us and kept us from developing it?”
Most of us want a better country, and we are very good at describing what is wrong with this one. Havel turns the question back on us. He asks us to look less at what is missing in the world, and more at what is missing in our response to it.
That is where the Ethical Commitment begins.
When someone signs the Unashamedly Ethical Commitment, they put their name to ten commitments that describe how they intend to live: how they speak, how they treat their families, how they work, how they use influence and how they respond to people in need.
Why put it in writing? Because good intentions are fragile. People rarely set out to compromise. They drift, and a shortcut under pressure becomes a habit, then a culture. A commitment made deliberately, in a calm moment, gives us something to return to when the pressure arrives.
A public commitment also changes who we answer to. A private intention answers only to ourselves, and we are generous judges of our own behaviour. A public commitment answers to a community that can rightly expect more of us.
And it reminds us that we are not alone. Signatories in 144 countries have made the same commitments. Each one who chooses honesty over convenience makes that choice a little easier for the next person.
This series takes the ten commitments one at a time: what each asks of us, why it matters, and what it looks like on an ordinary Tuesday. Read them slowly and honestly. Some will affirm you. Others may unsettle you. Both are useful.
Ethics starts with me. But it grows when we stand together.
Will you take the stand? Read the commitment and add your name at unashamedlyethical.com/commitment.
Yours in ethics,
Ilene Power