{"id":1166,"date":"2010-06-04T10:00:25","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/?p=1166"},"modified":"2010-06-04T10:00:25","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T15:00:25","slug":"considering-moral-ambiguities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/considering-moral-ambiguities\/","title":{"rendered":"Considering moral ambiguities"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was recently listening to the soundtrack from Wicked<\/em>, when a few lines from the song\u00a0“Wonderful”\u00a0struck me. The lines were these:<\/p>\n

“A man’s called a traitor – or liberator
\nA rich man’s a thief – or philanthropist
\nIs one a crusader – or ruthless invader?
\nIt’s all in which label
\nIs able to persist
\nThere are precious few at ease
\nWith moral ambiguities
\nSo we act as though they don’t exist”<\/p>\n

Working in the field of world hunger, it’s not unusual to have conversations with people who are reflexively negative about large corporations. From profit motives, to\u00a0workers’ rights, to enviornmental exploitation,\u00a0most of the world’s ills and many of the causes of hunger can\u00a0be laid in the headquarters of corporations. And without question, some of the criticism\u00a0is completely deserved and must be called out.<\/p>\n

But for all the outrage that is justified, some of it is not. Some of the outrage is\u00a0applied beyond what is deserved, and I don’t\u00a0know that it’s\u00a0helpful.\u00a0Yes, companies do bad things. But they do good things, too. Standard Oil serves as an iconic historical example. On the one hand, it was a ruthless organization,\u00a0using boldly smarmy\u00a0tactics that are now illegal to drive competitors out of business and acquire their assets cheaply.\u00a0\u00a0I don’t know how many people lost their jobs as a result, but I’m sure it’s a large number. On the other hand, they also hired a lot of people. And according to Wikipedia<\/a>, they did some things that\u00a0the general population found\u00a0very helpful, like cutting the price of kerosene in half,\u00a0\u00a0and developing many\u00a0other useful\u00a0products<\/a>\u00a0including tar, paint, and chewing gum. Then, too,\u00a0Rockefeller used his (ill-got?) gains to do some extremely good things, like funding research that led to\u00a0a\u00a0vaccine\u00a0for\u00a0yellow fever and founding the University of Chicago. So what of Standard Oil? Good or evil? And what is gained or lost by declaring it one to the exclusion of the other?<\/p>\n

There are, of course, many modern-day examples of corporations doing both good and bad things. Kind of like people. I don’t write this blog to defend the bad; only to acknowledge that corporations are complex and deserving of\u00a0more careful consideration in our judgements. Ending hunger is a big, complex job. Personally, I think corporations have a role to play in it. Calling them out on the bad is necessary and important. But so is praising and encouraging the good, which requires acknowledging it – and\u00a0often acknowledging moral ambiguities, too.<\/p>\n

-Nancy Michaelis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was recently listening to the soundtrack from Wicked, when a few lines from the song\u00a0“Wonderful”\u00a0struck me. The lines were these: “A man’s called a traitor – or liberator A rich man’s a thief – or philanthropist Is one a crusader – or ruthless invader? It’s all in which label Is able to persist There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","tag-world-hunger"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nConsidering moral ambiguities - ELCA World Hunger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/considering-moral-ambiguities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Considering moral ambiguities - ELCA World Hunger\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was recently listening to the soundtrack from Wicked, when a few lines from the song\u00a0“Wonderful”\u00a0struck me. 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