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Václav Havel on Government Ethics
Monday, December 19th, 2011
Robert Wechsler
To commemorate the death of Václav Havel, here are some
quotations from his work that are relevant to government ethics:
"The prerequisite for everything political is moral. Politics really should be ethics put into practice."
“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”
Living in the Truth: "A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system [with] no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his or her own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization. ... Living in the truth ... is ... an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving ... the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live in the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them – a lust for power or fame or wealth – and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization."
On government corruption: "Typical collaborators, men, that is, with a special gift for persuading themselves at every turn that their dirty work is a way of rescuing something, or, at least, of preventing still worse men from stepping into their shoes."
"Genuine politics . . . – the only politics I am willing to devote myself to – is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole."
On intimidation: "[I]t is not the absolute value of a threat which counts, so much as its relative value. It is not so much what a man objectively loses, as the subjective importance it has for him on the plane on which he lives, with its own scale of values."
“The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.”
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
203-859-1959
"The prerequisite for everything political is moral. Politics really should be ethics put into practice."
“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”
Living in the Truth: "A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system [with] no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his or her own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization. ... Living in the truth ... is ... an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving ... the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live in the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them – a lust for power or fame or wealth – and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization."
On government corruption: "Typical collaborators, men, that is, with a special gift for persuading themselves at every turn that their dirty work is a way of rescuing something, or, at least, of preventing still worse men from stepping into their shoes."
"Genuine politics . . . – the only politics I am willing to devote myself to – is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole."
On intimidation: "[I]t is not the absolute value of a threat which counts, so much as its relative value. It is not so much what a man objectively loses, as the subjective importance it has for him on the plane on which he lives, with its own scale of values."
“The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.”
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
203-859-1959
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