Assume you are one of the world's leading experts on aircrafts and aircraft engines.
You are also one of the worlds leading experts on a particular kind of plane whose takeoff you are watching at this very moment. It is flying, loaded with passengers. You are one of the few people on earth who has the expertise to recognize that at this moment there is a certain problem with this plane and the likelihood is high it will crash in this or the next or the flight after the next flight.
If you let everyone know, it becomes a huge political problem. Boeing and other US manufacturers lose $100B in contracts, trade with Europe and Asia goes bad, a recession begins, a president you support loses the election. In short, some kind of mayhem ensues. In your mind you construct a cost.
If you don't let everyone know (and btw, try and guess how often this happens!) you avoid "doing the marginally right thing", the plane crashes, only 300 lives are lost, but the aircraft problem is quietly fixed, no one is the wiser (you blame it on a flock of geese), and the economy is saved. You justify this in your mind by thinking that you saved jobs and "thus an entire economy and more lives".
To me this is an error in judgement. How do you know this is an error? If your daughter was on the plane, your solution would be exactly the opposite. There is no argument here.
Doing the right thing means to remove all possible extraneous paraphernalia (and there is a ton of it) from the mind and strike at the real problem like an arrow that strikes in a split second. In other words, your insides know the solution at the same instant that you see the problem. There is no space for thinking.
Somebody once said .... when you have a thought and an emotion, the emotion is the truth and the thought is a lie. That somebody is correct. |
