Don't Take It Like A Man: Take A Stand!
The Theme of Ethical Redemption In "North Country"


Edmund Burke observed, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Director Niki Caro's 2005 film treatment of the nation's first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit takes that ball and runs with it. Whether women should be treated as equals or enjoy protected status in the workplace may be the not-so-burning question posed by the film. The conventional answer provided is, of course, "both." There is a great deal of literature regarding the need for protection for minorities rights against the tyranny of the majority in free market milieus. Thus, I won't waste time trying to argue either for or against the need for workplace protections. Those protections have been a de jure fact of life for quite some time now. The wisdom that shaped them is grounded in experiences too common to have been anything but symptomatic of gross repression. Besides, equality in the workplace is the law.

The de facto situation since the establishment of protections, however, has been quite different for women for a number of reasons. I won't pretend to be able to list all such factors, however the film does suggest some poignant answers. Beyond its tendency toward melodrama and preachiness, the film does offer a nice snapshot of the destructive, misogynist male dominated culture coming into contact with new economic and social realities. Its seductive style and artistic integrity takes one inside a an economic microcosm completely dominated by a single employer. Other films such as John Sayles' excellent "Matewan" have already successfully mined this ethical territory from the repressed worker perspective. However, never has a feminist perspective been presented with such rich sense of pathos.

The recency of the events makes it hard to believe that such things can and still do go on in America. However, the point driven home is that sexual harassment is not merely a dyadic predatory situation. It is also a social ill that is driven as much by good intentions as bad ones. Specifically, not speaking out is the evil at which the film takes aim and it leaves one squirming with moral indignation over how thin the veneer of goodness is in otherwise perfectly decent neighbors. In other words, sexism takes a village.

The central character, Josey Aimes, is loosely based on a real complainant in the seminal 25-year legal ordeal behind Jenson v. Eveleth, the first successful sexual-harassment class-action lawsuit, in which female iron miner Lois Jenson battled misogyny in the iron mines of Minnesota's North Country. I say loosely because the producers of the film chose intentionally to dramatically alter the facts to heighten the emotional impact of the events. (This is a studio product here, after all, not an indie documentary). Apart from the artistic manipulation, many of the appalling incidences of harassment and violence portrayed in the film are not in dispute. Were the story a work of pure fiction, there would still be much to learn from the complex interrelationships of the characters and where the story arc takes them. The story presents an intricate patriarchal web of long-standing roles and relationships that glues the cold, Northern Minnesota community together.

Josey plows headlong into this web and finds it not at all to her (or to our) liking. This is where the film tends to get a little preachy, since she had us at hello. We are all on board with this feisty single mother simply trying to eke out a decent living and do right by her children. When she is attacked, revulsion is the natural reaction for all but the most hardened misogynist. Of course, one cannot help but despise the Neanderthal attitudes of the miners and the slimy manipulation of corporate big shots and reptilian trial attorneys. Thus, the inevitable clash between the corrupt homosocial good old boys network and the young, virtuous upstart is somewhat predictable. What are interesting, however, are teetering family and peripheral community relationships that are stressed to beyond the point of breaking during the conflict. There is a sense of history that is built up scene by scene that slyly pulls one into the place and time, whether it be memories of Christmases past or a father's silent smoldering meltdown over a cup of coffee. This film is not about set pieces or titanic revelations. Rather it is more about what it means to stand up when confronted by entrenched evil. Furthermore, it is about the remarkable bravery of the pioneers of new social orders, in this case the sex neutral workplace.

The two central relationships that form the emotional core of the story are between Josey and the two men closest to her: her miner father Hank and her teenage son Sammy. Josey has been more or less estranged from her father since high school after having Sammy out of wedlock, an unpardonable sin to many in the town, including Hank. This shame has been passed down intergenerationally to Sammy who harbors a grudge against Josey for his lot. His anger causes Sammy to take sides against his own mother as the spark of misogyny flashes in his heart.

Hatred and injustice are very much inherited. They are learned behaviors modeled by parents, teachers and heroes--those whose opinions are most valued. Their personal failures become endemic in the next generation. Sammy's loyalties are thus torn between his subjective need to support his mother under attack, and the easily-manipulated mania for conformity that is so symptomatic of adolescence. He is conflicted because he also has been stigmatized for her actions and tries to distance himself from her.

Meanwhile Josey's father, an iron miner who has come to assume the worst about his daughter, is bitter with disapproval over Josey's choices. To him, this was another in a series of challenges to his authority over her, bringing up residual resentments from Josey's stormy adolesence. When he sees her being drawn into the pit of industrial horrors at the mine, he characterizes it as an lesbian-driven affront to manhood that will come to no good end. The longtime social order of the town is under attack in his view. Indeed, he and other union miners see it not only as a feminist feint, but also as mine management's cynical ploy to undermine the union by introducing radical elements into the workforce, divide-and-conquer-style. A weakened union is good for shareholders. Management, perhaps wanting to update its image as more progressive, was hiring young, virile females as a second generation attempt to meet the legal requisites for equal opportunity.

Josey was hired, ironically, based on her gender, exactly what equity is ultimately a struggle against. Feminists want to be given the same chances as males and treated as economic equals. At the same time, they demand to be treated differently socially when it comes to workplace protections and basic amenities. Thus, while the mine's owners may have some subjective sense of responsibility to join the zeitgeist and become more progressive on some level (whether motivated by greed or not), they also had no choice but to make a good show and meet pressing objective responsibilities to the law with regard to hiring practices. Myopically, they chose imprudently to ignore serious legal prohibitions against condonation of sexual harassment. Hank sides against Josey until he realizes the destructive maelstrom she has unleashed threatens to utterly destroy what is left of his relationships. By ignoring his responsibility to protect Josey, he is headed down a slippery slope toward chaos and dissolution, while playing right into the hands of management. When he eventually sees these truths, his humility and moral outrage are inspirational. This was the part of the movie where even I cried. This thoroughly dour and disloyal man becomes the male role model of the film and an example of how to act responsibly in the face of cruel injustice and misogyny when no one else would.

He and the other males in the film are faced with an ethical dilemma to either downplay the nature and the scale of the misogyny or to challenge it at great personal risk to themselves and their families. The threat for them is fairly well implied: If they choose not to "go along to get along," they will become pariahs and suffer much the same fate as the victims. The male miners, of course, don't have quite as much at stake the females who are challenging the status quo--after all, they are unlikely to be raped.

Nevertheless, no one speaks up for these female miners, not even Josey's own father who all but tells her that she is asking for trouble. Meanwhile, the female protagonist is advised repeatedly by the moral proverb to "take it like a man." One encounters this rationale from antifeminist rhetoric fairly frequently: "they want their cake and to eat too!" This narrow mindedness is also encountered in film. In other words, no one can avail themselves of equal rights and special protection of rights at the same time, which is patently absurd. Of course they can. A classic rule of progressive government states that "equals should be treated equally, while unequals should be treated unequally." No one would reasonably suggest, for example, that the rights of African Americans cannot enjoy both equal status with their Caucasian brethren and yet still enjoy special legal protections against discrimination. They do under law.

For many victims of discrimination and systematic oppression, protection, whether through laws, regulations, company rules, or the courts, is the ONLY effective means toward de facto equality. That is what makes their experiences so vital to forming effective political and social responses to injustice. Furthermore, when the need for those protections is so utterly blatant and urgent as portrayed in the film, it would be morally indefensible to make a case against them.

The courts are often the last resort to both shape and maintain the rights of protected groups such as women and minorities. Even in situations where politicians are unwilling and/or unable to act ethically in response to social injustice, lawsuits offer a last resort to right society's horrible wrongs. Though reactionaries may rail against the abuse of civil law as a form of tyranny of the minority, the fact is that many progressive protections that we now take for granted as citizens were first established by judges who defied conventional wisdom and were not afraid in their proper roles as Constitutional officers to "legislate from the bench." Later these protections were codified into law by less-imaginative legislators and timid executives who were unwilling to do what is so obviously right were it not for all of the political sniping and grandstanding.

Likewise, the film makers place the onus on individual citizens, particularly all persons in positions of higher social status, to speak out against sexual harassment and discrimination whenever they encounter it. Though this message is implied, one can clearly see it in Hank's journey from bad father to good. It is also visible in the film on the faces of many of the other miners, male and female alike, who are clearly uncomfortable with the status quo, but reticent to speak honestly about their disapproval. The viewer cannot help but cheer them on to take responsibility for the situation, for it is theirs just as much as it is the key players.

There is Glory, Josey's mentor and first generation female miner who shows her the ropes at the mine. When she learns of Josey's plans to sue the company, she loses all hope and a great deal of faith in her friend who seems to be spending all of Glory's hard-earned social capital with the men. Her dilemma is whether to work for change within the system incrementally with the male miners whom she trusts and whose grudging respect and trust has had to dearly earn; or, on the other hand, she can do the right thing for her friend and for female miners in general by joining the class action. Her courtroom statement that she stands with Josey, even when horribly paralyzed, inspires the other female miners to take a clear stand for justice. Sherry, Josey's co-worker, needs her job to support a dying father. Practical matters such as that prevent her from pursuing justice for her own cruel mistreatment by male miners. Hers is the swing vote, the pressure point at which the suit can become a class action. Inspired by Glory's support she is able to stand up as well. By allowing for the class action, that one statement of support sets the courtroom rocking, the ripples from which spread outward in society from a Minnesota mine shaft to the boardrooms of New York--indeed, throughout the entire social fabric of the United States.

Then there is Josey's mother who goes from dutiful resignation, to moral crusader in one gigantic leap when one day Hank comes home to find she has packed her bags and checked into a local motel. She could no longer countenance her husband's disloyalty to her child and her grandchildren. "She had a baby, Hank! She didn't rob a bank." she had shouted at one point, clearly at her rope's end. She had then warned him he would soon find himself doing his own laundry. By rock Hank's ethical boat, she manages to set the whole town rocking, for Hank is the touchstone. He is old school and a long-time insider. If he could make that ethical transition from capitulator to collective conscience, then anything was possible and she precipitated it. Even more conflicted is serial harasser Bobby Sharp. His long dead romantic relationship with Josey is resurrected, albeit in a horribly mutated form, upon Josey's hiring. Their triste ended suddenly in high school when Bobby witnessed Josey's vicious rape at the hands of a teacher that results in her pregnancy. After fleeing the scene and refusing to help, Bobby had deteriorated to a shadow of himself. But for occasional flashes of humanity, he had become a monster. His shame had become manifest as violent misogyny. When his sin, revealed Hollywood-style on the stand, dashes management's evil scheme to discredit Josey, he suddenly becomes a kind of pathetic hero, redeeming himself when his shame for not helping his friend finally overcomes his need to save face and avoid legal penalties for all of his crimes against Josey and others. Even the worst that is among us, by this example, can find absolution by turning to justice.

By simply seeking the same respect accorded to men as required by law, Josey transformed the lives of the people around her and changed the perceptions of her community at large. However, it is only through collective action that the problem can be addressed. Refusing to "take it like a man" applies not only to female victims of sexual harassment, but also to anyone exposed to it. The tendency to downplay the negativity and bad intentions associated with harassment do nothing but encourage it through misplaced tolerance. Males and females alike must stand up and rock the boat from time to time if, for no other reason, than to maintain a sense of personal integrity.

Moreover, if belief in the principle of equal opportunity for minorities holds any kind of water, we as co-workers and family must do more than pay lip service to it. It is a burden as well as a privilege that we ignore at our own peril, for tomorrow it may be our own wife, or daughter or friend who is the victim. Thus, we are all the lesser for simply doing nothing. When confronted by evil, in Josey's words, "Take a stand!"

JOURNAL: WEEK THREE

For the Good of All
Any personal model of professional ethics for me would be incomplete without some concept of the public good. Generally, people enter public service in pursuit of certain motives, whether they be to help others or even to just help themselves. In fact, researchers like Rainey, Crewson, Perry and others have shown a whole range of rationales for public service to explain why qualified candidates seek government and nonprofit positions. These motives range from compassion and self-sacrifice to expanding responsibilities and challenges to personal development of integrity. Not surprisingly, the financial rewards of public service are low on the list. Intrinsic rewards seem to dominate it. Taken as a whole, these motives provide evidence of a particular service ethic, an orientation to serving the public good that attracts various types of people.

The developmental aspect of public service emphasizes that people seek ethical actualization through service. Employees often feel a duty to serve, protect and defend the democratic ideals of society. This may be thought of as a form of patriotism. At the same time, they also feel responsible for the welfare of other human beings, and thus cultivate a sense of benevolence. Eventually, by serving people and society they also tend to develop a sense of personal integrity. This reaffirms their values and provides them with a sense of stability over time. Duty, responsibility and integrity are ethical terms besides being motives cited for service. By choosing to do one's duty, be responsible and maintain integrity in the face of budget cuts and political pressures, employees come to have, in a word, character. Character is how personal values are expressed in the employee. A strong, ethical character contributes directly to organizational mission.

When, on the other hand, character is weak, due to external forces or to the employee's own internal failings (or both), the developmental function of public service can and become dysfunctional or break down, weakening the organization.

Idee fixe

JOURNAL: WEEK TWO

Toward a Personal Model
During Week One, I considered the various aspects of how my experience in design paralleled the ethical design process. I think it is fair to say that there are plenty of direct comparisons. At the same time, there are some pretty significant differences too. Ethical decision-making is not as practical as the artistic design process, which is, at best, an applied form of reasoning. The purview of the ethical process, by contrast, is not limited to just practical matters, which is always the case in graphic design. Furthermore, there is usually no direct physical product as in art. Ethical decisions can certainly have very tangible results, but usually they are by-products of the decision itself. Finally, ethical resolutions have the propensity to involve more costly forms of compromise in terms of personal sacrifice than in art. The results in art may satisfy no one else, but if they satisfy the artist then the work is considered successful. The same cannot be said of ethics where the satisfaction of the decision-maker may well be rendered irrelevant depending on the situation. The process of arriving at an ethical decision is more definitive of the decision-maker than any result.That is why developing a personal model of ethical decision-making may be so important. The model presented by Cooper on page 20 of the text includes the typical inductive-deductive movement of the rational decision-making model. I know that that model would work for me, just as it has for others. I wonder, however, where in his model there is room to explain the more irrational aspects of ethical decision-making--in other words, means of intuiting solutions.

Intuition is featured prominently in the artistic design process. Although intuition is probably not the point of the ethical model, it certainly can inform decision-making at any point in the process. Indeed, the model would be somewhat incomplete without intuition since human beings rely on it for most every decision. Hence, we are struck by a comparison or hit upon an idea or go with our gut. Instinct cannot be readily ignored, nor should it be easily discounted. Though it is early in the text, Cooper's view of ethics seems to be more prescriptive than it is descriptive of how decisions are actually made. Obviously, the text is mainly concerned with ethical practicalities at the expense of other considerations. The whole point is to make the process an overt one for administrators so as to maximize the opportunities for reflection.

The vissitudes of decision-making theory aside, people need tools they can use to help them do their jobs better. Becoming self-conscious about decision-making, however, is not just a means to an end; it is also an end in itself. Indeed self-awareness of this type is what many religions, such as Buddhism, strive toward. Thus, if I, as an enlightened Zen administrator, come to know myself through a keen awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses (and through ginormous amounts of reflection), I should be able to swim the political waters of administration like some kind of administrative version of Mark Spitz. Moreover, perhaps my heightened sense of my own developing repertoire and sense of character will allow me to move toward a comprehensive personal model of ethical problem solving--one which takes into account my intuition as an essential driving force for my particular problem solving style.

The Decider
Cooper uses the concept of "moral imagination" to account for the way people navigate between objective and subjective responsibilities and to generate alternatives. Needless to say this concept appeals greatly to the creative side of me. The whole point of an advanced degree, one might say, is to cultivate a sense of possibility where others see only black and white. There is freedom to be found in shades of gray:freedom from the tyranny of simple-minded extremism. I view extremism as the greatest force of evil in the world today and for all time.Relativism has been mocked in recent years by conservative pundits and religious ideologues as a mere by-product of radical leftist social philosophy--a symptom of cultural decadence and moral decay. These voices claim that without absolute values of good versus evil, that refugees from the 60's opened a Pandora's box of social ills ranging from pot smoking to child pornography.

This kind of rhetoric is not simply reprehensible and false: it is a slap in the face of reason. Hypocrisy is among my biggest pet peeves and there seems to be a lot more of it to go around these days. One need only a cursory glance at the history of the human race to see that the main culprits of murder, genocide and hegemony have always been religious and cultural extremists. Those feta-loving founders of Western culture, the Greeks, understood this well after centuries of war and bloodshed. They arrived at the Aristotelian ideal of moderation and balance. America's Founding Fathers didn't build these ideals into the Constitution on a whim. They didn't invent democracy, nor the republican ideal, but they did perfect them. They deliberately constructed a careful balancing act between delegated powers, resulting in a slow, deliberative process to fulfill the terms of the social contract between government and the governed. Now that contract is dangerously close to being nullified through monolithic one-party dominance, a cowed legislature a polarized judiciary, and an executive branch run amok, willing to sacrifice our most cherished principles in the name of national security. Jesus's flair for terseness seems apropos: "They who live by the sword, die by it." Therefore, now is the time that the American intelligensia must step up and take a stand against the twin scourges of irrationality and reactionary thinking.

Those who would have us sell our American birthright offer, in the poetry of REM, "a truck stop instead of St. Peter's." To me, the Western tradition handed down to us by way of the Constitution represents the apotheosis of culture, the temple of the secular "religion." We are standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants. By contrast, those who would defer to authority, the so-called "values" crowd, are falling for a sales pitch involving manipulative dominionist dogma that would make P.C. Barnum blush. They are the cannon fodder in the so-called battle for the soul of America. The real agenda is not about saving souls so much as keeping a heavy thumb on the scales of economic progress. The price for that mendacity has been an artificial polarization away from the great political center where lasting social change is most prevalent.

As a result, the classic ethical schism of conequential versus non-consequential theories of morality has been somewhat resurrected in recent years. Consquentialists, most often associated with relativism, tend to agree that the rightness of an action depends mainly on the results. The utilitarian ideal states that the total net good of the results is the moral yardstick. Even murder can be justified simply by appeal to self-defense, the defense of others or of the nation in time of war. This does not mean that murder is ever easily justifiable. Rather, it means that ends CAN justify some of the most appalling of means.

By contrast, non-consequentialist theories discount the importance of the results in their evaluation of actions. They appeal to established moral principles and to higher powers that have set the bar. Actions for them fall onto a preset moral continuum that determines their rightness. Ends are irrelevant since the action sets the precedent. I think that this distinction is perhaps overdrawn from a postmodern perspective. Needless to say, bad means can lead to good ends and good means can lead to bad ends. Rather, the residual distinction is between those who favor utilitarian formulas for action versus those who favor the intrinsic value of actions. For example, utilitarians would justify war by saying that action had to be taken to prevent further bloodshed. If, for example UN forces invade Darfour to avert further genocide, then killing some insurgents is preferrable to letting the situation fester.

Conversely, those who favor value of actions over utility would say that it is right to fight for your country even if that means killing the enemy. This would be the John Wayne school of patriotism. Doing the right thing, most would admit, is not always so clear cut. One can count on a healthy dose of uncertainty and ambiguity prior to tough calls. Afterward, one may even expect to experience residual stress, guilt and other mixed emotions. Being a decider, is not all that it is cracked up to be. It may very well involve reconciling seemingly irreconcilable alternatives and avoiding ethical extremes to come up with complex solutions that require more than blind patriotism. Ethical analysis can tell us what is just, but we still have to have the courage of our convictions as a people to do it. Moreover, we should not forget what makes America great: our commitment to liberty. More so than average citizens, intellectuals have an obligation to fight the slippery slope of extremism and find a way that is free from the snares of our own worst fears.

JOURNAL: Week 1

WEEK ONE

Why a Journal?
CLASS REQUIREMENTS for PLS 508 state that we have to keep a log of our personal reflections during the progress of our studies to help stimulate an internal dialogue. The most important thing, the syllabus states, is that it be a personal documentation process, not just a log. The purpose, I take it, is to summarize on a weekly basis where the course takes me. To paraphrase Steinbeck, I'm not documenting the trip I take, but where the trip takes me. In other words, this is the beginning of developing a more overt process of ethical decision making--in the words of Terry L. Cooper, a design approach.

From the perspective of my life long career in graphic design, that makes sense to me. The whole idea of approaching problem solving from a rational, process-based perspective sorts well with my training and experience. It's not that being a designer prepares one to approach all problems rationally. Indeed, I'd make the case that such an approach lacks humanity, that touch of irrationality that often allows for truly creative and unique solution finding. What the design process does is allow designers to frame problems in such a way as to clarify them and refine understanding so as to encourage creative thinking. It is more problem finding than problem solving. Problem solving often implies that there is one best solution. Clearly, this is rarely the case. There is a tendency in humans to think this way, however, and that must be resisted consciously. By making the dimensions of a problem more explicit, one can begin to widen the scope of key issues, to use inductive reasoning to arrive at a more complete understanding. Only then can a truly creative mind begin to consider solutions.
The design process in art is a dynamic process in the sense that it is self-perpetuating. It is often broken down to varying levels of detail, depending on the source. Generally, though it involves the following four phases:
1. Problem Definition: summarize the problem dimensions, identify terms, research, analyze, redefine, etc.

2. Iteration: take mental inventory, make connections, prioritize characteristics, establish targets, brainstorm

3. Problem Solution: redefine, narrow down, critique, select, implement, etc.

4. Feedback: appraise, refine, reimplement, etc.

Being a professional designer or artist from a rational perspective, not only means being willing to abandon preconceptions and look at each situation with fresh eyes and an open mind, it also means being willing to channel one's feelings and intuitions in an explicit manner that may be at odds with these normally implicit pathways to knowledge. Rather than leaping to conclusions, which is often endemic to holistic thinking and Gestalt, a procedural approach leads the designer where artistic minds do not easily go. It wakes them from the sleep of reason by first moving mindsets toward the verbal, making the nonverbal explicit in the process. Design is the triumph of rationality over the inchoate.

Design also implies not being married to any one solution. The inclusion of feedback means that not only is there an element of isometric control, but that the process is a never-ending one. Solutions can only ever be approximations of the ideal. Therefore, their value is relative and is a partial reflection of the process that created them. One solution is likely to be interchangeable with any other (with varying results.) Only after many years of experience with this kind of overt thinking is it possible to shortcut the solution process. Moving from explicit to implicit forms of processing represents a kind of mastery that is difficult to come by and inconsistent in its results. Nevertheless, the process still undergirds the results. The best designers can switch hats interchangeably. Moreover, results are subjugated to process, in keeping with the post-modernist ethos of esthetics. For the creative-minded, the proverbial journey is more important than the destination. Zen rules.

What Lies Within
That having been said, the obvious comparisons between art and ethics are somewhat direct. Ethics also represents the application of reason to a broader area of human concerns, specifically morality. Like artists, ethicist must learn to balance the need for logic with other more "fuzzy" concerns. While reason is a necessary adjunct to moral decision making, reason without emotion lacks conviction. Reason without character is morally dangerous. Like artists, what ethical decision makers bring to the table is even more important to the process than the process itself. In two words, humanity matters. To quote Emerson, "what lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." By the same token, without reason, decision-making is blind. Thus, an overt process, as in esthetics, makes sense in such complex contexts.

Furthermore, the process is a dynamic, ongoing one, informed by feedback and subject to refinement. If ethics is in fact "a science of human intentionality," then an overt process makes good sense. Ethical decision-making is an active process, involving uncertainty and ambiguity. Limits of time and information likewise limit the inherent rationality of solutions. Ethical solutions are, at best, approximations of the ideal. Meanwhile, conflicting responsibilities and roles impinge on the process further reducing the effectiveness of the process. Defining problems, iterating and testing problem solutions and refining them in the ethical context provides decision-makers with not just better solutions, but also with defensible rationales as to how they arrive at decisions. This allows them to move, like artists, from a level of pure expression to one of analysis and, ultimately, synthesis in the sense of self-creation. The ultimate product of our existence is the essence of who we are.
Questions become broader, ultimately, we must ask "who am I?"

That is where the so-called "design process" of ethical decision-making provides a model of progressive self-examination and identity-forming. In an ethical sense, we design ourselves in the process of solving problems. The process is a developmental one. Cooper calls the resulting internal/external orientation the "ethical identity" of the decision-maker. Like art, ethical decision-making is defined by the learned skills that are associated with its practice. As artists develop their oeuvre, they come to be defined more by their methods than their products. Likewise, as one progresses in increasing levels of ambiguity and complexity in ethics, the ultimate result is the character of the decision-maker. Great artists are made, not born, through experience, willingness to learn, great effort and methodical application of the principles of design. The artist is the ultimate product of his or her own efforts. Ethical decision-makers, are also a product of their own making. That is something to be admired. That is why I aspire to it: to find something greater that is within me.