All spoke at a CLE today. Sounds like a start of a good joke.
The doctor provided the usual depressing information on the perils if alcoholism and depression. Statistically, lawyers are more prone to these maladies. More lawyers are also abusers but not alcoholics by some definitions.
I am not necessarily in agreement that these are diseases. It seems in my rational mind that these diseases are often a failure of self control. A determined mind can "defeat" these maladies? Maybe it is an INTJ thing.
The Rabbi, Bob Barr, spoke next. He was excellent. Sort of a non-denominational sermon. Where do people draw their ethical lines? All people rationalize but it does not make it ethical.
I should have kept notes. He was really good.
A judge spoke next. He provided some more food for thought. Are lawyers improving the world and society?
He cited this quote about the glue in our society.
Honour is more than acting lawfully… It is also how you behave even when you can do as you please, especially then. Honor, at the least, means not exploiting the trust of vulnerable others for your own advantage—including strangers—who are relying on certain basic standards of human decency.
Honor shares the stage with two other civilizing qualities. One is shame. To value honor is to be capable of shame. For the shameless, honor does not exist. They don’t prize it and they don’t miss it. The other quality is empathy even for those you do not know. Empathy is compassion for the plight of others, because you understand that they are tied to you and you to them.
Honor, shame, and empathy, then, make up the glue of civilization. Without them, things will fall apart. And as bad: when the public sees a loss of honor in how institutions and professionals behave, we have a loss of trust.
I think I can do this. I need to work on the empathy
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