No stick-and-carrot, reward-based system of ethics ever works for long. Rewards lose their value and people find ways to avoid the punishments. True ethics arises when people take the time to think and question what what standards are needed for a civilized society.

“One definition of character is who you are at 4:00 am in the dark when no one is watching,” writes Peter Vajda. “Once you start taking ethical short-cuts, even when no one is watching, you twist your character out of true.”

From business hero to criminal swindler. It has all happened before—if you take the trouble to look. In the 1840s in Britain, George Hudson’s phony empire of railway companies mirrored every abuse we have seen recently, from Enron to Bernard Madoff.

“In these tough times,” writes Nina Simosko, ”‘paying it forward’ could make all the difference for many people. We should all be sure to take every opportunity, when helping others, to ask them to do the same for those in need within their own network.”

Peter Vajda reflects on the advertisements during the Super Bowl game and wonders why we casually accept the preponderance of abuse—physical, emotional and verbal—that runs through them.

Peter Vajda reflects on why so many people routinely behave in unethical, immoral and untrustworthy behaviors, yet hardly ever experience guilt. By resorting to ‘moral disengagement’, they disengage their actions from their sense of right and wrong, especially in workplace cultures where pressure or ‘silent consent’ drive people to lie and cheat.

Saying sorry can feel like one of the most difficult things that you can be asked to do, but, as John Fletcher explains, leadership that will not accept responsibility is not leadership in any real sense of the word. Much of today’s world looks as though it’s run by whining adolescents trying to recast themselves as victims deserving of our sympathy, not the weak and greedy people they really are.

Peter Vajda ruminates on how people concoct a story that allows them to rationalize and justify their immoral or unethical behavior, absolve themselves from guilt and evade self-responsibility. “Integrity is not a cloak you can put on and take off when it’s convenient to cut yourself a little slack,” he writes. “Integrity is like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren’t.”

Carmine Coyote considers what it takes for a corporate culture to count as civilized and what we need to do to get back on the path towards a set of workplace standards of which we can all be proud.

Peter Vajda offers some sobering thoughts on the future and looks at the down-side of treating economics (and life) as a zero-sum game, where my gain can only come if you lose; then offers a way out of our mess.