Hudson River Valley
Ethics Forum

Hudson Valley Heritage

Much of what started here in the Hudson Valley as our local heritage has, in the fullness of time, become our national heritage. Among other things, that heritage includes a legacy of values that have become incorporated into our manners as ethics and formalized in our system of governance and law.

Our Hudson River Valley environmental community consists of a system of organizations, associations, and individuals, all working more or less together to produce changed people; people who will think and act differently in regard to one another and to the environment of which they are a part. Presumably each independent, self governing organization addresses its own ethical issues "in house," however it appears the conversations of ethical issues that would benefit all are avoided for the sake of unity. In consequence, opinions are left uninformed and important ethical concepts are under developed.

The function of the ethicist and of an ethics forum is not to tell the community to be good, but to elucidate what the good is. In a New York Times Magazine article (Sunday, February 4, 2001) titled "In Lieu of Manners" by Jeffery Rosen, Rosen states: "As the nation becomes even more legalized we will find ourselves less able to discuss with nuance and complexity the moral gray areas that exist in all our lives." It is the "nuance and complexity" that are missing from most of our conversations.