Monday, October 12, 2015

Asking The Right Question...






A QUESTION FOR THE CUNA BOARD:





"Cowardice asks the question: "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question: "Is it politic?"  Vanity asks the question: "Is it popular?"  

But conscience asks the question: "Is it right?"

And there comes a time one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular - but one must take it simply because it is right."

Isn't it past time for the Board to...

Martin Luther King, jr.

... put aside "your safety", politics and popularity? Why?




"Simply because it is right?"

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr. Blaine. The question you ask cannot be answered for those you ask it of have no conscience.

Anonymous said...

Jim-
I think you are wasting your time, energy and talent on CUNA and their lack of leadership and poor decision making. You've already dropped membership in CUNA, move on and go back to taking on the CFPB and NCUA. Unfortunately personal self-interest always wins.

Jim Blaine said...

Well first, I personally know many of the CUNA Board members and can say without question that they all are very good folks and I would never question their conscience nor principles - period.

Believe that it is fair to question their collective judgment, when confronted with an indisputable consolidation in the CU movement. It would be helpful for the Board to lead all of us into the future, rather than to have them "blink" at the tough decisions.

Perhaps the Board, much like Neville Chamberlin, believes they are bringing us "Peace in our time", by not confronting the clear facts, as outlined in their Task Force report.

Lots of us like to hope the future won't happen - it always does!

Jason M. Dias said...

I disagree. Mr Blaine stay focused on CUNA. They are wasting the members money and their legion of young and old supporters are giving CUs terrible advice. The best this for the CU marketplace is for CUNA to change radically, admit they have been listing or for them to become irrelevant. A generation of success does not earn you a second when you fail to change with history you deserve to be changed by it. In a free market CUNA is getting the destiny they deserve.

Unknown said...

Unfortunately, the right thing to do is oftentimes not the easiest thing to do. Take Dr. King, he paid the ultimate price for doing something that many people knew was right, yet few had the courage to voice it so forcefully. In today’s society, with an increase in narcissism (Ref. 1, 2, & 3) as well as the prevailing phenomenon known as “groupthink” (Ref. 4), people are less likely to stand up for what is right because doing so probably won’t affect them in a positive manner.

References:
1. Leung, Louis. "Generational differences in content generation in social media: The roles of the gratifications sought and of narcissism." Computers in Human Behavior 29.3 (2013): 997-1006.

2. Gray, Peter. "The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents." American Journal of Play 3.4 (2011): 443-463.

3. Bergman, Shawn M., et al. "Millennials, narcissism, and social networking: What narcissists do on social networking sites and why." Personality and Individual Differences 50.5 (2011): 706-711.

4. Bénabou, Roland. "Groupthink: Collective delusions in organizations and markets." The Review of Economic Studies (2012): rds030.