A few weeks ago, my pal Jamie from Duward Discussion reintroduced her wonderful weekly feature. Take This Tune provides a musical prompt each week, usually a video with the song lyrics. The task is to write something inspired by the song or something in the lyrics.
Regrettably, this week Jamie announced that this is the final regular TTT prompt. She'll bring it back occasionally at Duward Discussion, but its presence as a weekly feature has ended. I've enjoyed participating because the prompts combine music and writing, two of my favorite things.
This final prompt is the song Red Dirt Girl, a song written by Emmylou Harris. Jamie says, "This is a beautiful but terribly sad song about two girls with dreams. One made hers come true. The other completely lost her way. Your challenge is to Take This Tune and tell us about choices and outcomes."
I decided some time ago that I would not let popular convention dictate my decisions. I don't follow fashionable trends or fads, no matter what they are. I don't take the popular position, or the position of the majority, just to get a win.
I think. I research. I discuss. I match my morality against the options. I try to apply tests of fairness and reasonableness. I ask myself what I want, and how does the data support or deny that desire.
Then I decide.
The degree of importance of any choice doesn't really change my process. You might not think that there is a morality question involved when deciding where to grab a quick bite to eat.
You'd be wrong to think that.
The WinShape Foundation is the charitable arm of the Chick-fil-A restaurant franchise. The foundation is on record actively supporting the denial of equal rights to the LGBT community.
We don't always know the morality inherent in an organization. It may not be something that occurs to us on a daily basis. But it's there. When you know the nature of that morality, does it matter to you? Does the knowledge of that morality, and its measurement against your own, impact your decision whether to spend your dollars?
What's the impact of a decision not to purchase from a company whose morality doesn't align with your own? These companies employ people. Can we separate the corporate morality from the jobs it creates?
If you eat at Chick-fil-A, does that mean your morality can absorb discrimination against gays? If you don't eat there, does that mean your morality is indifferent to people losing their jobs?
Should those questions even come up?
Sheesh. What really is the price of a chicken sandwich?
