Do the Right Thing: Living Ethically in an Unethical World

by Thomas G. Plante

How should you live your life? Our actions and choices dramatically affect our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and the world around us. Few things promote good mental health better than a clear conscience and the peace of mind that come from knowing you’ve done the right thing. But, in our ever more complicated world, what are the right choices? How can we make decisions that are at the same time good for us, good for our community—and just plain good? This book, written by an esteemed psychologist and ethicist, helps you answer these questions and develop a sound system for making the right choices in each situation. First, the book offers a clear, easy-to-understand survey of the major traditions in ethics and their approaches to problem solving. Then it explains an innovative, five-step process you can use to make sound, ethical choices. The RRICC system works by helping you examine situations according to five ethical responsibility, respect, integrity, competence, and concern. By following the lucid, step-by-step exercises that introduce the system, you will learn and practice invaluable decision-making skills—simple, reliable techniques you can use at any time, in any place to make sure you always do the right thing.

168 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book does have some good ideas in it (and your own ethical framework is something that you should never stop considering and evaluating as you grow as a person), those good ideas are heavily outweiged by how out of date and out of touch the book and author are, respectively. This is impressive considering the book was only published in 2014. Prior to that I was reading it under the assumption that the book was written in the 50s or 60s by someone who was already old. It just reads like that.

The most problematic thing throughout this book was really Plante's idea that it you are living ethically you WILL be happy and if you are not happy then obviously you are doing something morally wrong somewhere. So figure out what that is and you'll be fine!

It's so overly simplistic and completely ignores a huge side of mental health that I could never recommend this book to anyone.

[Jordan Munn · Rating 1 out of 5]

crap. this book appeals to people who already believe in it. there's not an argument. some of the support and reasoning is circular, shifting, and not rigorous.