What are the virtues that will bring the City to a golden age, not just successful by material standards, but good human beings; saving a legacy of global flourishing? What are they with next year the 10th Anniversary of the publication of the Parliamentary Banking Standards Commission report, which focused on virtue?
Ethics and virtues aren’t inscribed on paper or tablets.
They can only be written on the human heart.
As a banker at the Commission in 2012 said when shown a dense two-page ethical code designed for use in a large dealing room – ‘it would make a rather good paper aeroplane’.
The greatest failures in our society come from the absence of the virtues of self-awareness; that we do believe in our own sinless perfection, and we don’t believe in sin.
If we can’t acknowledge our shortcomings, our sins, we don’t learn from our failures. And if we don’t think we need forgiveness, we don’t give it to others. Forgiveness oils the wheels of society, of politics, of the markets. It makes civilisation possible. After war it may take generations, reasonably and understandably, but without it the international future is of armies fighting by night on a darkling plain.
Archbishop of Canterbury says Russian invasion of Ukraine must not succeed https://t.co/MXIh0gRb1d
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) December 2, 2022