Behaving Badly: The New Morality in Politics, Sex, and Business

by Eden Collinsworth

Overview

On a quest to understand morality's place in modern culture, Eden Collinsworth taps a wide variety of impressive authorities, from authors and CEOs to scientists and pop stars.

Media executive and business consultant Eden Collinsworth investigates the surprisingly complex foundations of contemporary morality. From repentant murderers to corporate whistle-blowers, from the boardroom of Ashley Madison to famous ladies who lunch, Collinsworth leaves no stone unturned in her quest to understand the vagaries of the moral compass, and to figure out whether fixed ethical positions still exist--if they ever did.
     Warm, wry, and witty, Collinsworth weaves together her own research--from ancient history to contemporary philosophy--with numerous interviews of people from all walks of life. And throughout is her unique brand of probing thought and reflection, tackling the Kardashians, contemporary American politics, and her personal experience raising a child largely on her own. Conversational, intelligent, and always entertaining, Behaving Badly is brimming with evidence of how little we really know about the moral principles that underlie our daily actions and decision making.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385540933
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/04/2017
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

EDEN COLLINSWORTH is a former media executive and business consultant. She launched the Los Angeles based monthly lifestyle magazine, Buzz, after which she became VP and director of cross-media business development at Hearst Corporation. In 2011 she launched Collinsworth & Associates, a Beijing-based consulting company, which specializes in intercultural communication. She is the author of I Stand Corrected: How Teaching Western Manners in China Became Its Own Unforgettable Lesson. She lives in London and New York City.

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PROLOGUE
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Behaving Badly"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Eden Collinsworth.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Part 1 Confronting the Unreliable Provenance of Morals

1 Wherein I Begin with the Definition of the Word 9

2 According to a Convicted Murderer, It Has to Do with Character 16

3 A Neuroscientist Explains the Evolutionary Origins of Morality 27

4 A Brief History of Mankind's Attempts to Rein in Bad Behavior 40

Part 2 Morality's Scorecard

5 The Editor of the Financial Times Provides a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Principles 51

6 Instructions on How Not to Cheat 61

7 Pros and Cons of Doing the Right Thing 72

8 The Law: Tools of Control, or Instruments of Enlightenment? 79

9 The Political Function of Ethics 90

Part 3 Sex as Moral Provocateur

10 Monogamy (Not So Much Anymore) 101

11 The Screen as a Siren 116

12 Testosterone: Morality's Enemy, as Well as Its Hero 127

13 Immoral Women: Or Just Those Having a Better Time? 138

Part 4 Taking the Bother out of Morality

14 Celebrities as Standard-Bearers 149

15 Reality Redefined 158

16 The Web Wonders What's So Great About the Truth 163

17 Ethically Sanitized Warfare 171

18 Immorality's Black Sun 182

Part 5 The Future, or Something Like It

19 The Moral Vagaries of Making Babies 193

20 Mapping a Post-gay Culture 198

21 Is It Progress if We Barter with Ethics? 205

22 Programming Morality in Robots (They'll Show Us How) 211

23 So Who, Exactly, Gets to Set the New Rules? 224

24 Wherein I Conclude by Looking Forward 232

Epilogue 238

Notes and Additional Reading 245

Acknowledgments 253

Editorial Reviews

02/06/2017
Collinsworth (I Stand Corrected), a business consultant and former media executive, conducts an entertaining, if overly discursive, study of ethical quagmires and moral gray areas in modern-day business, interpersonal, and military practices. Taking a global view, she maps the moral landscapes of Swiss bank accounts and the murky waters of Japanese business practices, and compares American and French perspectives on monogamy. Determined to leave no stone unturned, Collinsworth subscribes to “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort’s motivational newsletter and interviews a convicted murderer. She considers the “liberalization” of sexual mores via dating apps and wrestles with moral relativism: is it a necessary component of globalization, or the downfall of American society? Sometimes she makes an already expansive topic too wide in scope. Transitions are abrupt, and references to the Large Hadron Collider and Tiananmen Square are dropped in and quickly left behind for no discernible reason other than to cover as much ground as possible. She sets the scene for an interview with a Kurdish pop star and then fails to include a single word of it. Ending on a high note, Collinsworth speaks to 20-somethings who sound infinitely more reasonable than the so-called experts who dominate the rest of the book. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

05/15/2017
This book by former media executive and business consultant Collinsworth (I Stand Corrected) is surprisingly entertaining in spite of the inherent weight of its subject matter. Discussions on integrity, behavior, and even murder are brought forth with whimsy and often humor, which makes the work much more palatable than those written for a scholarly audience. While more approachable than many other works discussing modern morality, this offering is no less impactful. The discussion on murder, highlighted with a recounted interview with a convicted killer, is especially insightful and contemplative. Along with many other chapters, this prompts self-reflection without aspiring to a specific moralistic framework. VERDICT A compelling read for a wide audience.—Matthew Gallagher, Victoria, BC

Library Journal

2017-01-24
A nonscholarly discourse on manners, morality, ethics, and civility in these times of social upheaval.London-based author Collinsworth (I Stand Corrected: How Teaching Western Manners in China Became Its Own Unforgettable Lesson, 2014) has run a publishing house, founded a magazine, written a bestselling book on Western manners for Chinese businesspeople, served as a consultant on corporate communications matters, and lived and worked all over the world. Thus she has a lot of access and connections, and she uses experts in various fields to address tricky issues of morality in areas ranging from sexual infidelity to financial malfeasance to drone warfare. "Where," she asks, "does one find solid moral ground on what is proving to be the porous bedrock of our twenty-first century?" Toward the end, a friend asks about her "quixotic search for morality," and most readers will agree that there have been few clear answers to dozens of knotty questions. But the author is always a genial guide through the moral thicket, and her companions underscore the provocative spirit of her quest. It begins with a convicted murderer who has come late to the whole notion of morality, which plainly wasn't ingrained when he was involved in a couple of senseless killings. "As I grew in moral understanding, I began to realize what I had done," he says. If morality is learned behavior, different cultures teach different lessons, and there are different contexts where behaving badly might vary significantly in terms of consequences. One of the more interesting examples concerns an American whistleblower in a Japanese corporation who was shunned because the shame he brought to the company that expected his loyalty was considered worse than the corruption he had exposed. Collinsworth is at her best with gender issues in general and sexual mores in particular, as she shows how technology has altered the playing field. A wide-ranging, breezy journey through a series of ethical minefields.

Kirkus Reviews

Rarely does a voice cut through all the noise and deliver a brand new take on the world as we know it, but Eden Collinsworth does just that.”
—Newsweek

“Written with brio and great charm. . . . An implausibly entertaining romp through the ethical questions of our time.”
—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree

“Has technology changed what we believe is right? . . . [Eden Collinsworth] enlists both the famous and infamous to unravel how we make moral choices in an ethical flexible era.”
—The Economist Radio

“Morality is a complicated subject, but Eden Collinsworth breaks it down. . . . Her analysis is surprisingly light and fun.”
—Bustle

“Fascinating. . . . A refreshing read.”
—Big Think

“Regardless of the era, vice is a tale as old as time, and author Eden Collinsworth works wonders to produce a fresh spin on one of the humanity’s oldest dichotomous positions, morality.”
—PopMatters

“Every day we see and hear stories of bad behavior in sports, business, and politics, in which bad people with no moral compass seem to succeed. . . . This extraordinary, thought-provoking book by Eden Collinsworth makes us stop and consider who we are and who we want to be.”
—Ed Rollins, former U.S. Presidential Advisor

“Eden Collinsworth doesn’t pull her punches as she explores the shifting moral landscape of our times. Behaving Badly is as insightful as it is hilarious.”
—Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

“Meticulously researched, historically grounded. . . . Morality and wit are a rare marriage, yet in sharing these stories—and telling her own, by far the most intriguing—they are marshaled into often hilarious lockstep.”
—Nancy Collins, journalist, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, and ABC News correspondent

“Collinsworth’s goal is to make readers think, and she not only succeeds in doing that, but does so in an entertaining manner.”
—Booklist

“A wide-ranging, breezy journey through a series of ethical minefields. . . . The author is always a genial guide through the moral thicket, and her companions underscore the provocative spirit of her quest.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Entertaining. . . . Taking a global view, [Collinsworth] maps the moral landscapes of Swiss bank accounts and the murky waters of Japanese business practices, and compares American and French perspectives on monogamy.”
—Publishers Weekly 

From the Publisher