"Everyone in our society has a shared duty to stand up for and articulate standards of conduct," says Jack Marshall, President of ProEthics, the national ethics training and consulting firm based in Alexandria, VA.  

 Marshall, who lectures and writes about professional and workplace ethics across the country, advocates what he calls "the duty of confrontation." "The duty of confrontation is every American's obligation not to look the other way when someone engages in outrageous, wrongful or anti-social conduct," he says. "Bad conduct that isn't actively opposed becomes acceptable conduct, and everyone's quality of life suffers. We each have a duty to confront public wrongdoers and tell them that their actions are inappropriate. Sometimes it is necessary to seek the authorities, or even to stop the conduct ourselves. What we can't do is pretend that it's none of our business. It is everybody's business to define the culture, which means making distinctions between right and wrong."

 

 Marshall has written an article about the duty to confront on the new ProEthics commentary blog, Ethics Alarms (http//www.ethicsalarms.com)  It uses the trivial but obnoxious conduct of tooth-flossing in public to explore the importance of individuals aggressively policing bad public conduct. "Some of the conduct is relatively trivial, but not the principle," he  explains. "Too many Americans  adopt the morally inert position that nobody has the right to correct the conduct of another, and the result is steadily worsening public decorum, manners, courtesy, and respect for others. At the extreme, this creates complete license to do wrong, as when bystanders did nothing to stop the gang rape at Richmond High."

 

 Marshall began thinking about a public duty to confront as the result of a disturbing personal experience. "I was walking to a seminar in Washington, DC, with my arms full of hand-outs," he says. "A family of obvious tourists crossed the street behind me. Suddenly, the mother began screaming at the youngest child, who looked about 10, for lagging behind, and viciously kicked the child in the stomach! I was stunned at the violence, hesitated for several seconds, and looked for a place to put down my materials so I could apprehend her. By that time, she was gone, and nobody else on the crowded sidewalk had done a thing. I hadn't acted quickly enough myself, and I realized that we need to look upon confronting bad conduct as an ongoing duty of citizenship. The more you do it, the more quickly you react. If that mother's attack happened tomorrow, I would just drop my papers and confront her in time."

 

 What about fear? Marshall: "Courage is often a necessary catalyst to ethical conduct, it's true. And courage is a habit worth cultivating. Still, not as much courage is required if everyone is doing their duty. When someone is rude or worse in public, he or she should be confronted with many objecting individuals, not just one. It is much more effective,and there is safety in numbers.

 

 In addition to running his ethics firm, Marshall is a Harvard and Georgetown educated attorney, an author, and an adjunct professor of Legal Ethics at American University's Washington College of Law. He has served on an ethics panel for O Magazine, too. "Ethics is essential to all of us, and it needs to be de-mystified," he says. "Ethicists need to get down off their high horse and talk about everyday life."

 

In Marshall's view, people taking their duty to confront seriously will make everyday life a lot better, if occasionally contentious. "Making it clear to all that rude, disrespectful, uncivil, immodest and disruptive behavior is not tolerable and will not be passively endorsed by inaction is a duty," he writes in his blog post, Why Public Flossing IS Our Business, "and the more of us who do our duty, the better everyone's lives will be."

Marshall's article concludes:

 

"It isn't just flossing, ear-cleaning and nose-picking that we have to target. It is unnecessary loudness, foul language, rudeness to clerks...people who cut in line, those who talk during movies and live performances, those who text-message or check blackberries during performances...couples groping or open-mouthed kissing, mothers breast-feeding immodestly, parents being abusive to children, pet owners abusing their animals or failing to clean up after them, individuals making racial, sexist or other slurs in public…all of this and more is our business, because public conduct is not solely up to the individual. The public decides what proper public conduct should be."

"In the long run," says Marshall, "those who neglect their duty to confront are just as culpable as the wrongdoers for the decline of our quality of life.