I’ve been married for nearly 40 years, and for no particular reason, neither my wife nor I felt compelled to share much about our prior love lives. There was nothing much noteworthy to share on my part, but that changed about three years into the marriage. A young woman with whom I had a summer-long relationship as a teenager was beginning to make waves in the music industry — waves that would continue to the point where her music is now instantly recognizable to most people.
I am in the habit of playing this artist’s music, in part because of the personal connection and memories it evokes. Not long ago, my wife remarked that I am a “big fan.” I smiled, nodded and changed the subject. My fear is that sharing this connection with my wife would jeopardize my continued enjoyment of this artist’s body of work. No jealousy, I’m sure, just gentle ribbing I could do without. An ethical omission? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
So for decades of married life, you never mentioned your summer with — well, readers can fill in their fave from the category of famous female pop singers who emerged in the mid-1980s. This is surprising. And yet the liaison doesn’t have the kind of inherent significance that would make its disclosure obligatory. Every couple develop a cultural microclimate — their own set of expectations, conventions, values. Whether your failure to mention this relationship is ethically troubling depends on the norms of your microclimate. Some couples believe in telling each other every detail about their past; you and your wife have settled into a different habit. So the question is whether your wife would feel betrayed and hurt by your having kept silent about this summer of love — or whether, as you suggest, she would simply be amused.
Readers Respond
Last week’s question was from a reader who was a professor at a small college and recently became the chair of its English department. They wrote: “It occurred to me that ChatGPT might prove useful for the reports, proposals, assessments and the like that take up the precious time I could be devoting to students and my own scholarship. Is it OK to use ChatGPT to generate drafts of documents like these, which don’t make a claim to creative ‘genius’?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “I see no reason that you shouldn’t start this way, provided you do the proper revising and are confident that the final document says what you want it to say. Big departments at big universities may employ half a dozen or more full-time administrators. Sometimes a departmental administrator is a dab hand at drafting documents of this sort for the chair to review and revise, and doing the same with ChatGPT is fine — as long as you exercise proper vigilance and can stand by what you submit.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
It is a bliss to have access to a technology capable of easing our daily struggle in any task that doesn’t require human intuition or originality. What makes us proud as human beings is not the fact that we can fulfill tasks mindlessly, but to be able to create something new and unique. — Stefan
This content was originally published here.
