Priest sees chances for ethical behavior everywhere by Anna Marie Remedios Mercury News   Tom Shanks likes to talk about the ``ethical reflex'' to daily living. It's something he tries to cultivate in his own life. And it's something he fails at, he concedes -- miserably at times. For instance, there was the time Shanks, a Jesuit priest, drove along the freeway, heading to church to deliver a sermon. In a rush, he cut someone off, and, checking the rear-view mirror, watched the other driver give him a ``Rockefeller salute.'' Hurrying on to Mass, Shanks recognized that something wasn't right with this picture, and started to think about what it means to be a ``virtuous driver.'' More generally, he thought about what it means to be virtuous. And what happens when two or more people, trying to act virtuously, disagree? Can they be taught to find common ground? When does the common good transcend individual interests? The questions spiral out for Shanks, director for the last five years of Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied ethics, an institution with a rising profile that has pushed and promoted a commitment to ethics in public discourse and policy-making. In conferences, publications, discussion groups, and on-line forums, the center, calling on Santa Clara faculty members and, increasingly, experts from around the country, has examined issues including immigration, welfare reform, the role of fathers in the modern home, same-sex marriages, competitive children's sports, and the competing ethical agendas of lawyers and journalists in the O.J. Simpson trial. In June, the center will begin a series of corporate ethics round-tables for executives from 50 Silicon Valley companies. Approaching the end of its 10th academic year, the center has joined with O'Connor Hospital to create another Applied ethics Center at O'Connor for health care issues; with Independence High School to teach ethical values in English classes by examining the moral choices of fictional characters; and with The Tech Museum of Innovation, whose new, 32,000-square-foot exhibit space will open next year, replete with explanations of the ethical implications that technological advances pose to society.   Taking it on the road   ``We don't have a way to talk as a community about the issues that matter most to us,'' says Shanks, whose schedule finds him traveling to address health care, business and professional people. This week, he flew to Tucson to speak to 350 bankers, brokers, and investment people about viewing their work through ``the filter'' of ethics. It is one of his favorite lessons: That almost every personal interaction raises an ethical question. And that because ethics is about relationships, business is about ethics. After all, every transaction in the marketplace is an exchange between people. Will that exchange be conducted ethically? Will businesses learn that ethical treatment of employees means those employees will become loyal and productive? And that doing good in the workplace ``also means doing well in terms of the bottom line?''   Silicon Valley's challenge   Shanks takes it as a challenge that the ethical lines framing public issues are particularly well-etched in Silicon Valley. The rampant materialism. The unanticipated effects of technological innovation on society. These present temptations and ethical challenges. ``We've grown very mature at start-ups and bringing products to market,'' he says, ``but I would like to help create a Valley where that ethical reflex is at work . . . There's vast change in the structure of organizations here -- downsizing and upsizing. There's still vast amounts of money to be made and lost. And the issue that we are going to deal with next at the center is the disparity of wealth between rich and poor, which is really clear here.'' But not before the center co-sponsors a ``public deliberation'' next Saturday on the subject of managed health care in Santa Clara County. The daylong meeting, entitled ``The Care in Managed Care: Comparing Costs, Promoting Values,'' will bring together HMO representatives, physicians, patients, nurses, benefits managers, health care office managers and others, many with radically differing points of view. Each constituency met alone recently with Shanks and members of the county's medical association. The plan for Saturday is that all the groups will discuss the future of managed care in the county, and form working groups to recommend changes.   An O.J. conference   It's important to Shanks that concrete changes should emerge from the center's programs, which are legendary for their looping flights of academic oratory. In a sense, they are a reflection of Shanks' persona. He is bright and inquisitive, a great talker, and very much the entrepreneur when it comes to promoting the center and its mission. In January, Shanks helped pull together most of Simpson's defense team, along with Geraldo Rivera and other celebrity journalists from the trial, for a conference on moral issues involving the courts and media. And while some of the participants homed in on Shanks' theme -- that common ground be established between the competing parties -- there were also those moments when noble talk disappeared and Leslie Abramson and Rivera started sniping at each other. Shanks concedes that some people ``thought we were capitalizing on all this glitz and glamour.'' Not so at the Tech, where the center's efforts will have a visible payoff. Three years ago, Shanks and his staff began a collaboration with the museum that resulted in its writing a special mission statement -- one that commits it to educating the public about the ethical implications of technology. The next step was to re-think the museum's plans for its expansive new galleries: It became clear that gallery descriptions of technological wonders needed to incorporate information on ethical concerns. Robotics are not just technologically cool; they threaten jobs. Genetic engineering and computer technology are awesome, but also ``rife with ethical implications, both subtle and obvious,'' says Emily Routman, director of exhibit development. ``Tom helped the science people to understand that, embedded inside the technology stories they'd planned, there were ethics stories that also needed to be told,'' she says. The result is that The Tech will offer ``much more than technological boosterism . . . Without Tom we could not do our job right. He's really vital to our process of getting our stories right about technology and how it impacts our lives.''   Thinking nationally   By focusing on California issues such as technology, immigration and medical care -- all national issues, as well -- Shanks hopes the center ``will in fact be influencing the national conversation.'' The efforts come amid the proliferation of ethics centers and journals across the country. Stanford University has a center devoted to biomedical ethics, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley to ethics and social policy, San Jose State University to business ethics and social responsibility. Increasingly, universities are establishing programs, like Santa Clara's, that apply ethical reasoning to broad discussions of the day's issues. This practical application of ethics arises out of public frustration that ``we're facing ethical and value dilemmas as a society, and we need to have mechanisms to foster better dialogue,'' says Bruce Jennings, executive vice president of the Hastings Center in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., one of the oldest ethics ``think tanks'' in the United States.   Markkula's support   Santa Clara University's Applied ethics Center was founded in 1986 by faculty members and university patrons. These included Manuel Velasquez, a philosophy professor and author of one of the first textbooks on business ethics, who became the center's first director, and Apple executive A.C. ``Mike'' Markkula Jr. Markkula's daughter was entering Santa Clara at the time. Concerned that universities seemed to be graduating legions of ethical agnostics, Markkula provided seed money for an ethics center. The Markkula Center for Applied ethics now derives about a third of its annual $700,000 operating budget from a $4.5 million endowment started by Markkula and his wife, Linda. The rest of the Center's budget comes from donations. From the start, the center was intended to foster a discussion among faculty, to nurture the ethical sensitivities of students, and to have all this bubble out into the larger community. A decade later, Shanks and his colleagues hope the Valley, its businesses and innovators will learn to factor ethical behavior into the bottom line. But that won't happen unless people from all walks learn to examine their daily lives through the lens of ethics, understanding that ``doing ethics'' is a process that starts the moment they wake up each morning. ``I keep learning how to be a human being,'' Shanks says. ``I keep trying to practice that art. And I'm not very good at it some times, and some times I have a pretty good sense of doing the right thing. I mean, I have a pretty good sense of moral sensitivity; I can usually tell when I'm in the presence of a moral situation. But I don't always have the moral commitment or courage to follow through. And I keep struggling to have the kind of integrity that I would like to have. And someday I might get there.''