Personal Statement– If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything

A personal statement

In our business conduct, we are guided by the image of the honourable merchant (Ehrbarer Kaufmann) and by the Bible.

What do we mean by this? For example, it is written in the Bible:

Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not ill-treat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt. Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the Lord.

Is our thinking antiquated and idealistic religious in nature? No. Lets have a short look to the preamble of two countries.

In the preamble of the Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation we read:

In the name of God Almighty! The Swiss people and the cantons, in responsibility towards creation, striving to renew the Confederation in order to strengthen freedom and democracy, independence and peace in solidarity and openness towards the world, willing to live their diversity in unity in mutual consideration and respect, conscious of their common achievements and of their responsibility towards future generations, certain that only those who use their freedom are free, and that the strength of the people is measured by the welfare of the weak.

The Preamble to the Declaration of American Independence states:

We hold all these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal

Abraham Lincoln repeated these words in his famous Gettysburg Address, in which he said that this nation:

was designed in liberty and dedicated to the fundamental proposition that all men are created equal

All men are created with equal worth before God and are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But neither Jefferson nor Lincoln held that all men should be equal in ability, education, opportunity, income, etc. They believed in equality in terms of God-given rights – namely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Equality in worth before God, yes; not in equality of aptitude, inventiveness, intelligence and income.

The kind of ordered liberty we enjoy can only be maintained if the inhabitants of a country are, on the whole, a virtuous people. John Adams, the second President of the United States, in a speech in 1798 warned against those who speak “the language of justice and temperance” while practising “injustice and extravagance”, and he ended his speech with this famous statement:

Avarice, ambition, revenge, or the courage of death, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and believing people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other people.

Rather than in many words, I would like my actions to contribute to our staff, society and our customers.

Attn. Andreas Hosang – 2022