Lower Case or Upper Case Morality

In his article, “The moral naturalists” (explanations for lower case letters to come), David Brooks points to research that points to a sense of right and wrong that we are born with and learn very early. Even “lower” animals such as rats and monkeys learn to cooperate. It seems that we have “natural receptors that help us recognize fairness and cruelty,” and we show preferences for goodness and fairness from infancy. Social norms, evidently, “fall upon prepared ground. We come equipped to learn fairness and other virtues.” Those who behave morally seem to do it because they are “more sensitive to other people’s points of view” and better at “anticipating and reading other people’s pain.” What researchers seem to be identifying as a moral sense is one that values such virtues as cohesion, cooperation, and empathy. However, Brooks complains that researchers’ perspective on morality seems to be “lower case” and that it might not satisfy “those who want their morality to be awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great.”

I find myself asking the following questions in response: If morality is inborn and starts so early, what happens along the way that people let go of it and allow themselves to choose such immoral behaviors? What do we have to do to encourage people to continue caring about the group, about other people’s pain, about respect and empathy and responsibility and courage (those lower case virtues)? Why are we seeing so many fall from grace? Fall from honesty and integrity? Right into our prisons. When will people understand that a lack of trust is the greatest risk to our society, to our psychological wellness, to our safety, and to our financial well being?

Personally, it is the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great” that motivates me. Without a powerful faith, my fears would overwhelm me and persuade me to take the easy, safe, and perhaps less than honest or kind path. That faith keeps me moving along the path toward greater character, remedying my faults, and striving for what’s optimal (believing that it is only possible with help from Beyond). Many of the people that I collaborate with on character issues also find their motivation in the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great.” So I ask the question – must we have “the awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great” to move us out of our moral depravity? Does it take something grand and holy to persuade us, to enable us to live differently?

If so, then the approach I have been using in the Eriksen Institute for Ethics is likely to fail. That is, I figured, given the clear relationships between our economic recession and the unethical behavior of mortgage and financial institutions, and given the clear relationships between long term profitability and developing an organizational culture centered on aspirational values, that businesses and other organizations would be hopping right in line to fully infuse aspirational values from top to bottom. I figured that because of the clear ethical needs in our society, we could, without calling on the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great,” feel justified in advocating for business ethics. We could justify our demands or expectations that businesses and corporations live according to a basic set of aspirational values without having a discussion of religion or faith or. . . you get my drift.

And yet, we seem to be a people who respond to crisis. We seem to need it to break through our inertia. If Haiti and the Gulf oil spill and a war in the middle east and an economic crisis can’t get organizations to put values first, then perhaps we really do need the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great” to empower our efforts. However, I personally have found that when I daily think the “lower case” morality, how to be more loving or kind or trusting or responsible, I feel less defensive and more willing to grow and work on myself. I believe that, despite a life time of the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great,” I am a better person from having, for a few short years, invested in “lower case” morality. Do we need to require people to take the larger plunge into the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great?” Or might they be more willing to begin with the smaller steps, with the “lower case?”

From Science to Humanity

Isn’t it interesting that in these days of doing with less, we seem to be reevaluating what really matters? Isn’t it amazing that at a time when we wonder if we will have houses to live in, or when the next paycheck will arrive, we are giving more to those in need? It seems that, in response to the unethical, and, in some cases, outright illegal behavior of our leaders, we are focusing more on ethics, on doing the right thing, on how our society has declined morally, and on what’s needed to turn things around. We seem to be emphasizing community more, and in doing so, emulating our European and Latino neighbors -- that is, relatives and friends are moving in together. Children are living at home for longer. Bartering is seen more frequently.

But perhaps the greatest shock is that the field to which we attribute the greatest fault in this financial crisis – economics – is, according to David Brooks of the New York Times, retreating from its rational, scientific base, and “taking baby steps into the world of emotion, social relationships, imagination, love and virtue.” The old notion that economics and business and such are about making as much money as possible by any means possible, the commitment to putting the almighty dollar first, above all else, may actually be dying a slow death. As Brooks points out, Adam Smith was a moral philosopher. Keynes saw economics as a moral science, dealing with “motives, expectations, psychological uncertainties.” So much for taking the emotion and humanity out of the economic world!

Of course, those in the religious, spiritual, and psychological worlds have always advocated for keeping humanity and spirituality in our daily life and workings. Anyone who has participated in a spiritual or religious community has at least heard about virtue and “the good” and optimal ways to live life -- usually life with God or life empowered by God. Of course, people in these communities reflect on these words or live them out to different degrees. In some of these communities, sin or hell or lack of God is emphasized as a means of getting people to choose something better.

In the psychological or mental health world, virtue or the development of mental health is rarely the focus – although “wellness” in the counseling field and “positive psychology” in psychology are currently getting more airtime. Instead, people who involve themselves with mental health professionals are usually motivated to get help or to “fix” something in their lives by emotional pain or relationship struggle. And mental health professionals themselves are, for the most part, also primarily focused on reducing pain and struggle – after all, insurance companies don’t pay for developing joy or gratitude or other virtues. Occasionally, in this world, people pursue or offer parenting groups or some form of positive mental health education in order to promote life skills or to get better in doing life or relationships.

But it seems that most of the time we are motivated by pain or crises or “fires” that need to be put out. Is that all that is happening now? Are the observations listed above reflective of true transformation or will we merely resume our lives of “automaticity” once the financial crisis is over? Will we use the crisis as the impetus to shift to a whole new way of viewing the world and our society? Or will we return to plugging away at whatever is in front of us, believing the “money first” aspirations of our boss or business colleagues? Will we rise to the challenge and become more reflective and intentional about the way we live our lives, more aware of the larger, longer term picture, more concerned with how we can live together in peace, ensure that everyone has enough, and preserve our environment for our children and grandchildren? Or not – it seems that there is a fork in the road before us. Will we take “the one less traveled on?”

Empathy: The Ground of Moral Behavior (April 2009)

Major spreads in our local newspapers have detailed the tragedy of losing 21 polo ponies to incompetent or perhaps illegal pharmaceutical compounding. I have been struck by pictures of grieving owners, and have myself empathized with their pain, and felt the craziness of such an unnecessary loss. It seems that pain caused unnecessarily to animals draws out our feelings of compassion and empathy.

Similarly, our Girl Scout troop visited the local animal shelter to do a service project this week, and the girls found themselves drawn to adopt the "poor puppies and kitties" who had been mistreated and needed homes. The girls came home and very effectively persuaded moms (myself included) to visit and to adopt. I felt the pain of the little four pound puppy who had been in the shelter for three weeks recovering from illness and mistreatment. Why would anyone mistreat or harm these helpless little beings?


While I don't want to diminish any feelings we may have toward these animals, I do want to pose questions about our empathy failures with human beings. And I want to do so, not from a feeling of superiority, but from an acknowledgement that I need to be more empathic with the people I care about, and even with those whom I probably should care more about.

Empathy is "feeling with" people, the ability to get inside another's skin and know what they are experiencing. It is touted as essential to our ethical or moral development and as what motivates us to behave morally or ethically. Empathy is the internal feeling that urges us to behave well toward others. It is the internal response to the question, "How would you feel if someone else did that (something of questionable moral character) to you?"

And yet, how often do we leave our empathy behind? When we are angry at the boss or an employee, do we remember to consider what their feelings are likely to be in response to our anger, or do we focus only on our own? When a family member or colleague fails to take care of their responsibilities, do we start yelling? Or do we take time to consider whether our chastisement is warranted, or whether they have a good reason for the failure, reasons that need to be considered and discussed as part of the effort to get the responsibilities taken care of?

I have complained to my daughter's elementary school principal about the amount of yelling that goes on at her school, and have even transferred my daughter out of a classroom in which the teacher regularly yelled at children. Yelling isn't what is taught as a classroom management strategy in teacher education programs, and what is taught works very effectively. Although I understand that teachers may become frustrated at times, I wonder if the yellers are taking the time to anticipate what the children on the receiving end of the yelling will feel. After all, as adults, shouldn't we be able to put our children's or students' needs and feelings before our own, even if we are angry or upset?

I made a Lenten promise to my daughter to stop being as irritable or harsh with her when she misbehaves. As a former family therapist, I know that harshness is not a recommended parenting or change creation strategy. And I find that all it takes to put my harshness aside is empathizing with her feelings - thinking ahead about how she will feel if I "blast" her. Should we be any less concerned about the feelings of our neighbors, our coworkers, our boss, our church members, or our employees?

If our answer is "No, of course not," then I would challenge you to take the questions a step further - What about people we don't know? People at a distance? What about the homeless person on your street corner, or the illegal immigrant who mows your lawn? What about the neighbor who lost her job, or the single parent struggling to care for three children? What about that friend who has become largely housebound due to a disability? What about the professional family who has become homeless because dad lost his job, the mortgage payments went sky high, and there are no other family members to step up and help?

Or might we consider a lack of empathy to have played a part in our current crisis? Was Bernie Madoff considering the feelings of the people whose money he took? Were the mortgage brokers who provided loans for people who were going to find it really hard to stay solvent thinking about the long term feelings or experiences of the people who wanted to borrow money? Were the lenders and realtors and financial mavens thinking about the long term risks of what they were doing, the risks that people would lose their homes, their retirement, their life savings, their jobs?

I am reminded of Robert Fulghum's book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (2004), in which he reminds us of Kindergarten's rules - Share Everything, Don't Hit Other People, Play Fair, Clean Up Your Own Mess, Don't Take Things That Aren't Yours. If we asked people why they follow these rules, wouldn't they remind us that we would want others to behave this way toward us? Wouldn't putting ourselves in another's place, and thus empathizing with her or him, keep us from doing wrong? Aren't we encouraged to do the right thing by our empathy with others? How much better might our relationships be if we started from a place of empathy rather than our "rights?" If we can empathize even with the horses or the shelter animals, can't we do the same for other human beings? Can we encourage ourselves to extend our empathy just a little further each week? Let's hear a rousing chorus of our nation's current positive attitude: "Yes, we can!"