Saturday, April 05, 2008

Doing the right thing ain't always easy

Morality: a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong, whether by society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience. As a father and an educator I spend a lot of time trying to instill the idea of right over wrong.
Recently I listened to a documentary broadcast from a New York public radio station (WNYC’s Radio Lab) all about the concepts of morality. Here is a morality conundrum discussed on this show, which is frequently used by scientists working with how people decide right and wrong.
There are five workers toiling away on some railroad tracks. There is a train headed their way. They are oblivious to the danger. You cannot get their attention. You have two choices. You can do nothing and allow the five workers to die or you can pull a lever which causes the train to go onto a side track where there is only one worker. Saving five, yet sacrificing one. The great majority of people asked this question say they would pull the lever.
Then there is a twist to the next question. There are still five workers facing impending doom. The new wrinkle is you are now standing on a bridge over the tracks. There is no lever, but there is a rather large man standing next to you. If you push him off the bridge he will land on the tracks which will cause the train to stop, saving the five workers. The great majority of people asked this question would not push the man.
The math is the same. Sacrifice one for the sake of the five. The difference seems to be how comfortable people are with the degree of “hands on” the sacrificing of the one is. What the scientists asking the question failed to do was go into more depth. If the rather large man standing next to me on the bridge is loudly singing “It’s a Small World” I would be much more likely to push him.
Let’s step away from the scientific, ivory tower version of morality and go more real life. What I am always trying to get across to children is that people should do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because you get paid off. Unfortunately, the “what’s in it for me” mentality seems to permeate the culture.
I remember reading in some educational journal about a teacher of first grade kids. She was proudly describing how she would distribute Skittles (bite sized and, if I might say so in a blatant hope that someone from the Mars candy corporation will read this and send me a couple of free cases for giving them a plug in my column, a very delicious candy) to her class for behaving correctly. The problem for me arose when she just as proudly stated that when her class started acting up all she had to do was lift up her jar of mouth-wateringly delicious (maybe three free cases?) Skittles and shake it. The noise would cause the kids to get back on task.
Does anyone else out there find this frightening? Seven year old children are doing what they are supposed to do because, like seals in a circus, the “trainer” will throw them treats. This teaches them the only reason to be good is because you’ll get paid off. No concern about kindness, ethics, or even that selling your soul for bits of sugar, corn syrup, and hydrogenated palm kernel oil is actually pretty cheap.
I also have visions of this poor teacher forgetting to go to the store one Monday morning and her candy supply is gone. Her students progress from slightly unruly to focusing the sun through one kid’s glasses to start a fire using the math books as kindling while the poor teacher, who is tied to a stake, keeps violently shaking an empty jar. Lord of the Flies, all for want of a two dollar and ninety-nine cent bag of candy.
One quote from the radio documentary was, “If you remove empathy from the morality equation it all falls apart. It’s just a bunch of rules.” This seems pretty obvious to me. If I cannot understand what it feels like to have a hive of angry bees duct taped to my thigh what is to stop me from doing it to someone else. If it was just an e-mail from my boss saying I should not duct tape a hive of angry bees to another person’s thigh I might still do it.

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