Scary Choices End Up Being the Most Worthwhile

"All of us face tough choices.

Sometimes we duck them. Sometimes we address them. Even when we address them, however, we don't always decide to resolve them. Sometimes we simply brood endlessly over possible outcomes or agonize about paths to pursue.

And even if we do try to resolve them we don't always do so by energetic self-reflection. Sometimes we simply bull our way through to a conclusion by sheer impatience and assertive self-will--as though getting it resolved were more important than getting it right."

This quote is from the book, How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living, by Rushworth M. Kidder.


As I absorb the current events of our time, I am amazed at what decisions I must make, really without having all of the information I need to make a good decision. Who will I support in the 2016 Presidential campaign? Do I support U.S. involvement in Syria? How do I feel about Syrian refugees-- do they pose a danger? Do I change my Facebook profile every time Facebook suggests it? Should I be concerned with how Starbucks embellishes its cups? What do I believe about Planned Parenthood?

Many of us are heavily influenced by media. We watch the news and talk shows. We read the paper or our newsfeed on Facebook.  We feel pressured to have and to share an opinion. We want to feel we have the Right Choice. We want to feel good about our choice and be able to defend it. We may never have formally learned how to evaluate difficult choices. This process is called "ethics" or "ethical living."

What follows is a quick crash course in Ethics.... a survival guide, of sorts.

In his book, Kidder warns that, overwhelmed by choices, and the seriousness of those choices, we will find "the moral landscape... will be shaped by three conditions our ancestors could not have imagined."




1. Entirely New Ethical Issues: The concentration of power and the technological advances of our time mean that lapses of judgement have farther reaching consequences than ever before. Hundreds or thousands of people can be affected.  Think nuclear bombs, environmental disasters like the Exxon Valdez. Think computer viruses, the spread of AIDS, arson or even accidental fires in densely populated areas. Lapses of judgement can destroy more lives than we can imagine; contaminate the environment for longer than we can comprehend. With the focus on power and discovery, we are subject to the ethical lapses of others, for whom "the moral issues pale to insignificance before the lure of discovery...the fact that something can be done is reason enough."

(Chernobyl, with its hundreds of thousands of people affected and

the environment ruined for many lifetimes, 

happened because of a botched informal experiment 

by two scientists who were vaporized in the meltdown.)

2. Moral Intensity: There have always been wars, famines, crime, epidemics, and genocide. Now we are subjected to literal scenes of the carnage playing out in our living rooms every night. A few decades ago, we would not have to have an opinion on these events because we were ignorant of them. Now, we know, and feel obligated to form an opinion or take action. We are faced with so many serious problems, we may exhibit compassion fatigue.

Dr. Charles Figley described it this way: Compassion Fatigue is a state experienced by those helping people or animals in distress; it is an extreme state of tension and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it can create a secondary traumatic stress for the helper." Individuals eventually protect themselves by becoming less caring. 

Peter Goldmark, of the Rockefeller Foundation, states that it is no longer enough to find worthwhile causes-- there are too many of them. We must choose to back those causes that are essential, and not worry about the rest.

3. A tempting reaction is to become "ethical tortoises" who retreat from the moral intensity and refuse to face humankind's overwhelming needs of the 21st century.  Kidder warns: "Yearning for a spearate peace, (emotional tortoises) mat be especially prime targets for cultish behavior... Only a truly moral community can counter separatism where it shows up-- whether as ethnic cleansing and hatred of refugees on the international front, or as special-interest pleading and whining me-firstism on the domestic scene.

I can't help thinking, as I read these statements, that we are witnessing these sentiments unfold first-hand, every day in the news. Syrian refugees and border walls. Occupy Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, and demanding free university education.




"In the end, our ethics define the way we participate in the community around us. Yet it is also a deeply personal construct, developing powerful standards and practices in each of us. It calls upon us to be impartial, Yet it demands that we be engaged-- that we have, in other words, a point-of-view." (Kidder)

"Values-neutral relativism (is) corrosive to ethical endeavors." (Kidder) He suggests that each of us should take time to examine our value system so we recognize right versus wrong and act instinctively to protect right when we need to. 

Then we should realize that the vast majority of decisions are right versus right. When faced with a decision that seems to have no obvious right answer, he encouraged the individual to gather facts, weigh the options, and make a decision. We must be willing to accept that most decisions will avoid some negative consequences while bringing some others. We should concentrate on the good that comes from our decisions, and fully accept the consequences.  

Kidder warns against trying to find a simple ethical formula and apply it everywhere.In a society of quick fixes, it is easy to cling to one value to the exclusion of all others and fail to grasp the complexity of most issues. We then are guilty of substituting "thoughtless moralizing for moral thinking."

He suggests the following four paradigms, however, to help us when we are face with a 'right versus right' decision.

1. Truth versus Loyalty


2. The Individual versus the Community
     

3. Short-term versus Long-term


4. Justice versus Mercy

 Though we sometimes may put on above the other, depending on circumstances, he encourages us to decide which we feel is most important, as a rule. Then , we will have a beginning dialogue when faced with a 'right versus right' decision.

If you are curious, Kidder shares which are most important to him and a brief reason why.

• Compelled to choose between truth and loyalty, I would (all things being equal) come down on the side of truth. One reason: The history of this century suggest that those who put loyalty above truth (loyalty to Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and even Richard Nixon) are capable of doing terrible damage to the world. It's hard to imagine that kind of damage arising when truth is put above loyalty. Having to choose, I feel safer and more comfortable honoring what is true than following human allegiances.
•  Compelled to choose between the individual and the community, I would (all things being equal) lean toward the community. One reason: Individualism and its emphasis on rights has run to such extremes in this century that it has done serious damage to community and its emphasis on responsibilities. Were I a citizen of a post-Soviet county, I might feel otherwise: Seventy years of oppressive communism might have driven me to support the individual at any cost. But I'm not: My history, and that of my culture, has been different. Another reason: Community includes self, but self does not always embrace community. 
• Compelled to choose between short term and long term, I would (all things being equal) favor the long term. One reason: The long term always includes the short term, whereas short-term thinking (as the history of greed in the American 1980's demonstrates) does not always provide for the long term. 
• Compelled to choose between justice and mercy, I would (all things being equal) stick with mercy, which to me speaks of love and compassion. One reason: I can imagine a world so full of love that justice, as we now know it, would no longer be necessary. But I cannot imagine a world so full of justice that there would no longer be any need for love. Given only one choice, I would take love."

 He closes his book with this observation:

W will not "survive the morality of relativism: There is too much leverage these days behind even a single unpunished act of evil. We'll survive by a morality of mindfulness. We'll survive where reason moderates the clash of values and intuition schools our decision-making. Theres' no better way for good people to make tough choices."