I'm not really close to any of my family, but I hear of one of them rather more often than the others. About once every three or four years, he makes the news locally, in some minor way, and I recognize his name: he's in law enforcement, and he's the officer quoted in some news story about that often. And I notice something every time, without exception. But first, some preface.
I've scarcely seen him at all since a family holiday event a smidgen over 25 years ago. I was back from college, he was a recent college graduate working for the county police department. And it came up in conversation that he'd been recently assigned to the vice and narcotics squad, working undercover. Knowing what I knew about vice and narcotics work in general, and about the then truly awful reputation of the county's vice and narcotics squad, I expressed my sympathy, and assured him that most officers find it pretty easy to rotate out within at most a year or two. He demured, and stated right out loud that he'd asked for the transfer to narcotics and vice, and intended to make a career out of it. I couldn't square that with his life-long reputation as the straightest of straight arrows in the family, as someone with zero taste for any kind of moral or ethical compromise, couldn't see how he could do work that compromises you ethically and morally even in the cleanest of departments, which the county vice and narcotics squad absolutely wasn't at the time. He couldn't understand what part of it was confusing me. So after talking past each other for a while, I brought up all the scandals I'd seen in the past year's worth of newspapers, asked how a guy who felt the way he did could make the ethical and moral compromises necessary to do undercover work at all, let alone participate in cover-ups of criminal activity by fellow officers and superior officers, and not want to escape it as fast as possible?
I think I was expecting some kind of nuanced answer. I did not get one, nor was I braced at all for what I got: an explosion. Incoherent, angry raving and screaming. To which, being no more mature than any other 20-something, I responded by trying to yell over him to try to ask him what he was yelling about, which, of course, only made things worse. The family began to steadily gather around us from other rooms, to see what the yelling was about, just in time for he and I to figure out exactly what the point of conflict was between us:
My relative is firmly of the opinion that it is flatly never acceptable to place your own moral judgment above that of anybody in authority over you. Ever. Not only is it never acceptable, it's never moral. Not only is it never moral, it is never even legal, he insisted. Not only is it illegal, but it's a sign of a sick mind; only the most twisted and psychopathic and immoral of perverted reprobates says that their moral judgment is more reliable and more trustworthy than that of any authority figure over them. If someone in authority over you tells you that something is moral, then either that settles it, or you're the kind of criminal monster sicko that guys like my relative have sworn to protect society against. And when he got that across to me, I lost my temper even bigger than he had. I reminded him of the Fourth Nuremberg Principle, as I'd been taught it all the way back in first grade: "I was only following orders" is not a defense, it's an indictment. I reminded him that we had sent Nazi and Japanese war criminals to long prison sentences for not exercising independent moral judgment when given immoral orders by their superiors. Within seconds, we were both screaming apoplectics, and that's when the whole family stepped in to separate us. Both his mother and my father said the same thing: "There is no way for you two to ever talk to each other ever again, if that's how you both feel." And we've both stuck to it, even at my parents' funerals; he stays over there, I stay over here. Even though he's almost one of the only living relatives I have in the local area, we never, ever interact, and it suits us both just fine.
And the thing is, in the immediate aftermath of that screaming match, my parents said something to me that took me decades to even grudgingly accept the possibility of: they told me that both he and I are completely insane on this subject. Someone who can never accept another person's moral authority when that person is in authority is just as crazy as someone who can never question it, they told me; the sane course is to know when the other person's moral authority is more trustworthy than your own, and to know when to question it. Some days, I can even intellectually accept that. But I cannot make myself actually believe it. I can be persuaded, when no moral issue is at stake, to follow orders I disagree with, because I accept that sometimes it's just not up to me. When moral issues are at stake but those in authority decree that there is to be no punishment for the path that's abhorrent to me, I can usually pretty effortlessly persuade myself to suspend judgment on others, usually even mind my own business, especially in cases where the people who're accepting the moral mis-steps are themselves the only ones being ripped off or hurt. But I can never, ever, ever judge right and wrong, especially as it applies to my own actions, by any standard other than my own moral compass.
Chalk it up as more evidence that I'm crazy, I know. But here's the thing I notice, every time he's in the news: he's gotten another promotion. Every couple of years, he moves up in rank, moves to a more prestigious department, or both. My particular insanity on this subject has rendered me unemployable, made enough actual and potential employers and co-workers uncomfortable as to have explicitly cost me three jobs, for not being unethical enough. Even when I was willing to go along to get along, people felt judged. His insanity, on the other hand, has been steadily lucrative for him, a lifetime source of satisfaction and prestige. And that makes me uncomfortable in ways I can't even begin to express, not all of which I even understand myself.
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bradhicks- J. Brad Hicks
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And my background distracting thought, "In my next life, I want to be a member of a sane species, even if I'm not sure I'd qualify."
And, "Thank God he's in America rather than somewhere where there are *no* checks on authority."
And then, "What I am thinking? Shouldn't I be wanting him to be abusing people over there rather than over here?"
I hope his bosses aren't completely awful people, but I'm not counting on it.
And now I'm off into associationland, "There's a limit to how much you can fake. That's why he's doing better than guys who are in vice/narcotics for the bribes and to shove people around."
The government, be it a lowly narc squad cop or the President of the United States, is supposed to derive their power from us, the People. A government official does not lose his obligation to question authority as a private citizen just because they become a government official.
We are a nation of laws, not men, the saying goes. "Men" have the balls to question authority and look it straight in the eye and say "what authority do you have to enforce this law?" Does that mean they choose to not enforce it, if they find it morally objectionable? That is an argument for another day, perhaps: but the QUESTION has the right to be asked, and given its due.
I judge other people by a very permissive moral scheme that simply involves not being actively harmful. Personally, I try to be a generally positive influence; that's not a vastly higher standard, but it's something to aim for at least. None of that, however, makes any acknowledgement of authority or the place of authority in making moral decisions.
As with you, this is deliberate -- I don't think morality works in such a way as to make things that are otherwise immoral okay as long as you're in the right place in the right hierarchy. And if it doesn't, then the important thing is to pay attention to what other people have to say about morality, and learn from it -- whether they're in a position of authority or not.
The fact that, as you've noticed, society seems to prefer people willing to compromise or revise their morality to conform with the structures and authorities surrounding them is deeply disturbing to me, but undeniable. Luckily for me, I've found a niche where my particular morality works just fine and I can make a living.
You have to look at the society that we are in... it rewards kiss asses plain and simple.
Even a singular individual who lets their inner compass override their social compass still cannot reasonably and/or sanely operate as a moral island without crossvalidating either a negative or positive with another person. I can validate against someone else who I have already established through external validation is crooked, but ultimately I must validate with someone else who has a compatible moral system to my own, and this can be valid historically, where I validate against established data, or in real time. As a social animal, when judging social interactions, no other transaction is valid, even if it is proven correct outside of context, because social decisions are made exclusively within the social context of the decision.
Now, saying that a social decision is made in a faulty context is entirely valid, as proven at Nuremberg and all across history. Ignoring historical data because real time data has transplanted established society rules is wrong, but wrong in a highly functional way, as it allows the individual to validate the collective within a limited context, and our lives are composed of the micro interactions rippling out to the macro. Ultimately when the context of the interaction is expanded, invalidation of the wrong decision is easy to find at the macro level only if the transaction ever gets exposed to that level, but external context can often be toxic on the micro scale.
The irreconcileable difference between Brad and his relative is that this relative does think that only moral decisions that can be done via micro transactions are valid, whereas Brad considers only moral decisions that can be done as macro transactions are valid. I don't for a second believe that anyone, anywhere has a unique, original moral compass that is not derived from external social data unless they are dangerously ill. From what I have read of Brad's writing, I understand that his compass took a great deal of time, energy, and effort to derive, in part because his comprehension of the micro transaction may not be entirely typical.
There are certainly times when one might do something one wouldn't ordinarily do for a greater good -- especially in being an undercover cop or spy. I try to stay out of those situations.
It looks like an indictment of our adolescent culture that your relative's behavior is rewarded, an indication of how far we have gone in the direction of authoritarianism being considered the norm. 'course, that's always been more true in hierarchies like cops or military.... (it's sometimes called testosterone poisoning.)
Your position, on the other hand, rests on the assumption that if we argue long enough, eventually the truth will come out. And frankly, if the rules of debate are followed, eventually it will. As long as closure isn't sought prematurely. You yourself have shown admireably commitment to not closing judgement prematurely. Moreover, remember the Peter Principle? It doesn't work if subordinates challenge superiors constantly. The Peter Principle _seriously_ f*cks us over, collectively. So again, good idea on your part.
What it comes down to is "when is it insane" to not trust someone else's moral judgement? Is there a time? No, there is not. Morality is part logic, part emotion, and part conditioning. But what it is most of all is you. Your morals may change but at any given time they sketch the perimetre of your behaviour. The perimeter may be dental floss on the ground, you ignore it so much...it might be concrete fortifications. There is never a time that it is insane to be yourself. If you stop being yourself, you're just stepping on a long conveyor belt to true insanity.
Now, you may reasonably expect to _suffer_ for your acting on your morals. But that again is presuming to know what is worth what to you better than you do. If your adversity to others does not meet an actual pathological criteria (like ODD)...but is just your best attempt to influence the world into the shape you find desireable. That's not insane. its what everyone does.
Now the question is: are you _likely_ to actually change the world, and what is the highest cost of failure you're willing to pay? So what they're saying is you're too brave and hopeful for this world. That you could change your morals, see the same practical effect, and be better off. That's true. but only if you want to give up who you are right now. Maybe the world is such a mess because people generally decide to make that surrender when pressured with difficult or hopeless fights. I suppose the question is : do you think the end of Pan's Labyrinthe is a win or a lose for the protagonist?
I count it a glorious victory, myself.
When I was more manic (three cups of coffee a day), I'd get told I was driving people nuts and that I should "be myself". I'd ask what they meant.
Eventually I figured that I was performing too much, that I was not accepting input and instead just playing the tape of stuff I always talked about. At first I was angry with this verdict because I interpreted it as "shut up".
Eventually I understood that I am a deeply social creature. I don't like being without human input for more than a few hours; otherwise my inner dialogue gets loud and my paranoia cranks up. Thus if I wanted people around me, I'd have to observe when I was tuning them out and stop those behaviors.
Now I understand what "be yourself" means -- usually it's "you're coming on too strong. Turn it down." Nevertheless, I still don't know what "oneself" is when one isn't mimicking other people. What is this self?
Ultimately, there are two types of people:the ones who live purely for the present moment and the ones who want to leave a legacy to the future. Yes, the ones who live partly for the future do impoverish themselves in some degree. But the world now is better because of their efforts and will better still in time because those efforts have not ceased.
That's what I mean by being yourself: pursuing your needs in the order of how important they are to you. I think it is one thing to logically decide "no, actually, on second though, I should live in the present, screw the future". It is another thing to say "I will give up _acting_ toward a better future while still _wanting_ a better future". That sort of internal dissonance is insidiously harmful. Either abandon hope, or keep fighting for it. Don't harbor it but not do anything about it.
I was in sales. I can understand your stance. I had a boss that tried to get me to lie to customers. I couldn't do it. I'm an actor and I can put on a persona but I'm not going to say "yes sir, I believe in Jesus because I think it'll get your money." No way. I left that job gladly. It's the only time I really felt it was safe to leave a job without having a new one lined up.
I am a moral relativist. Can't help it -- too many things make sense on a sliding scale. "With us or against us" guarantees I'm against them.
I can relate.
IMO, it's better to walk a rocky path than lose your soul.
Namaste.
As a nation whose founding documents and philosophies are framed in ways that say "the people have rights to tell their government to fix things, or to tell them to go away, or to replace them with something better", that unquestioning obedience is rewarded creates, well, look at all the scandals of the current administration.
- Your cousin is immoral for blindly accepting what authority tells him to do;
- His reward for blind obedience is promotion.
- Whereas your moral compass never wavers and cannot see beyond its situation;
- So you keep getting sacked.
- Your parents offer the Apollonian solution (nothing in excess);
- ...and you can't handle that, either.
- Most moral standards have to do with universal will or maximizing the availability of good or happiness.
- Most moral standards do not live in a vacuum: they are molded a posteriori into methods for relationships.
- While sucking authority's dick will eventually make you the scapegoat for a major scandal,
- Doesn't lack of moral deviance make one a hermit?
- Doesn't it at least make life boring, poor and otherwise unrewarding?
- If you never eat fat, will you ever feel full?
I agree with your parents on this one, after years of learning how to play scoundrels against each other to keep from being sacked while making people that actually get ripped off get some compensation other than karma.Maybe I'm not the right person to be reading this or commenting. I used to work in sales and I was good at it. I can be a sociopath at times, doing just what it takes to throw someone off my scent while I work on my next plan and use the rewards to fund more interesting people.
Still, I'm awestruck by your story. It's galvanizing reading. Thank you! If I'm ever in Missouri, I definitely want to take you to dinner.
If we don't behave as though things can be better than they are, we ensure they never will be. You may find that an acceptible outcome, I don't.
And how is China about happiness, anyway? I'm not seeing the connection.
China is pretty vile about long term versus short term happiness. The government owns the people and if the good of a person or group of people is not _statistically likely_ to cause problems if neglected or thwarted...then that welfare is -ignored-. The group involved may be oppressed (like Falun Gong, Tibetans, Central Asian tribes) if they try to insist on getting the same respect for their welfare as others. The preservation of the status quo is their only concern...save where powerful ogilarchic groups have interests in changes to it. They are a society that punishes idealism like Brad's most severely. They are a living demonstration why utilitarianism cannot be the last word in "how shall we live?"
It's like law. I'm a vicious jaywalker but I never steal. They're both laws, but no one gets hurt if I cross the street off the light and there aren't any cars whereas someone does get hurt if I steal.
Besides, my point is now moot thanks to your earlier response about why you left those jobs. That makes it less ambiguous.
It's not impossible for people in authority to have the moral high ground, they just don't automatically get it because of their station.
Or so I read.
Personally, I've just added this to my list of supporting cases of "people too smart to understand reality isn't right".
I wonder how your relative feels about the fact that he's turning into a moral authority (by his definition), and I wonder how well he gets along with those under his supervision.
Even some almost parallels from my own life.
Does raise a couple of pertinent(I think?)questions that have haunted me.
Is it not possible that the morality issue in this case is subjective? One distinction between those in authority and those below them in the chain of command is the knowledge base available.
And, I've always felt that employment is essentially a contract; that is to say if I don't like the job, I can leave. Doesn't my moral responsibility stop there?
Neither question covers outright criminal behaviors. If I simply don't approve of some product or technique, say lab testing on animals, it's time to move on. OTOH before I was 50 I'd had 30 jobs that showed up on the SS report... not sure what THAT means? [grin]
True story:
Working for The Conspiracy occasionally entailed traveling on business, to trade shows mostly. At those trade shows, I'm not entertaining clients, customers, or vendors, so there's no reason for me to eat any fancier than I do at home. And I believe in erring on the side of living cheap, in order to make sure that our department's travel budget stretches to more trips, anyway. So when it comes to meals, I'm as like as not to grab something from the MacDonald's between my hotel and the convention center as anything else; if anything, eating out at all three meals a day is a treat for me. And because it's no trouble to do so, I ask for receipts; because it's no trouble to do so, I itemize my meal expenses.
Every single expense report I submitted at The Conspiracy got bounced back to me by the accounting department over just this issue. Why? What the notes said was, "It is not necessary to itemize meals, so long as you are spending less than $xx per day." (I don't remember the exact amount, but it was way more than I'd ever eat, like 4 or 5 times more, not even counting the several times each show I was fed lavishly at some vendor PR event. Remember, this was during the dot-com bubble.) And every time I sent it back, saying, "that's okay, here's how much I actually spent."
That first expense report, the third time they bounced it back, I called them, and asked, "Are you ordering me, as a condition of approving my expense report, to pad my expense reporting in this category?" No, I was told, because that would be illegal. "OK, then what are you ordering me to do?" We're not ordering you to do anything, came the response. "But you won't approve my expense report unless I do?" They approved it. And we went through some form of this dance every time I traveled to a trade show.
After the second time, it came back to me that there was pressure on my manager to stop letting me go on business trips. Other people who were reporting the full allowance for meals and pocketing the difference were afraid I was going to narc them out in order to get them fired, to free up room for me to get promoted. My manager stuck up for me on this, saying that I had no interest in doing anything of the sort, that it was just my way. Then I got transferred to a new manager. Under whom I lasted only a couple of months.
It may be that below a certain dollar amount, it costs more to look at an itemized expense sheet and make sure the receipts match the amount claimed than it would to blanket approve anything $X or less.
Also, depending on how the company budgets things, employee expenses for trade shows (travel, hotel, meals) likely show up in a different accounts register and possibly count as a deduction, so being able to meet a minimum expectation (5 employees sent = $5X Food/day) is probably desired and planned when the company is determining if the trade show will be cost effective.
Also, it might be considered, by the employees and employer as an undocumented bonus if they eat less than their minimum requirement. So it may not be that the others were ripping off the company, but that the company wanted to spend that amount, and was only interested in hammering people if they went over.
Your "crime" therefore, was not being "too ethical" but making them think, which nobody wants to do, and costing them money by making them add up your totals, or bounce it back at you when rubber stamping an $X expense would have been cheaper.
My own anecdote. I went to Ottawa as part of a course with another IT professional. We were allowed $5 Breakfast, $10 Lunch, $15 dinner. I ate a McDonald's lunch for a couple days, and went to Quebec and bought alcohol with the left overs (it got eaten eventually), documented nothing, charged the default. My friend had room service and steak dinners, documented it all, exceeded the allowable rates, and got hammered for not justifiably staying within budget. This was in 1990 and the Per Diem rates haven't increased in 15 years. I think, really, that regular employees were supposed to eat $30 a day, no more, no less, and the itemized expenses option existed ONLY for the big-wig CEOs and Power-Sellers, thus your final third "crime" might have been trying to use an above-the-glass-ceiling-class feature you weren't supposed to.
If this helps any...
That relative is a madman living in a madman's world, and your parents' perspective sounds like the sad, flawed compromise of sane people who've lived in that world for too long. When the lunatics run the asylum, the sane must feign madness in order to survive. To do otherwise is to live under the boot-heel of the world, constantly struggling to stand while the weight of society tries to crush you into the mud.
The only even vaguely controversial part of that, by me, is the failure mode: what if the company has made a good faith effort to have a backup pharmacist on duty to fulfill the prescription but due to unintentional failure (let's say the pharmacist who isn't being a religious dick about this has gone home suddenly sick) he either fulfills the prescription or he loses his license.
But let's be blunt about this: that he would have to make this choice is not even vaguely unforseeable. Are there any pharmacists left in the entire field who were in it before Griswold v Connecticut? When he chose this profession, he chose it knowing that it included dispensing birth control. Given that it's a health care profession, getting to change his mind in a way that denies care is not something he gets to do and stay in the profession. Which, by my lights, makes the Illinois compromise a generous concession to the anti-contraception religious nuts.
Edited at 2008-04-28 01:33 am (UTC)
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue
That is, "My honor is called loyalty."
This was also known as the Leadership Principle, or Die Fuehrerprinzip.
Or, as Albert Speer wrote in one of his books,
"We put our conscience in pawn to authority."
All the best, Jtg AKA rnk35
The only thing I can think of here is that they weren't speaking to the moral issue, they were speaking to a practical one.
I think that within any context there's a spectrum of allowable morality. Go too far too fast in either direction and you de-sync from the group, the consequences of which are usually some form of shunning or worse. Yes, it is possible to stake out an absolute moral position that is well outside the spectrum and still thrive, but I suspect that it's rare that it succeeds. The optimal solution, then, (the "practical moral solution," if that makes any sense) is to find a group with a spectrum that includes your moral position, or is close enough to it that you can, given sufficient time, push it in that direction.
Note that this has much less to do with what is right, in absolute moral terms, than with balancing the following factors:
- How much of my own morality do I compromise?
- How much can I move the group's morality in the "right" (ie, my) direction, and how much of my compromise does that redeem?
- How much can I reasonably thrive in personal/professional/familial terms? (Remember, many people have dependents, and that adds another complicating variable.)
Who does more good: the steadfast outcast, or the sell-out who manages to some good? I'm not sure there's an absolute answer to that; a lot of broad social issues ultimately come down to compromise and long-term drifts, but society needs to have some people who are willing to unapologetically stick to their guns, as an example if nothing else.
So my point is that most people do some version of that juggling act and ultimately decide to pick their battles. When you attempt to articulate it, though, it's hard to articulate to oneself, let alone to someone else. And when you add in that last variable -- especially when you have a kid -- especially when you're explaining all of that to your kid, who you hope will grow up to be happy and reasonably successful, but to whom you also want to serve as a positive moral example -- there's just no way you can say it right. Because it's not right, it's functional.