Ethics in the Time of Cholera
On occasion I work with a patient who is essentially having an existential crisis. “What is the point of [fill in the blank] when the world is so bad” is what I am asked. I struggle with questions such as these as I see their point. Pollution is certainly not improving. Corruption in government, wars, beheadings, bank bailouts and ponzi schemes are not on the decline. How do we remain hopeful when it takes decades to convince government to enforce what is common sense to most of us? Where is the gain in all of our advancements?
I found myself tackling these questions in earnest while reading “The Warmth of Other Suns,” by Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson. In case you are unfamiliar with it, fifteen years of research and 1,200 interviews went into compiling this epic about the Great Migration (1915 – 1970s), when 6 million black Americans began fleeing persecution in the South for the less hostile regions of the Northeast, Midwest and West. While chronicling the lives of three individuals, Wilkerson also gives detailed descriptions of what was happening around our country.
“The Warmth of Other Suns” is filled with stories that were shocking to me. Despite the fact that I had American history classes throughout my education and supposedly learned about slavery, Jim Crow, integration, the Civil Rights Movement, etc., and took classes at university about race and ethnic relations I was confronted with facts in a new way. At times it felt as though I were a witness to the many terrible events.
There were many events outlined in this book that were horrifying, such as parents putting their 2 year-olds on their shoulders to better witness their first lynching. The degree to which sadism was rampant was truly surprising. Perhaps that is naïve of a psychologist to say, however our lives and our system today are like hotdogs: We do not always get to see what goes into them, nor do we really want to know as we are rather confident we would not like what we discovered.
While I contemplated what might make so many people act or condone (passively or actively) such mass sadism, I also had to wonder why there have always been some who went against the grain, such those white undertakers who smuggled blacks out of the South in coffins. They risked their lives, possibly even the lives of their families.
This left me considering who I would be in a similar situation. What choices would I make? Would I be part of the empowered majority? Would I participate in throwing rocks? Would I avoid conflict because it was uncomfortable or say something? Of course I know how I wish I would act but I have also had the privilege of growing up at time when speaking up most likely does not get you jailed or your family murdered.
This certainly seems to be a point of progress of our times. Perhaps we are less sadistic than we once were? We now have Whistleblower policies, supposedly protecting people who speak up. And then again, it is rather concerning how often those who speak up are punished, such as Sherron Watkins who, despite being on Time’s cover as a person of the year, was never able to work in corporate America. We are all aware of the miserable state of the justice system. How about the predatory lending practices that were (are) happening? How often do we overhear a slur or other bigoted comment from a neighboring table and we say nothing because it would be awkward to lean over and confront a stranger? How often do we avoid pointing out something problematic we have noticed within our organization that might upset someone popular?
It is scary to have to put your neck out there. No one wants to be ostracized. It is easy to feel threatened when others could or do become litigious. And what is worse, sometimes our brothers and sisters do not support us. They stay silent.
Ken Pope (2015) summarized research about how organizational culture often disapproves of the questioning of leadership, its behavior and adherence to their ethics code. There is a perception that it will lead to retaliation, both personal and professional consequences. At times there are divergent expectations and/or discipline tendencies of those who are in power or leadership (high status) versus those who are part of the larger organization or low status. Thus, people are disinclined to voice ethical questions or concerns.
Any steps to make organizational ethics stronger can succeed only if we actually take the steps. Taking action requires us to leave our role as passive bystanders (aka enablers) when we learn of questionable or unacceptable behavior, especially when the welfare of others is at stake. We must often teach ourselves how to leave the comfort and safety of “it’s not my problem,” “someone else will take care of this,” “it’s probably not as bad as it looks,” or “speaking up won’t make any difference.” (Pope, 2015)
While there seem to be differences between the past and now, between us and them, are things really that different? The landscape has changed. Perhaps no one is actually putting a child on their shoulders to witness their first lynching, but are we really any different or are we ultimately the same the same band of brothers that killed their father in Freud’s Totem and Taboo?
A quick perusal of television and the Internet leaves little to question. We lynch people in effigy, ruin reputations, kill their ability to work again, let corporate America sue the little guy or hide behind arbitration clauses. Have we progressed? It begins to look like we are the same as we ever were. Nothing has changed. Can we actually, on a moral or ethical level ever progress?
We make a horrendous mistake, I think, when we let ourselves believe we are more ethical than we were in the past. In that act of denial we shed ourselves of responsibility, not just as individuals but as a group, an organization, a profession and a nation. It is very easy to fall into that comfortable feeling that these “wars” have been fought. Every era is faced with problems that are as great, if not greater, than those faced before. The only thing evolving is the mask they wear. We must constantly work to plug the gaps that ultimately will always be there.
So what is the point of speaking up when the chances of it being effective and avoiding negative consequences are so low? Perhaps the tipping point that helps motivate us to act or speak up may simply come not from a realization that we are better people than those who have come before us, but rather in the realization that we are not.
Pope concluded that “a chance to make a difference can come at an inconvenient time and catch us off guard by appearing in forms we did not expect, that we can pass by it without noticing, and that we need to pay attention to what shows up unannounced at every step.
Pope, K. Steps to Strengthen Ethics in Organizations: Research Findings, Ethics Placebos, and What Works. 2015 J Trauma Dissociation. 2015 Mar 15; 16(2): 139–152.
2006 http://www.scribd.com/doc/74367362/David-Lease-Great-to-Ghastly Lease, D. R. From great to ghastly: How toxic organizational cultures poison companies: The rise and fall of Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, and Tyco International. Retrieved from.
This post originally appeared in the Illiinois Psychologist newsletter.
Posted by: Karla Steingraber, Psy.D.October 5th, 2016 Share
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