Big Questions: What is the right thing to do?

Everyone on the chartered jet was jubilant.  The plane was filled with Georgia Southern football players, coaches, mangers, trainers, and a bunch of fans (including my family) who were fortunate enough to accompany them to Tacoma, Washington for their first Division I-AA National Championship game in 1985. And, we were so joyful with our win our rival Furman University ended with a last-minute pass from Tracy Ham to Frankie Johnson. 

The flight attendants busily served those who were of age (and perhaps some who were not) with the drinks they ordered.   Unfortunately, the food was served much later, and some of the team members were celebrating a bit too much.  They seemed to find it amusing to harass the female flight attendants.  Coach Erk Russell heard some of the remarks from his front row seat.  I watched as he stood up with a stern look on his face.  He walked back to where the players were – stared at them and said, “Do Right!”  That was all that was needed.  They settled down immediately. 

I had heard Coach Russell share before that he had only one rule for behavior of the team – and that was to “Do Right!”  He shared that most of the players knew by the time they came to college what the right thing was to do – so they did not need to have to have more specific rules.  I was not sure that I entirely agreed with him.  But it surely did work on the plane that evening.  Even the fans behaved a bit better.

But it’s not always so simple to know the right thing to do, is it?  Philosophers, theologians, psychologists, biologists, and others have studied this, of course - specifically studying how and why we may make the decisions that we do make when we have a moral dilemma.

What is a moral dilemma.  The most famous example is probably the Heinz dilemma.  Here is one version used by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg:

A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors said would save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's laboratory to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not? 

Now forgive me for getting into my teacher mode – but this is the kind of information I taught in my Human Growth and Development class at Georgia Southern back in the day.  Kohlberg did a long-range study following his participants through different ages to see how they answered this and other questions.  (Some of his methods were later criticized – and I’ll share about that later.)  In any case, his findings are probably still the best known and used to show how people tend to move through stages in developing their morality.  And it’s not the ANSWER they give to the question – is the reason they shared for why they gave the answer they did. 

Kohlberg concluded that there are three levels – each containing two stages of moral development.  Here is a chart with how the responses to the Heinz dilemma would be categorized by Kohlberg.

 

#	Level	Stage	Heinz should steal the drug, because	Heinz should not steal the drug, because
1	Pre-Conventional	Obedience	It is only worth $200 and not how much the druggist wanted for it; Heinz had even offered to pay for it and was not stealing anything else.	He will consequently be put in prison which will mean he is a bad person.
		Self-interest	He will be much happier if he saves his wife, even if he has to serve a prison sentence.	Prison is an awful place, and he would more likely languish in a jail cell than over his wife's death.
2	Conventional	Conformity	His wife expects it; he wants to be a good husband.	Stealing is bad and he is not a criminal; he has tried to do everything he can without breaking the law, you cannot blame him.
		Law-and-order	His wife will benefit, but he should also take the prescribed punishment for the crime as well as paying the druggist what he is owed. Criminals cannot just run around without regard for the law; actions have consequences.	The law prohibits stealing.
3	Post-Conventional	Social contract orientation	Everyone has a right to choose life, regardless of the law.	The scientist has a right to fair compensation. Even if his wife is sick, it does not make his actions right.
		Universal human ethics	Saving a human life is a more fundamental value than the property rights of another person.	Others may need the medicine just as badly, and their lives are equally significant.

 

Later psychologists replicated his study using other stories and a wider age-span.  They concluded that we must pass through each of these levels and stages though few of us get to the last one – at least in what we actually do – not what we say we will do. 

Piaget, Kohlberg and others will tell us that a young child is just not developmentally able to base their decision making on the kind of moral reasoning that would put them at the post-conventional level.  And – many adults are not either. 

Now what their choice WOULD be – is often determined by the environment – and what they were taught as they were raised – and the laws on their culture and their religion, too. 

We all face these dilemmas.  Maybe not one like Heinz did – but we all get “in a pickle.”  When I taught elementary school, I would play a pickle jar game with my students – and put in dilemmas that they might actually encounter, then ask them what they would do and why – and we’d talk about it.  I changed some of the situations, but did the same game with my college students at Georgia Southern.  I won’t bring out the pickle jar for you – but you know you’ve been “in a pickle” many times. 

Now I told you that I was going to let you know that some believe Kohlberg may have missed the mark a bit – as we all do.  For one thing, he used only boys in his longitudinal study – no girls. 

Along comes Carol Gilligan  She did her own studies and wrote a book in 1982 called – “In a Different Voice.” 

Gilligan proposed that women come to prioritize an "ethics of care" as their sense of morality evolves along with their sense of self while men prioritize an "ethics of justice."

She also indicated that women go through levels and have transitions between each level. 

Now she got some criticism as well – because, of course, it will be different with different cultures and more.

But the thing is that we do develop our moral decision-making ability – and of course, this is greatly affected by our experiences in life.

One of the most famous moral dilemma’s in American Literature is shared in Mark Twain’s novel, Huckleberry Finn. 

You may remember that Huck had befriended Jim, an enslaved man who had escaped from Miss Watson.  And Huck and Jim were on the river to freedom for Jim.  Now Huck’s morality and his conscious of what was right and wrong were based on what he had learned as a white boy living in a rural Missouri where folks considered enslaved people to be property.  He also learned that it was wrong to steal someone else’s property.  So, as they made their way, and were getting closer to the border where Jim would be free, his conscience started to really bother him. 

Here's a quote from Huck, himself about this:

Jim said it made him all trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.  Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, to, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free – and who was to blame for it?  Why, me.  I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way….  It hadn’t ever come home to me, before, what this thing was that I was doing.  But now it did, and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more.  I tried to make out to myself that I wasn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it wasn’t no use conscience up and say, every time.  “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.” That was so—I couldn’t get around that, no way.  That was where it pinched.  Conscience says to me:  “What had poor Miss Watson done to you, …that you could treat her so mean?” …. I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. 

Now, as his conscience bothered him more and more, Jim made a plan to say he was going to paddle up the river pretending he was going on a reconnaissance mission, but really planning to turn Jim in.  And as he paddled off on the raft, Jim was shouting to him.  “Pooty soon Ill be a shount’n for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck I’s a free man..Jim won’t ever forgit you Huck:  you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ old Jim got now.”

Well, to make a longer story short – Jim just couldn’t turn him in, though knew it was the right thing to do – to turn him in. It wasn’t that he thought at some higher level of moral reasoning.  He still would say that to turn him in was the right thing.  And he commiserated, again, over a later opportunity to do so.  But he loved Jim, so he did what all of US would think was the right thing – and did not turn him in.  His Sunday School lessons led him to know that his actions would lead him to go to hell.  But with all the gumption a 13-year-old boy can muster, he declares, “All right then, I’ll go to hell.” I’m not sure what Kohlberg would say about Jim’s reasoning – but I’d say that LOVE won. 

Thankfully, unlike Huck Finn, I don’t believe in Hell.  But I have had other folks who say they love me worry that that is where I’m headed.  If that was the case, I think their ideas of who’s to hell might make me a winner – in good company!!

Now I have something to tell you that may sound a little self-serving since I’m a Unitarian Universalists minister, but I’ve decided to share it anyway. 

I think that being involved in Unitarian Universalism, exploring ideas and situations with all of you, other UU ministers, and reading books and articles recommended by other Unitarian Universalists has shifted my thinking over time to something that, frankly, is better.  I don’t know if I’d still make it to the top of Kohlberg’s chart – or Gilligan’s --- but that’s not what is important to me anyway.  I just want to try to do the right thing.  And being with you folks helps me to be  more accountable to that effort and to – I hope – make better choices.

I’ll close with the slide of the proposed values  that we agree to especially lift up as Unitarian Universalists.  Now of course there are other values that are important to many of us – but the article 2 study commission felt that these were values that we especially need to lift up as UUs – perhaps because they may not be lifted up in Huck Finn’s Sunday School class or – seemingly – by many state legislatures and more.  And these are all values that are important to me – with of course, that central value guiding all of us – which is LOVE. 

How do we know what is the right thing to do?  It’s hard sometimes.  No doubt about it.  But we can all make that attempt to let Love guide us.

(Sing)

Love will guide us, peace has tried us,

Hope inside us, will lead the way

On the road from greed to giving.

Love will guide us through the hard night.

If you cannot speak like angels,

If you cannot speak before thousands,

You can give from deep within you.

You can change the world with your love.

 

May it be so!