What about when MOM is the abuser?

I recently had an experience that I wanted to blog about for my last post of this year. The experience got me to thinking about Moral Courage and how rare it often is. I try not to comment to much as my lack of writing skills becomes glaringly obvious when I do. But I think if more people would stand up and show moral courage in the new year we would have much less of the issues this blog has covered.


I want to start off with a quote from a school official from St Paul's School for Boys. The quote was made to parents after there was a scandal at the school.

"At a minimum," Hallett wrote to parents, "we should expect each boy here will, in the future, have the courage to stand up for, to quote the Lower School prayer, 'The hard right against the easy wrong.'"

The hard right against the easy wrong. There was a scandal at the school where a boy made a sex tape of him and a girl, without her knowledge, and later showed it to his Lacrosse team mates. None of his team mates objected or tried to stop the video, they just watched. Now this team was rated to be #1 and it would have been easy to give the kids a slap on the wrist and go on with the season. Here is what happened:

The boy who made the tape was expelled. Thirty varsity players were suspended for three days and sent into counseling with the school's chaplain and psychologist. And eight junior varsity players were made to sit out the rest of the season.

This is a story about moral courage-a lack of it among teammates who failed to object to the tape, and the expression of it by an administration that took a formidable public stand where in other schools it might have slid past with perfunctory penalties. - http://www.globalethics.org/pub/moral_courage_top.html


That final point explains the actions of the educators at St. Paul's. They already had a precept-"the hard right against the easy wrong"-to use as a reference point for testing the actions of the team. They must have known the value of examples-known that a Hollywood movie can poison budding moral sensibilities, and that in the absence of a strong ethical antidote the poison can do permanent damage. And as for practice, that was essential. They were building, over time, a tradition of moral education just as they were building a reputation for lacrosse. Yes, they sacrificed the short-term glory of a sterling athletic season and the financial support it could bring. But the long-term risk of educational hypocrisy-talking up values without walking down the road to integrity-would have been far more damaging.

And the last piece of that article is something that ALL leaders should consider, be it church or school:

In the annals of moral courage, this is a small story. It's not about a whistleblower, an investigative journalist, a researcher finding an unpopular truth, or the signers of the Declaration of Independence. But its very smallness is telling. Moral courage plays itself out daily, hourly, in the interstices of our lives. Without it, our brightest virtues rust from lack of use. With it, we build piece by piece a more ethical world.

And, at times, reap unexpected successes. By late April, the Boston Globe was already reporting rumors that admissions inquiries at St. Paul's were up from previous years. Which may suggest that while lacrosse is a big draw, moral courage is even bigger.

Moral courage is a big draw. It is such a big draw because it is such a rare thing these days. My grandfather once told me that the old saying talk is cheap was correct. He told me the way to judge people and places was to listen to the words and then see if they match the actions. "Its not about what you say, it is about what you do" that truly defines a person and their character he said. That article also lists this:

Moral courage, then, has four salient characteristics:

· It is the courage to be moral-to act with fairness, respect, responsibility, honesty, and compassion even when the risks of doing so are substantial.

· It requires a conscious awareness of those risks. The sleepwalker on the ridgepole is not courageous unless, waking up, he or she perceives the danger and goes forward anyway.

· It is never formulaic or automatic, but requires constant vigilance against its opposite (moral timidity) and its counterfeit (moral foolhardiness).

· It can be promoted, encouraged, and taught through precept, example, and practice.


How many times do we tell our own children to resist peer pressure and just say no, or walk away, or tell someone? Yet do we do this when we are put in these situations?

Moral courage is not about facing physical challenges that could harm the body. It's about facing mental challenges that could harm one's reputation, emotional well-being, self-esteem, or other characteristics.

How many Enron's do we all personally face each day yet say nothing? How many tiny acts of wrong do we overlook each day for the sake of a promotion, fitting in, fear, and various other reasons? We rationalize to ourselves that this is how things are in the real world and go on like nothing happened. We selectively pull passages from the Bible to reassure ourselves, and others, that we are doing the right thing when we look the other way. How many times have we not spoken up when we should have? When Joe or Jane or a leader or friend has made comments about an entire class of people yet we sit silently and say nothing.

Here is a bit from another article:

“If you’ll steal a nickel, you’ll steal a million dollars. If you sell your character for a little thing, you’ll sell it for anything, because you’ll start to git used to puttin' your character up for sale. After awhile, you won’t think twice about it. I seed it happen to folks.”

I wish I could say I have never sold out. The truth is I can’t calculate the number of times I have. I called it “compromise.” I’d carry water for a boss’s error to keep a job or get a raise. I’d pretend I believed something I knew to be a lie to not make waves. I’d dance around some sycophantic Maypole, holding hands with others while we sang the praises of the powerful or the elite while they were in our presence...

The lies I’d told formed a long parade around me. The times I’d been silent when I should have spoken up. The times I’d been tricky for my personal gain. The times I'd been self-consumed and self-indulgent. The times I did something for personal aggrandizement as much as for the “cause.” The times I’d glossed over a misdeed to avoid criticism. The times I’d failed my friends. The times I’d failed my children. The huge sums of money I’d spent on clothes (that I no longer had) to impress people when I could have spent it helping people. I had cut corners and cut deals when I knew better.

Have we not all done this to various degree's? I wish I could say that I had not but that would be a lie. Doing the right thing is one of the key points of the Bible that often gets left out or the message scrambled as people try to define what the "right thing" is. Displaying moral courage IS the right thing.

Jesus himself is the supreme example of Moral Courage. He stood up and challenged the wrongs he saw being committed by his own brethren in their church's and daily life. He did so knowing what the end result could and probably would be. The truth is that doing anything that might really bring about sweeping change is never immediately popular and more often than not apt to get you killed. From Jesus to King to Gandhi to Mother Jones to Tubman, none were popular until after they were dead.

The everyday struggles matter even more. When we stand up to the smallest injustice, we show the greatest courage. If we can’t stand up to the smaller things, we won’t be seasoned enough to tackle the bigger ones. - http://www.schoolformoralcourage.com/sellingout.html

How many times do we discount someone or something they say because of something about the person we find disagreeable? Gandhi was not a Christian so we just discount him and everything he stood for and did out of hand?

Lastly I want to take some snippets from another blog. That blog sets forth the personal views of the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law on various issues and he touched upon this subject. Here are some things he had to say:

There is, however, another type of courage, moral courage. This, as I understand it, is the courage to do and say what is right, or what you truly believe, even though you will catch several different kinds of hell for doing or saying it.

Moral courage is not something this writer understood in his younger days. For he was raised by semi-socialistic immigrant advocates of social justice, who taught that one should always do and say what is right and the world will respect you for it. So doing and saying what was right was not a matter of courage. It was simply the way one acted and spoke.

After awhile, of course, the first generation American learns that this philosophy is usually just foolishness and self destructive in America. Here, doing and saying what is right does not gain one respect. Instead, it leads to getting smacked upside the head. The smack may be professional, may be social, can sometimes even be physical one guesses. Because of it, there is such a thing as moral courage. Moral courage is the courage to do or say what is right. It is the courage not to silently go along with the crowd. - http://velvelonnationalaffairs.blogspot.com/2006/04/re-physical-courage-moral-courage-and.html

And of course he is right. Though I know there will be people that will discount anything he has to say simply because he has the "liberal" title on him. Which of course displays moral cowardice by discounting what he may say based on that rather than if it is true or not.

Which brings me back to the beginning of my rambling post. Moral Courage is a draw because it is so rare. The School might have upset some people at the school and church by the discipline they issued to them. But the long term benefits are that people saw that the school leadership not only talked the talk, but they walked the walk and so enrollment applications have increased.

Mark Twain wrote this letter about Moral Courage:

My Dear Sir:

But you are proceeding upon the superstition that Moral Courage and a Hankering to Learn the Truth are ingredients in the human being's makeup. Your premises being wild and foolish, you naturally and properly get wild and foolish results. If you will now reform, and in future proceed upon the sane and unchallengeable hypothesis that those two ingredients are on vacation in our race, and have been from the start, you will be able to account for some things which seem to puzzle you now.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.
Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, Dec. 21, 1901.


Lets look at Enron a little:

Enron was not only a financial Ponzi scheme but an ethical one. The whole charade would have ended if one man or woman who knew or suspected the truth had stood up and said no, I will not be Enroned into silence. Even Sherron Watkins, the internal whistle-blower, said she did not go to the board with what she knew for fear of losing her job. She did, however, sell some of her Enron stock, getting off the ship before it sank with nary a whisper to the crew. And she was the best of the lot.

Why did no one stand up? Let's apply moral realism to the question, seeking not to forgive but to understand.

It is hard to stand up: our ethical Occam's Razor need cut no closer than that. How many of us have kept in our seats when the path of right lay up the hill, so clear but so difficult, before us? Unlike physical courage, writes one ethicist, moral courage is "lonely courage." Frank Serpico, the New York City policeman who exposed corruption in the department, was ostracized by his fellow officers, beaten, and nearly killed for his lonely courage.

Another reason people don't blow the whistle is that they would have to blow it on themselves. "The only way you get to know these things," says a social worker who has worked with whistleblowers, "is that you have been in the thick of it." J. Clifford Baxter, the Enron vice president who committed suicide in January, took his concerns about the partnerships to Skilling, was ignored, then, having made his feeble gesture, sold his stock for millions and retired. Whistleblowers, says the social worker, often "take on the guilt of the organization." The weight of Enron's guilt may have been too much for Baxter to bear.

Countervailing ethical demands also keep us from acting ethically. Ibsen's Dr. Stockman, in Enemy of the People, stands up to expose a public health scandal—and his righteousness destroys his family. Many of us would be moral lions if we did not have kids.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200203u/pp2002-03-13


And another article tidbit. This also touches on the issue of "knowing" someone and "knowing" they could not do something etc. Basically losing your objectivity because of your personal relationship with a person:

People who know some of Enron's former executives say they really believe they did nothing wrong. The rabbi of one Enron executive reportedly has said he was one of the "most moral" members of his congregation.

How can this be? What enabled people at Enron and other now-disgraced companies to go so far astray from what most of us consider ethical behavior was the fact that they were surrounded by a culture that not only accepted but admired and encouraged their behavior.

The only thing that stops people from doing what is wrong-if not their own morality-is strong disapproval from those around them. But such disapproval, whether based on moral values or sound business principals, was entirely lacking at Enron.

A senior Enron executive put it this way: "I've had a very lucrative career. But it's cost me my soul." - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3942/is_200210/ai_n9133851

And an interesting blurb I found from another article:

Whistleblowers give witness to the reality of these fears. Movies such as Silkwood, The Insider, and A Civil Action demonstrate how hard it is to fight the corporate power structure, but perhaps leave us believing that these cases are rare publicized exceptions. Yet bring up the subject in almost any group, and one or more will be able to relate stories in which either their livelihood or that of someone they personally knew was threatened because they refused to yield to pressure to cover-up wrongdoing, inefficiencies or incomplete decision-making processes. Such is the way we have rewarded “right action” in our culture.

All of these things point out why it is important to have outside, truly objective, people, boards, whatever, to rely upon and to seek guidance from. When people say they are afraid to speak the truth at school or church because of what might happen to them or their children, that is a very strong signal that some deep soul searching discussions need to be occurring. Discussions that are not looking to fix blame or punish, rather discussions on how to put things right and repair, if possible, the relationships and people that have been harmed. Discussions on how to fix the culture and let people know it is not right to do these things to others that are not a part of "our group".

Anyways I am done rambling for now and hope this was not to convoluted or obscure and hopefully my point comes across as I hoped.