Doing the Right Thing Can Be Hard – But You Should Do It, Anyway

I will always act so as to not harm/disrespect/etc. other people. However, I'm not on a suicide mission in this life. I will help others, so long as it does not exceed a certain hurt threshold on this end.

Nice post. I had forgotten about O'Conner's protest. And I cannot believe someone would actually get on television and say they would "smack" a woman. That's insane. America owes Sinead O'Conner a huge apology.

I remember watching the broadcast. At the time, I was starting to become aware of the Vatican's self-serving world view and assumed that the song being sung, "War" and the singer's appeal to stop evil refereed to politics of war and nothing more. Even now, how do we know she was speaking about the highly organized child rape that was occurring. I wish she had been clear that she was speaking about rape if she actually was. Many people find a way to justify war in their mind especially if their religion condones it, but nobody can justify child rape.

I have never held out much love for the Vatican nor the Catholic Church as an institution. I find the scales largely out of balance, and cannot accept that the "ends justified/justify the means." I find too often that there are precious few people (of any faith) who are willing to martyr themselves for the causes of righteousness and justice.

I have personal reasons why I have chosen to eschew organized religion entirely, and I consider myself lucky that during my teen years, I came to the conclusion that religion and organized faith were not consistent with my internal worldview. I find it unconscionable the depths of depravity that people are able to rationalize in their own lives and the lives of others when couched in the veneer of self-serving piety. In my experience, once you scratch the surface of most "believers" their knowledge and depth of practice of their own faith is largely superficial.

And now to address the larger issue, rather than the example: I am not sure how I would react were I to find myself in the midst of such a moral hazard with means to effect change. I would hope that I could expect of myself such bravery and selfless commitment to what is right as was displayed by Ms. O’Connor. I am thankful that she felt the compulsion to act despite the risks to her career and her life.

I don't steal because I do not want to be stolen from. I don't rape, murder, or injure others because I do not want others to rape, murder, or injure me. I stand up for justice for others because I expect them to stand up for justice for me. I say all of that, but I have never truly been put to the test, and have never had my feet held to the fire. Until the day comes when I am tested, I cannot truly know if I can live up to the ideal to which I aspire.

I agree, to remain silent is to side with evil. We have a duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves (children and animals). It's the principle of the matter. It's the right thing to do.

It's one thing to be unaware. But to be aware of something like this and then turn your head, is just as evil.

JUST BECAUSE YOU FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE WITH A DECISION DOES NOT
MEAN YOUR CHOICE IS UNETHICAL OR IF ETHICS IS NOT INVOLVED THEN UNWISE.

A man was afraid to face the truth that he had a serious heart condition. He survives a heart attack. He is lucky that he does not have organ damage. He then gets the pacemaker. He should have gotten the pacemaker when the doctor first recommended it. He made a mistake.

A child had eye cancer. He was treated with drugs but the cancer was not responding to the drugs. The parents had to make the terrible decision to make her son blind to save his life.

In those stories the decision makers felt uncomfortable.

SOME TIMES IT IS BEST TO STAY UNEMOTIONAL.

Suppose you are a doctor interpreting test results. Cancer is awful news. But as a doctor you need to be objective and unemotional. If cancer is present then you need to see it. You cannot wish away cancer. But of course being unemotional does not mean that you do not care about the patient.

There is a reason that surgeons do not operate on their family members. People care about their family members. If you a terribly afraid of making a mistake during your mother's heart surgery then you are much more likely to make a mistake.

Feelings are neither ethical or unethical.

Feelings may be rational or irrational. Feelings may be mature or immature. People feel their feelings. People have a right to feel their feelings. People do not choose their feelings.

Emotions are from the right hemisphere is of the brain. Logic and moral reasoning are from the left hemisphere of the brain.

You may feel very sad about doing something that is good and ethical.

There is a difference between doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and feeling bad about doing the right thing.

You may get more moral credit for doing the right thing and feeling bad about it.

An ethical dilemma is when you do not know what is ethical. A conflict of right verses right. But what if you intellectually know what is right and you shirk your ethical duty for your own comfort. Be ethical.

If you ran a business school, would you include a course on the Catholic Church?

I think the Catholic Church could provide an interesting series of case studies throughout history simply because it is one of the oldest institutions in the world. It has all sorts of real-life business lessons embedded that could serve as useful learning experience. For example:

1. The consequences of failing to expose corruption. It is not an exaggeration to say that during a period in the 20th century, the Catholic Church leadership represented and enabled what amounted to the largest pedophile ring in the world as people stood by and did nothing. (Within the past few hours, Minnesota has announced charges relating to one of the old cases.) It single handedly ruined lives, destroyed the institution's reputation capital, and drove away customers who would have been loyal for generations. This failure to act is, at its core, identical to what brought down Gutfreund at Solomon who, himself, wasn't involved in initial wrongdoings.

2. Agency risk. The so-called "Bishop of Bling's" $42 million mansion built with church funds is a classic example of misappropriation little different from the former CEO of Tyco.

3. Holding company structure, bankruptcy protections, and fraudulent transfer asset protection techniques. One useful case study: When the aforementioned scandals took place, Timothy Dolan established a cemetery trust and transferred property to it for what was alleged to be the sole purpose of effectively making one of the diocese where abuse occurred insolvent; thus, victims would be unable to collect monetary damages that the money would still be controlled by the institution that had allowed so many children to be raped. His actions were originally upheld by a Federal court but upon appeal, the Circuit Court looked at the evidence and reversed the decision, saying the $55 million Dolan attempted to put out reach was "fair game".

4. Socially responsible capital allocation decisions that align or misalign with the stated core beliefs of your institution. To build on the last point, if you really want to go down the proverbial rabbit hole, start tracing the money and holding structures used by the parent company to hide assets and then look at what those assets are. There are office buildings in London paid for with "look the other way money" Italian dictator Mussolini shoved in their pockets while millions of people were being hauled off to ovens in concentration camps. There is a massive gay bathhouse / sex club in Rome serving as the core tenant in a $30 million building in which the Church holds majority equity, meaning while they preach against monogamous gay couples getting married in the United States, they are literally paying the bills with cover charges given to them by men looking for one-night stands and orgies. There are tax shelters in out-of-the-way islands.

5. Market share. The mental models and methodology the Church has used to maintain and expand market share is worth its own course alone. The core bedrock rests upon childhood indoctrination (How many people, if raised in a rational environment who were not exposed to the teachings as a child, would study Catholicism and say, "Yes. That's exactly the truth and best explains the world as it is given the evidence."? I doubt very few.) Add in self-regulating disincentives to modify behavior (fear of a place called hell as well as the existence of purgatory); social proof (reach critical mass by converting, through force if necessary, native populations, or, as it did in the 20th century, exporting white children who have been properly indoctrinated to colonies throughout the world to keep non-whites in the minority); authority respecting tendency (especially when shrouded in "mystery", ceremonial robes, what were once the largest buildings in town, etc.) Decentralized operations a la Johnson & Johnson or Berkshire Hathaway. The introduction of non-Biblical vows of poverty and celibacy to maintain institutional power at the expense of family bonds, which are often stronger. The list goes on for miles. It's total lollapalooza, as Charlie would say.

I mean ... yeah. We could keep going and there could be an entire semester taking case studies of the good and bad it has done in the world, along with the mechanisms through which it achieved it with varying degrees of effectiveness. You could even get into governance issues to examine how power has transferred without the existence of stockholders.

That said, would I? Probably not. Unless they've adapted rationality as the lens through which they look at the world, most people go into "click-whirl" response when dealing with certain topics. They would approach such a course, knowingly or unknowingly, from the perspective of tribalism and seek confirmation of their existing biases; all of those non-examined assumptions that were drilled into their head without any evidence before they were old enough to think having already taken root; things that they would reject out of hand as absurd were they presented with them at 20 or 30 years old, with a little bit of life experience under their belt. Unlike the worship of Zeus or the temples built in honor of Marduk, Catholicism is still practiced therefore it's harder to abstract the lessons in their raw, academic form.

To give you an example, imagine you were teaching a course of anthropology. You examine behavior of ancient Greeks. You talk about how women would go get an amulet blessed, pray over it, and ask the gods to protect their sons as they rode off into battle or undertook some far away trip. Simple enough, right? You understand why the behavior evolved; how it gave an illusion of control; how it provided relief from anxiety; how it might give strength to act, believing your were protected when you otherwise might be too paralyzed to do anything.

Now, imagine you taught the exact same thing. Only, this time, you use an example of an older woman praying the Rosary, taking Rosary beads, and asking for her grandson in Iraq to be protected or her daughter to survive a battle with cancer. Suddenly, despite it being the exact same anthropological behavior - and the fact that for a vast majority of human civilization, Catholicism has not existed - you're going to run into anarchy. Unless the audience is filled with critical thinkers, you can't John Stuart Mill it because too much of their ego, hopes, fears, and dreams are tied up in the idea not being disproven or seen as comparable. "It's not the same!" they'll decry. Religious parents are going to talk about professors having a "secular humanist" perspective, attempting to "indoctrinate" their kids. There is no winning. You cannot look at the topic objectively unless you can somehow ensure the participants can separate themselves, almost like a surgeon, from the topic, turning it over in their hands and trying to look at it from a third-party perspective like Munger talks about athletes watching game day tapes or pilots evaluating their performance using data, not feeling.

If you doubt it, consider, again, that all of us - you me, and everyone who happens to stumble into this old comment thread - are atheists or agnostic for at least 99% of the 5,000+ deities that have been worshipped throughout human history. There was a time when practically the entire known world praised Zeus and the pantheon of gods at his side. The idea that the world would ever be completely devoid of believers would have been unthinkable to nearly all living men, women, and children in Western civilization. Yet, here we are today and the same pattern played out as did in ancient Babylon, China, and everywhere in between. Catholicism, again, hasn't existed for a vast majority of human history. There is absolutely no way it still exists in its present form tens of thousands of years from now as it evolves to adapt to changing understandings of the nature of the universe and world. It's just reality. Human history has borne it out over and over again. Yet, I guarantee most of the people who hold it near and dear to their heart have not, and will not, consider such a thing. They'd almost violently reject it the moment they saw the words. Reality doesn't care much about how we, as humans, feel so to a rationalist, it is what it is. As Thomas Jefferson famously put it, "the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter". If you quoted those words in this part of the country without mentioning it was something the founding father wrote, it'd start a fight. They will argue with you, offended, saying "this time is different" even though it will almost assuredly play out exactly like the thousands upon thousands of institutions and belief systems before it.

All that said, from an administrative perspective, I'd almost definitely conclude I could teach the exact same lessons through different means without running into any of the mental gymnastics and defense systems that would be activated by using other case studies. Since the mission of the school is to produce better business leaders and executives, I'd probably be more successful using that tactic. As such, I'd most likely pass.

I would, however, include it as an elective humanities course in the liberal arts department. During my undergraduate years, the chair of the department was wonderful. She'd bring in Jewish Rabbis to teach on Judaism, real-world scientists active in the field to offer introductory courses to genetics, and historians to look at geopolitical events in certain countries during certain centuries. I signed up for nearly everything I could just to be exposed to different ideas. I'd probably name it something dry, too, to scare away the non-rationalists like "Practical Lessons from an Objective Analysis of the Historical and Modern Institutional Dynamics of Organized Religion".