Moral Rebels: On the Scarcity of Moral Courage

“I do not myself believe that many people do things because they think they are the right thing to do . . . . I do not think that knowledge of what is morally right is motivational in any serious sense for anyone except a handful of saints.” Federal judge Richard Posner commenting on the creeps and characters who traipsed through his court room for decades always pleading their real or imagined innocence, Social Norms, Social Meaning and Economic Analysis of Law: A Comment, 27 J. Legal Studies, 553:560, 1998

“What is morally right is a matter of long-term human survival. The days of pretending that we cannot self-annihilate or that God will intervene to save us from ourselves are illusions. There are two choices with two moral paths, immoral business as usual or a moral, honest and fundamental reassessment for our condition and situation. The reassessment requires real guts, i.e., moral courage. The easy but deadly dangerous way is business as usual.” -- Germaine, July 14, 2020

A BBC article, Why some people risk everything to be whistleblowers, discusses some of the science and reality of what it takes to have moral courage. The BBC refers to people with moral courage as moral rebels. The BBC writes:

"Moral rebels speak up in all types of situations – to tell a bully to cut it out, to confront a friend who uses a racist slur, to report a colleague who engages in corporate fraud. What enables some people to call out bad behavior, even if doing so may have costs? 

First, moral rebels generally feel good about themselves. They tend to have high self-esteem and to feel confident about their own judgment, values and ability. They also believe their own views are superior to those of others, and thus that they have a social responsibility to share those beliefs. 

Moral rebels are also less socially inhibited than others. They aren’t worried about feeling embarrassed or having an awkward interaction. Perhaps most importantly, they are far less concerned about conforming to the crowd. So, when they have to choose between fitting in and doing the right thing, they will probably choose to do what they see as right."

The article goes on to briefly touch on some brain and science stuff, in this case the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. The article asserts that for moral rebels, it generally doesn't feel so bad to feel different than others. Not mattering so much makes it easier for rebels to stand up to social pressure.

The article also comments that what rebels stand up for vary widely. For these people, it is more about standing up to social pressure to stay silent. That pressure can be applied to just about anything. The point is that rebels withstand the social pressure from their family, group or tribe better than most people.

The moral rebel mindset seems to be fostered by having seen moral courage in action. Moral rebels tend to feel empathy and an ability to imagine the world from someone else’s perspective. Getting to know people from different backgrounds helps. The article points out that research data shows that white high school students with more contact with people from different ethnic groups generally have higher levels of empathy. They tend to see people from different minority groups more positively.

The article concludes:

"Finally, moral rebels need particular skills and practice using them. One study found that teenagers who held their own in an argument with their mother, using reasoned arguments instead of whining, pressure or insults, were the most resistant to peer pressure to use drugs or drink alcohol later on. Why? People who have practiced making effective arguments and sticking with them under pressure are better able to use these same techniques with their peers. .... It is possible to develop the ability to stand up to social pressure. In other words, anyone can learn to be a moral rebel."

Why bring this up? Pragmatic rationalism

This article makes a point that's central to understand pragmatic rationalism (PR). One of the most powerful influences on our perceptions of reality, beliefs and behavior is social pressure.[1] The influence is mostly (~98% ?) unconscious and unknown. That was the main point that Peter Berger made in his short 1963 masterpiece, Invitation to Sociology. Berger was blunt about how disruptive this knowledge can be to some people. He felt knowledge of the power of social institutions was so deeply disturbing that he questioned in 1963 whether it should even be taught to college undergraduates, but dismissed it as innocuous because most of us are oblivious creatures because we evolved to be that way:

“What right does any man have to shake the taken-for-granted beliefs of others? Why educate young people to see the precariousness of things they had assumed to be absolutely solid? Why introduce them to the subtle erosion of critical thought? .... the taken-for-granted are far too solidly entrenched in consciousness to be that easily shaken by, say, a couple of sophomore courses. ‘Culture shock’ is not induced that readily.” 

In other words, mindsets rarely change and facts don't usually matter much or at all. Massive shock tends to be what it usually takes. The German people after WWII is an example. They had a real shock. Teaching a couple of sociology courses to undergraduates in the US will not faze them in their rock solid but false beliefs in themselves and their grasp of reality and false sense of mental freedom. Note the point Berger makes, “the subtle erosion of critical thought.” 

Critical thought is a false certainty killer. I know that truth from direct personal experience, and I'm not even much good at it.

At present, PR has no significant chance of gaining significant social influence unless and until society builds institutions that revere and adhere to the core moral values of that anti-ideology ideology, or from a better variant of it than I can envision. From what I can tell, the PR concept is no less radical that what Berger was concerned about teaching to college students. But like the German people after WWII, it just might take a similar shock. That assumes it won't be too late for us to save ourselves. That is an open question.

Or, am I being waaay too self-important, self-righteous and/or otherwise self-deluded?

 Footnote:
1. The most piercing, in-your-face modern arguments about the staggering power of social situation that I am aware of is in an article by legal scholars Don Hanson and David Yosifon, The Situation: An Introduction to the Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, and Deep Capture. They wrote:

“We have already summarized some of the "evidence that people are inclined to offer dispositionist explanations for behavior instead of situationist ones, and that they make inferences about the characteristics of actors when they would do well to make inferences instead about the characteristics of situations ...." We have also suggested that this fundamental attribution error has not spared the professional and credentialed minds of economists and legal economists-hence, our repeated emphasis on the fact that they too are human. 

Regarding the first question, our gun-to-the-head example makes clear that our dispositionism does occasionally give way to situationism. The example is particularly apt because it appears that we rarely see situation unless the situation is thrust upon us in the form of another hard-to-miss actor such as a person wielding a gun. 

Even a very obvious, controllable, and tangible situational influence-money-is commonly overlooked in favor of dispositionist explanations of behavior. The effects of financial incentives on lay people tend to be understood in terms of stable dispositional proclivities.”

Fundamental attribution error: the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations for their behavior. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are".

Social situation rules. People tend to not do who they are. Instead, they tend to do what their social situation dictates they must do. Moral rebels aren't like that at least sometimes in some situations. Sometimes, they have the moral courage to resist their social situation.