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Between Loyalties and Ideals
Emrys Westacott
A moral dilemma
Two years ago I was teaching an ethics course and I asked the students to describe
some moral dilemmas they had recently found themselves in. One student told the class
about a dilemma that had arisen for her here at Alfred, and what she said provoked a
fiery discussion that kept me thinking for a long time afterwards. I thought I would begin
today by presenting a slight variation on that dilemma, using it as a springboard for a few
reflections on the sort of moral pressures that people often feel when they are establishing
themselves in a new community.
So, imagine. It's a dark and stormy night--the night before an important exam.
Your roommate and several other people in your dorm will also be taking the exam, and
at around nine in the evening they blow into your room happily cackling over their
success in downloading the multiple choice section of the exam that the professor will be
using. They invite you to look over it with them.
Naturally, you refuse. You gather up your books, give your roommate a little
lecture about how crime doesn't pay, and take yourself off to the library to burn the
midnight oil there. After three more hours of honest study you return to your room. You
get into your pajamas, clean your teeth, polish your halo, offer up a brief prayer on behalf
of miserable sinners everywhere, get into bed, and enjoy the untroubled sleep of the
righteous.
The next day, the exam takes place, but the professor gets wind of the cheating
that has gone on. She decides to try to get to the to bottom of things, and interviews
members of the class individually. Your turn comes and you're asked if you know which
students cheated. What should you do?
Honesty—a modern ideal
Many of you are probably thinking: Well, I know what he's going to say. He's
obviously going to say that you should tell the truth. Perhaps you assume I'll say this out
of professional solidarity with the professor. But remember, all professors were students
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once, back in the days before ipods, before PowerPoint, before cell phones and CDs,
before the steam engine and the printing press, when cheating on an exam meant carving
crib notes on a bone and hiding it under your toga. Or maybe you just assume that, like
most people, I value honesty and truthfulness. After all, telling the truth is a moral ideal
that has great prestige in our culture. The ninth commandment says "Thou shalt not bear
false witness". Children are warned against the tangled webs they weave when first they
practice to deceive. George Washington, according to the legend, said that he could not
tell a lie--and no president since has felt able to tell one either. Nor any vice president.
Nor any attorney general.
It’s worth noting that truthfulness has not always been considered so important.
Think about the hero of Homer's Odyssey. Like many other heroes of folk literature and
legend, Odysseus is praised not for being honest but for being crafty, for getting results
through lies and deception. Odysseus, we can safely assume, would have been one of
those who cheated on the exam. But in our culture, today, honesty is widely viewed as a
cardinal virtue. Sometimes, in an ethics class, I ask students: which moral qualities
would you most like to see in your children? Almost always, the first one they mention is
honesty—ahead, of courage, or compassion, generosity or kindness, modesty, selfcontrol, or even wisdom.
So that is one horn of the dilemma. We are taught from infancy that truthfulness
is good. It is an ideal inculcated in us that we cannot help but respect.
What, then, is the other horn of the dilemma? In the situation I've described, what
would pull you in the other direction? The answer, I suggest, is loyalty—the sense that
you ought to stand by the group to which you belong. This sense of loyalty is an
peculiar phenomenon. Let’s look at it more closely.
Loyalty—a primitive virtue
There are various kinds of loyalty. You can be loyal to a particular person, to a
baseball team, to your home town, your employer, your country. What we’re talking
about here, though, is loyalty to a group—specifically, to a group of peers that you live
among and are in continuous contact with. I think a sense of loyalty of this sort is quite
likely the origin of what we call moral feelings. To put it another way, loyalty is a
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primitive virtue. In saying this, I don't mean to imply that loyalty would or should only
be valued by unsophisticated people. Not at all. I’m only suggesting that loyalty is a
quality you’d expect to find praised early on in the moral development of human beings.
A sense of loyalty is probably one of the earliest and most basic moral feelings.
Let me explain a little more why I think this—why I think a sense of loyalty is
foundational to morality. Ask yourself this question: How did human beings ever come
to look at things from a moral point of view? This is a genuinely profound question.
How did we ever start praising and blaming, rewarding and punishing, calling some
actions right and some actions wrong, describing some people as good and others as bad?
This is something we assume animals don't do. They don't look at the world through a
moral lens. That's why, as the poet Tennyson famously said, "nature is red in tooth and
claw." Animals aren't constrained by moral considerations. They do whatever they have
to do to survive. This is the lesson that the dog Buck learns quickly in Jack London's The
Call of the Wild.
Now humans can sometimes revert to that condition, but they do so only under
extreme and unusual circumstances, such as a complete breakdown of political authority.
Under normal circumstances, we temper self-interest with moral restraint. Go back to
our opening scenario. Your fellow students whom you are thinking of reporting may be
cheats, but they still operate within moral limits.. OK, they might be willing to hack into
a computer to steal the exam ahead of time; but they wouldn't slit the security guard's
throat to get hold of it. This is Alfred, not Cornell!
So—to return to my question--how did human beings first start thinking in moral
terms and having moral feelings? Many explanations have been put forward. The oldest
one is the religious account, according to which humans were created by God with an
inborn moral nature, ready to receive a set of moral rules handed down through
intermediaries like Moses, Jesus, or Mohammad. These great ethical teachers enjoy
some sort of privileged access to God's will, and they communicate what they learn to the
rest of us. This view held sway for milenia and it's still accepted by many. From a
scientific or scholarly point of view, of course, it's problematic since it appeals to the
supernatural, God being a supernatural entity.
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Another well-known theory is that morality emerged out of what is called a
“social contract”. Originally, human beings lived like animals in a so-called "state of
nature" where there were no rules, no laws, no moral expectations, no rights, duties or
obligations. The good news about the state of nature is that you enjoyy absolute freedom.
You can do whatever you want. You can bash your neighbours head in and steal his
zuccini and you won't be arrested, or tried, or punished; nor will you feel any sort of guilt
or shame or remorse. (You'll just be viewed as a bit nuts for stealing something as boring
as zuccini, which at this time of year people are giving away.)
But the bad news about the state of nature is that you can't trust anyone; you can't
make any long term plans; and you live in continual fear of being robbed, or raped, or
killed, or having zuccini stuffed in your mailbox. So, to get out of this unpleasant
situation, people come together and make an agreement with one another. They lay down
certain rules, and they give some king, or governing body, the power to enforce these
rules. Eventually, the rules become internalized and people feel uncomfortable when
they break them.
So that's two theories about the origin of morality: the religious theory and the
social contract theory. Another, more recent theory, is that morality emerges out of the
relationship between mother and child. A mother cares for her child instinctively, and
this instinct is part of nature. But it lays down the pattern for other caring relationships.
Morality is really all about caring, about transcending your self-interest and concerning
yourself with the well-being of others. Initially, people cared only about those very close
to them, mainly their own kin. Gradually, as society grew more complex, this concern
for others extended outwards to take in a wider circle of acquaintances. A noteworthy
feature of this view is that it doesn't understand morality as a set of rules that have to be
obeyed or applied like the Ten Commandments. Rather, the heart of moral life lies in
establishing and participating in caring relationships. A number of important feminist
thinkers have explored this way of thinking.
Alongside these ideas about caring, an evolutionary account of morality has
become increasingly popular. For a long time, morality was viewed as something
unnatural, or even anti-natural, a sort of harness that kept the beast within each of us
under control. But on an evolutionary view, morality is seen, instead, as something
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perfectly natural, evolving out of the obvious fact that human beings are social beings,
just like the other primates. We have to cooperate with one another to survive. Groups
where cooperation worked well flourished; groups that didn't cooperate well died out. So
over time, groups where the individual members began to develop feelings of obligation
and responsibility, trust and concern towards one another would do well in the survival
stakes. In other words, the development of moral feelings gave a group evolutionary
advantages. Conversely, anti-social attitudes would be disadvantageous. Thus people
with anti-social attitudes were selected out—or they joined fraternities. (It's interesting,
in this context, to note the title of the classic frat flick—"Animal House".)
I hope this makes it clearer what I mean when I say that loyalty is a primitive
virtue. The loyalty impulse has its roots in the fact that we are social beings. In fact you
could reasonably describe us as pack animals. We belong to a pack, work in a pack,
identify with the pack, depend on the pack—and so, of course, we defend ourselves as a
pack.
But here is where things get complicated—and interesting. If you're a wolf
belonging to a pack, your loyalty profile is pretty simple. To be sure, if you're a male
you'll scrap occasionally for mating privileges. But apart from that, you have a single
uncomplicated loyalty: to the pack.
Human beings, on the other hand, typically have a much more complex set of
loyalties. In earlier times or in certain traditional societies these nested or overlapping
loyalties might still be relatively few and clearly ordered: family, clan, village, tribe--that
probably covers it. But in a complex modern society, you quickly find yourself deep in a
forest of loyalty obligations: to your family, your friends, your colleagues, your school,
your sports team, your employer, your town, your country, your sex, your race, your
ethnic group, your political party, your church. And these loyalties can conflict with one
another. They can also conflict with other moral ideals and commitments—like the ideal
of truthfulness.
The nature of moral dilemmas
This is how I would analyze the moral dilemma I described earlier. You are
asked by your professor for details regarding the cheating practiced by your fellow
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students. This produces a conflict between loyalty to your peers and loyalty to the
institution as represented by the professor. It also produces a more acute conflict
between loyalty to your peer group and your commitment to moral ideals like honesy and
truthfulness.
It's fairly easy to think of other dilemmas that could be analyzed along the same
lines. Suppose a member of your peer group has injured someone while driving drunk
and you are being interviewed by the police. Would you tell the truth if you knew this
might land them in prison? What if the person was a member of your family? Should
this make any difference? Or suppose you are on a sports team and learn that several
members of the team are using performance-enhancing drugs. Would you report this to
anyone in authority? In each case I think you have a tug of war between a loyalty claim
and some ideal.
Now as I've already suggested, the claims on one's loyalty can be very powerful.
In many contexts they constitute an almost absolute taboo. Harry Potter may hate Draco
Malfoy's guts; and Malfoy may be working for Voldemort. But you can still be pretty
certain of one thing: Harry will never tell tales about Malfoy to the Hogwarts teachers, at
least not unless something really important is at stake, like the need to save the world
from absolute evil. Indeed, we'd be shocked if he did, because, like J.K. Rowling, we're
all familiar with the loyalty code that says students must close ranks before teachers. If
you notice, a similar code requires teachers to avoid criticizing one another in front of
students, although we prefer to call breaches of this code "unprofessional conduct". It
makes the code seem more dignified, less primitive.
Loyalties and ideals pullon us in different ways. Loyalty codes bind us with steel
bonds. Think of how readily particular groups— police officers, soldiers, doctors,
prisoners—just like students or teachers, will close ranks to protect their own against
accusations of wrongdoing. Loyalty is visceral rather than intellectual. Ideals, by
contrast, are somewhat abstract. Loyalty can be almost instinctual: ideals are more the
product of reflection. We have hard-wired into us a propensity to identify with and
protect the group we belong to. But we aren't hard-wired to cherish and defend such
things as equal opportunity, the golden rule, respect for the truth, or freedom of speech.
These values haven't been selected in by evolution over millions of years. They are
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ideals that our civilization has constructed slowly over the past two or three millennia: in
some cases, only over the past century or so. They are not even all compatible. Yet it is
a feature of modern times—a defining feature, perhaps--that the world is consciously
struggling to converge on a single set of core ideals that people everywhere can agree
upon. This is the impulse behind such initiatives as the UN's Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
Real moral dilemmas, like the one we began with, are painful. Of course, for
some people all choices are painful. (Should I have vanilla or strawberry ice cream ?
With or without chocolate sauce? My god, I just can't decide!) Here the problem is
simply that by choosing one thing you forego the other. But moral dilemmas are more
painful than that because they have to do more profoundly with your identity as an
individual. If I ask: Who are you? you're not going to say, "I'm someone who prefers
chocolate sauce on their ice cream." Or if you are, if that’s the sort of thing that reveals
the core of your being, it's frankly a bit sad. No, if I ask, Who are you? I would expect
you to tell me, among other things, something about the groups you identify with and
something about your ideals.
Moral dilemmas may be painful, but that doesn't mean they can or should be
avoided. Indeed, by coming to college, you are deliberately putting yourself in a
situation where you are more likely to experience this particular kind of anguish. You
leave behind your home community, perhaps some comfortable little village with just a
stoplight, a post office and a convenience store, and you come to Alfred—to get away
from all that noise and bustle You forge new loyalties, and sometimes these pull against
those you have back home. And the ideals you bring with you will also be challenged.
This is bound to happen, if you're a thinking person. People talk approvingly of those
who "have the courage of their convictions." Political leaders and TV ideologues love to
jut out their chins and pose as men of principle who stand firm and never waver. But as
the philosopher Nietzsche says, there's a deeper courage than the so-called courage of
one's convictions, and that is the courage to challenge one's convictions. In college you'll
encounter new ways of thinking about morality, religion, politics, society, culture,
science, and the arts [especially if you come to my coffee hour: Terracotta, Thursday
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afternoon]. In other words, you'll be given the opportunity and the tools to criticize
beliefs and values you may have so far taken for granted.
Negotiating the conflict between loyalties and ideals
Working through these changes, and trying to negotiate problems like a clash
between loyalties and ideals is hard work. The discomfort you feel might be called moral
growing pains, so long as that isn't taken to imply that there comes a point a few years
later, say on graduation, when you'll have satisfactorily resolved all your dilemmas.
Because they crop up continually and in many forms. Often, they arise in the nooks and
crannies of everyday life, as in the case of the downloaded exam that we began with, or
when a family member gets themselves into serious trouble, or when a good friend tells
an offensive joke, or when doing right by one friend involves breaking a promise made to
another. But people also find themselves stretched between loyalty and ideals in the
much grander arena of national and international politics. Think about the religious and
ethnic conflicts that are continually in the news— between Israelis and Palestinians,
between Sunni and Shia in Iraq; or between hindus and muslims in India. In many such
cases, I would argue, we find progress toward an ideal is blocked by the power of deepseated loyalties. This is understandable, perhaps, since in a dangerous environment
belonging to some group and sticking with them has always been an individual's first and
best kind of protection. But it is still unfortunate. Or think about the long-standing
tension in American politics between nationalism and internationalism—a tension that
can be found not just between parties but within a party--even within an individual.
Balancing loyalties and ideals is complicated. Ideals by themselves are likely to
be ineffective; loyalties without ideals are blind. There is no mechanical decision
procedure, no algorithm, no computer program that can integrate them. All you can do
when confronted with moral dilemmas is try to make informed, rational, sensitive
judgements. Making judgements in this way is what we call moral wisdom.
I could, of course, advise you to be wise; but there’s not much point. If your
parents’ parting advice to you was “Be wise!” then they were certainly being wellintentioned, but they were also being incredibly unhelpful—which is, of course, their
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inalienable and constituional right as parents. Telling you to be wise is a bit like saying,
“Oh, and one last thing—Don't screw up!” Genuinely useful advice has to be more
specific: Eat an apple every day. Don’t play your electric guitar in the bath.
Nor is there any short cut to moral wisdom. You will mess up sometimes.
Everyone does. But one way to reduce your chances of getting things badly wrong is to
belong to the right kind of community. I’d like to finish by saying a few words about this
notion of community, linking it to what I’ve been saying about loyalty and ideals.
There are all sorts of communities. A prison population is a community; so is the
army; so is a street gang, a law firm, a neighbourhood, a school. Each of these has a
unique identity, determined by the individuals that constitute it plus the ideals—the
beliefs and values--that it embodies.
Now, we’ve been talking throughout about tensions that can arise between one’s
loyalties and one’s ideals. And it may have occurred to you that there’s one obvious way
to reduce the chances of this sort of problem occurring: belong to a community that
embodies your ideals. That way, the group that demands your allegiance also stands for
what you believe in.
This makes sense. But it’s a bit too simple, and it’s important to see why. The
problem with what I’ve just said is that a lack of tension between your loyalties and your
ideals is not always a good thing. Racist, sexist, homophobic and intolerant attitudes will
find themselves at home in communities that are racist, sexist, homophobic or intolerant.
In such cases, we may have some kind of harmony between loyalty and ideals, but it’s
not a harmony to celebrate; it’s a harmony that needs to be disturbed.
This is why we need to talk not just about a community, but about an enlightened
community. An enlightened community is one that doesn't subjugate the individual to
the group but seeks the right sort of balance between individual and collective well-being.
So it tolerates difference, welcomes criticism, and strives after self-improvement. It also
recognizes the legitimate claims of other communities that exist alongside it or that may
even encompass it.
That, certainly, is the sort of community that Alfred University tries to be; and the
university has a distinguished record of championing enlightened ideals. For example, it
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one of the first co-educational colleges in the country; it admitted native american and
african american students in the 1840s and 1850s when educational opportunities for
minorities were hard to come by. This is an institution that priot to the civil war the
college and the town were strongly abolitionist—Frederick Douglass spoke here twice in
the 1850s and was warmly received. And at the outbreak of the civil war in 1861, every
graduating male that year immediately signed up in the union army. This is an
institution that was in the forefront of the struggle for women's suffrage.
As thousands of alumni can testify, Alfred is a community that has always
inspired a very strong sense of allegiance among those who belong to it. But it is the
mark of an enlightened institution—and this is true whether we're talking about a club or
company or a college or a country—that while it values the loyalty of its members, it
does not want that loyalty to be blind; it wants it to be deserved. Today you join this
community, our community. And part of the responsibility you take on in joining us is to
help make us that kind of institution.
Alfred University
August 23rd, 2007