So you walk out of a chain drug store and there’s a homeless man sitting on the ground. You decided inside to give him whatever change you got from your purchase, so you hand it to him immediately. You say, “Be well,” and walk away. And then you ask yourself, “Why did I do it?” And you answer, “Because I felt obligated to, because I would feel embarrassed and guilty if I didn’t.” And it is that answer – those sorts of answers that we give to ourselves all the time – that I want to do away with. When we give that money we shouldn’t tell ourselves that we did so out of shame, out of some selfish need to feel better about ourselves, but that we did so because we wanted to help someone in need.
I believe it has seeped into our daily consciousness that there is no such thing as a pure, rational decision to do the right thing. Maybe it’s from reading or hearing about “scientific studies” that “prove” that our “real” motivations are always seedier than we believe. Whatever the cause, this diluted Darwinian-Freudian-pseudo-psychology is now part of our common sense. We tell ourselves things like: women only want to find that one special man because of a biological belief that he will protect her as she carries his seed; men are determined to reject monogamy because of an instinctual need to spread their seed; we are religious because our mothers didn’t love us; we are atheists because our fathers didn’t love us. We act “morally” because we want to be better than everyone else. We act “immorally” because we want to be different. And so on, as the story goes.
Take for example a recent column published in the Forum, “For every action there is an equal and opposite…inaction,” by Hana Suckstorff. In it, she wrote about her counter-protest of members of the Westboro Baptist Church who came to Northwestern to protest Jewish New Year services. In a conversation with her professor after the event, he “suggested” that the motivation for such counter-protests is “something less altruistic: self-affirmation”. And she concludes the article saying, “next time WBC shows up, I’ll say a prayer at home and skip the protest.”
I don’t want to simplify her proclamation and I don’t believe it’s an unthinking one; I simply believe the sentiment to be wrong. It is this kind of undercutting of motivation that prevents us from taking and believing in moral action. To protest people who carry signs that say, “Pray for more dead kids,” to risk and defy mockery and to proclaim your views clearly and loudly is not just an essential pillar of a functioning and flourishing democracy, but a truly noble act. I must reject dampening and demeaning that moral action by saying that it was motivated by self-affirmation and then resolving not to take that sort of action again.
I don’t mean to simplify or reject actual, scientific, disciplined sociological studies; I’m talking about changing the way we speak to ourselves. Telling ourselves that we act not out of biological or psychological impulse, but because we think about what to do and then do it. And why should we tell ourselves this? So that we can stop eroding our sense of responsibility to better our life and the lives of others.
When we believe that our real, deep motivations are not noble, but mundane and even often disgusting, we stop trying to do what is right and start doing whatever makes us “happy.”
If we doubt or deny the idea that our decisions can be motivated by real rationality or morality, we lose and collectively discourage the desire to improve our minds, our bodies and our world.
Let’s rid ourselves of excuses, of a belief that nothing we choose is as it seems. What motivates you is what moves you, and don’t tell me that you aren’t moved by the good. Let’s believe in our ability to think and to choose to do good. And let’s yell about it too. Go.
Jamie Weissmann is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]
