The Problem With Scouting and Other Moral Organizations

Years ago the company I worked for changed to a 4-9-4 schedule that consisted of 9-hour work days Monday through Thursday and a 4-hour day on Friday. The company also allowed for flex time, meaning you could start your day earlier or later. I started coming in at 6:00 a.m. to beat traffic, so often I would be finishing my workday at 10:00 a.m. on Friday. I would proudly announce that my day was done as I left at 10:00 a.m. I found it disconcerting that many people replied:

"You're lucky! I can't remember the last time I only worked four hours on Friday."

I have since come up with a better understanding of this phenomenon (partially thanks to Dan McClellan and the book Sapiens)

Boundaries

Human evolution grew our brains to the point that we could manage to participate in communities of 150 people. Since our communities are much larger than this, we need a way to maintain social cohesion. One way we have done this is by creating arbitrary boundaries that define religions, companies, and other organizations. These boundaries show who is in and who is out. They define the behaviors required to signal to others that you are a trusted member of the group. The result is that we can interact with and trust people we do not know or have never met.

To signal that you are a more trusted member, you spend more of your time and energy, like working a full Friday instead of only the half-day that may be required.

So far, this sounds good, right?

On My Honor

I'm an Eagle Scout and some of my best memories from my childhood are from Scouting. I always liked the morals taught in Scouting. For example:

"Leave No Trace" - when you leave camp (or any place), leave it better than you found it. It reminds me of the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign that I learned in school as a young boy. This week, I was walking through the parking lot and someone had dumped all of their trash from a visit to a fast food restaurant. It was ugly and offensive.

This past week, I watched the documentary "On My Honor: The Untold Story of the Scouts", about sexual abuse in the Scouting organization. I know I am biased in favor of Scouting, so I disagreed with one of the opening statements that the good parts of scouting were just a facade for what was really going on in Scouting. I had the view that Scouting was inherently good and any abuses were a minor blemish on the organization.

I now have a different opinion.

The Problem with Moral Superiority

When a group creates an arbitrary boundary to signal high moral standards within the group, it can be very attractive to people wanting to find a safe place in a chaotic, and sometimes dangerous world. When joining such a group, members can then relax with the expectation that they are safe.

The problem arises when the signals required to join the group can be easily learned by dangerous players. In the case of Scouting, any adult male can wear a uniform, recite the Scout Motto and Scout Law, and volunteer. And, the organization was hungry for volunteers. Sexual predators learned this and so joined the ranks.

The problem is further worsened when the leadership of the organization takes a stand on their proclaimed moral superiority and refuses to acknowledge the wolves in sheep's clothing in their own organization. They are blinded by the same biases that I previously had about Scouting.

When the reputation of an organization becomes more important than the moral mission it claims to have, then there is a moral inversion. The offended individual becomes a sacrifice at the altar of the greater good.

Look in the Mirror

How about your organization or cause? Is it vulnerable to a similar moral inversion? Maybe there is no mistreatment within your organization, but how do you treat those outside of your boundaries? Do you apply the same morals and standards to non-members?

It's easy to feel good about the claims of the group, but good feelings can be a dangerous deceiver.

I have a saying:

Be careful putting up walls; you may end up on the wrong side.

Scarcity of Thought: Transitioning from Tribalism to Community

In the book "Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much", by Sendhi Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, there's the example of two people packing for a trip. One has a tiny suitcase and the other has a large suitcase. The person with the tiny suitcase needs to spend more time optimizing their decisions on what to bring, not bring and how to pack.  The person with the large suitcase can quickly pack. This person thinks to themselves "I might want to go running", so they throw in their running shoes without further thought.

What if we apply this principle to thought: ideas, beliefs, opinions? Maybe your tiny "suitcase", or scarcity, is due to your religion, political party, education, or cultural upbringing. As a result, when you get new information, you struggle to fit it into existing narratives. This is why we have political attacks. This is where apologetics comes from. This is the root cause of cognitive biases. For example, confirmation bias, where we tend to find and remember information that confirms our perceptions (and ignoring information that doesn't fit). Our suitcases are just too small for anything else.

It can be very liberating upgrading your tiny cognitive suitcase for a larger mental space. This can happen through a sudden or gradual awakening.  This happened for me politically during the Bush/Gore election. When something benign like dangling chads became a divisive political issue, I realized that the political parties were more concerned about obtaining and keeping power than they were about truth and justice.  I become an independent.

I grew up in a time when it seemed that the villains in many movies where from Russia (or the former Soviet Union).  When my group hired 2 Russians, I had to check my reactions. I was able to learn their stories and turned suspicion into respect.

I have a coworker from Iran. The media tells me that they are one of our new enemies. He ended up inviting me to his wedding. It was one of the most beautiful, inclusive experiences I have ever had. The Persian culture is rich and I would be proud if I was Persian.

I got to know another coworker from Iraq. I've heard insensitive people say while we were at war with Iraq that we should just drop a nuclear bomb on them and be done with it. My coworker told his story. He lived in a village where all of the names were biblical. The towns, hills, mountains all had names from the bible. He lived near where they thought Noah's Ark landed. How he came to America was that he was a Christian refuge fleeing earlier wars. The government sent a notice "We are going to be bombing your city. Either leave or be bombed" 

Still "my" group was morally superior, right? As I got to truly know people outside of "my" group, I was surprised to find that they had qualities that I valued. Often, their qualities were more polished, refined and authentic than found in my group

Tribalism vs Community

In this post, Alan Weiss writes

Tribes are homogenous, communities are heterogeneous.

Tribes are exclusionary. They recognize their own members’ similarities and common background...tribes tend to be insecure, mistrustful of non-tribal relationships, and highly threatened by perceived attacks on their beliefs and behaviors.

Communities are much more elastic, since it’s almost impossible to insult everyone at once due to the eclectic nature of the community. They will embrace outsiders and interact with other communities readily.

Communities are inclusionary. They are characterized by common attitudes, interests, and goals. Religion, beliefs, kinship, and opinions can differ starkly in communities and, in fact, give them vibrancy and dynamism, allowing for continued experimentation and growth. They do not hold long-term animosities against other communities, and those within them shift in opinion and allegiance as time goes by and learning occurs.

I love this!

Scarcity found in tribes is not necessary. It's possible to make space for a larger community. As I travel through life, I'm grateful for a "larger suitcase" that allows me to make room for an expanded understanding of the world while on my journey through life. 

More FDR: Wheat and Tares

I heard a positive news story recently that ties together several of my past blog posts. San Diego State University gave honorary degrees to Japanese American students who were forced to leave school in 1942 due to being sent to an internment camp [1]

As I read about the story further, I learned something shocking about this embarrassing episode in U.S. history: It was Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) who signed Executive Order 9066 that created the internment camps! This info made me think of a few of my posts from last year where I tried to answer the question: was FDR's New Deal good or bad for the country? My source of information were interviews with some of my octogenarian friends[2][3]

To save you the trouble, the results were:
The New Deal was great, putting people to work and literally saving lives, unless you were a small business owner who had to pay more than your fair share or a rancher/farmer who felt a man needs to fend for himself.

I don't think I need to do another survey to see if people agree that the internment camps were bad. This is where my post Wheat and Tares comes in. We all have good (Wheat) and bad (Tares) in our conduct and character. With another election coming up, I wish the candidates (and critics) would acknowledge this and quit the character assassinations.

Also, I wonder how many Americans called FDR a racist for what he did. I think we've come along way as a country since then.

My morals can beat up your morals!

I remember as a kid when a fight would elevate from name calling to the ultimate claim: "My dad can beat up your dad!". There seems to be polarizing conflicts all around and we all like the reassurance that the authority we rely on is valid and better than that of your opponents.

We no longer pit our fathers against each other in an imaginary fight, but we do pit our moral views against each other. The problem is, we lose focus on what the real issue is.

For example:
Is protesting American or Un-American?

Here, Nancy Pelosi is distracted by protestors. Instead, she should say that she thinks war is immoral and providing health care is moral. Calling your opposition "stupid", "bigotted", etc. is a step backwards in resolving moral conflicts.

Religion and Science

This weekend I watched Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed. A compelling movie by Ben Stein about how the scientific community is systematically suppressing any thought on Intelligent Design (the thought that an intelligent being like God had to be involved in creating the world). I then read Expelled Exposed, a website that refuted most of Ben Stein's claims.

The truth is that Ben Stein carved out a piece of truth to make a compelling movie. Also true is that Expelled Exposed refuted many of Ben's claims. So what clash of morals was left out?

Here are some truths that I see in the science vs. religion moral battle:

• Science has shown value in finding deterministic laws and using them to understand aspects of the world in ways beneficial to us.
  
• Science, by it's nature is limited. If by strict scientific method, a theory is not proved ,then science rejects it. Examples:
  
  • You feel sick, you go to the doctor. He/She orders all tests available for your symptoms, which come back showing no problem. The doctor feels content saying you are fine when in reality, you are not.
    
  • Scientists have no explanation or provable theory as to "how" life began. Even so, life did begin. Neither scientific nor supernatural processes can eliminated until we know how it happened.
    
  
  
• Scientists can be arrogant in their viewpoints and blind to the limitations of science.
  
• Religion has shown value in providing hope, structure and purpose.
  
• Religion embraces some challenging ideas:
  
  • An all powerful, all knowing Being, or God
    
  • Life after death
    
  • Supernatural events.
  • The Flood
  • Parting the Red Sea
    
  • Birth and Resurrection of Christ
  • Etc.
    
  • Religion has the potential of being abused.
    
    • Bloody sacrifices to appease the gods
      
    • The Crusades
      
    • Salem witch trials
      
    • (The Old Testament consistently deals with religion gone bad)
      
• Religion and Science sometimes take a "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" approach to each other.

War and Peace

I just finished the audio book "Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World" by Patrick J. Buchanan.

One of the key points I found is that brilliant people can be mislead by their own views of morality. For example, Churchill's strong moral opposition to Hitler:

• Turned a European war into a world war
  
• Caused him to ally with Stalin, who's own crimes nearly paralleled Hitlers [1]
  
• Resulted in the use (or consideration of using) of conventional, chemical and biological weapons against German civilians.
  
• Resulted in the bankruptcy of Britain and the downfall of the British empire.
  

NOTE: I'm not arguing that WWII was unnecessary, but instead I'm trying to point out conflicting moral stances. I'm reminded of a quote I saw recently:

"Why is it okay to kill people who kill people to let them know that killing people is wrong?"

It was interesting to read how the United States:

• Felt mislead into World War I (the "war to end all wars" and a promise to spread democracy)
• Strongly resisted entering World War II, even with the reported atrocities.
  
• The U.S. did not experience the same destructive forces as the other world powers, which is why America emerged as a world power (the author's conclusion).

Lessons for Us

Be careful when implementing your own morals.
Be understanding when judging the morals of others.
Realize that conflict will always exist and resist the temptation to make the conflict worse.