Saturday, October 24, 1998

Everyday Ethics: It's a struggle to get a grip on life's little quandaries

By Jeffrey Weiss

The Dallas Morning News

Many people treat ethics like the good set of dishes, something to be saved just for special occasions.

Life-or-death issues, really important personal quandaries, the discussions of professional philosophers - that's where ethics belongs. Not in our everyday lives, where decisions tend to be on the order of "You want fries with that?"

But hold the fries for a moment. What if you have a cholesterol problem and the increased risk of heart disease or stroke? Don't you have a moral obligation to your family to stay away from food like that? Maybe there is an ethical question you need to answer about the kinds of foods you eat.

Most people recognize the moral and ethical components of dramatic issues like abortion or end-of-life medical decisions. Other questions like "Should I cheat on my spouse?" or "Should I rob a bank?" call for moral judgments, too, but the answers are so obvious for most people that they hardly think about them - whether they choose to act in what they know is the proper way or not.

But ethical questions permeate many less dramatic and more ambiguous everyday situations:

How do I balance the time and energy obligations of my work and my family? How much should I pay my employees? What should I do with the child of my husband's first marriage who is disrupting our new family? How am I spending my money? Should I "borrow" a copy of my friend's software? If I know my employee is having troubles at home, should I treat her differently? What should I do if I know a neighbor's child is getting into serious trouble? How do I react to a sexist or racist joke?

"It's the rest of the iceberg," said Tom Mayo, associate professor at the Southern Methodist University law school and who also teaches ethics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "You don't read about these on the front page of the newspaper. You don't study them in philosophy class. These cases don't go to the Supreme Court."

Most ethics "experts" don't help people become sensitive to the everyday problems because they tend to focus on the big issues, he said. "Out of 500 books in my office, one has the title 'The Ethics of Everyday Practice.' "

Too many people make decisions about everyday questions without considering the underlying moral and ethical framework of the problems. They are simply swept along by the need to get through the day, said Dr. Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"They are so busy, and they have so many things to do that the tyranny of the immediate keeps them from asking the question 'What is important?' " he said. "A whole lot of our society is based on the implicit trust that people are going to do the right thing. I have to trust that the butcher is going to give me good meat. I have to trust that the maintenance mechanics are doing their best on this plane I'll be flying on."

We tend not to notice the ethical components of our daily lives until we run into a conflict -- either a case so complex that we can't forge through on moral autopilot or someone who challenges our unarticulated assumptions, said Dr. Elizabeth Bounds, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Emory University in Atlanta.

Waiting for dramatic events before we consciously tackle ethical considerations is like playing a sport only on the weekend. Just as a weekend warrior often ends up with pulled muscles and poor performance, people who seldom consider the moral implications of daily activities won't have the coordination to work through the more difficult times in their lives, Bounds said.

"They won't have many resources to fall back on. And we don't have many places in our society where we routinely practice this," she said.

The Rev. Gerald Britt, pastor of New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas, recently preached a series of sermons about the popular bracelets emblazoned with WWJD -- What Would Jesus Do?

"I said, 'You don't need a WWJD bracelet not to become a drug addict, not to cheat on financing a car, not to lie to a neighbor,' " he said. "These are decisions that are made in the warp and woof of our daily lives."

He divided moral questions into "life's major exams and pop quizzes. We need more guidance for the pop quizzes."

The Rev. Charles Curran teaches ethics at Southern Methodist University. He draws an academic distinction between the discipline of ethics and the practice of moral behavior. Nobody needs to know the technical differences between teleology and deontology to make good moral choices, he said.

"I'm worried that, in this society, when you have a plumbing problem you hire a plumber, and if you have an electrical problem you hire an electrician, and if you have a moral problem you hire an ethicist," Curran said.

Bounds agrees that one need not be an ethics scholar to act correctly. Recently, she drove past a boy walking with a soft cast on one foot. A little farther down the road, she passed a school bus. And she spent the next five minutes chewing over the ethical problem of whether she should have turned around and given the boy a ride to the bus. What if the boy would have felt threatened? What if she were late for her appointment? What if a U-turn blocked traffic?

"A lot of people who wouldn't consider themselves morally reflective would simply have stopped and given him a ride," she said.

In fact, one of the marks of an enlightened person in many religious and philosophical traditions is that the person simply acts rightly without having to work through alternatives -- the internal compass is that sure.

Most of us are not so enlightened. And a systematic approach can offer a guide for decision-making.

"It's very helpful when you're confused," Curran said.

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California is dedicated to explaining that ethics is not some esoteric science to be saved for the major exams.

"If we aren't aware that we're doing ethics, then it's likely we're doing bad ethics," said Dr. Barry Stenger, who directs the center's ethics programs.

The Markkula center Web site (www.scu.edu/ethics) includes case studies of everyday problems and a forum for people to offer their best answers. The Web site does not offer The Answer to any of the dilemmas. But it includes a host of links to tools people can use to work through their own decisions.

And that's the point, Stenger said. It's up to each person to come up with the answers that make sense in his or her own life.

"Ethics is something they need to do all the time," he said.

Many religious traditions establish the everyday character of moral and ethical decisions. God speaks to Christians and Jews from Chapter 30 of Deuteronomy:

"This mandate that I am prescribing to you today is not too mysterious or remote from you. I It is something that is very close to you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can keep it."

Islamic tradition teaches there are no meaningless decisions, said Imam Yusef Kavakci, who leads the Dallas Central Mosque in Richardson, Texas.

"For us, everything is important," he said. "Even looking at a neighbor's property with ill feeling and ill faith is not allowed in our religion."

According to Islamic tradition, two angels are with every person at all times, recording every thought, action or inaction. "They will be the subject of questions on the day of judgment," Imam Kavakci said.

Buddhism also teaches that everyday situations are filled with ethical choices, said the Rev. Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, a monk and teacher at the Zen Mountain Monastery in New York.

"Everything we do has moral implications," he said.

The answers, for Zen Buddhists, lie within. Each person has the wisdom, and Zen is a way to allow the practitioner access to that inner knowledge.

Recently, a student at the monastery called the abbot with a terrible problem. The student is a hospital pediatrician. He had a patient who was brain dead, and his parents wanted to take him off life support. How could he balance his duty toward his patient with the Buddhist reverence for all life?

"The abbot told him: 'They're your precepts. You're the expert on your own situation,' " Shugen said.

But like most philosophies and faith traditions, Zen offers some tools for its adherents to apply. Students are taught "precepts" -- grounded in compassion and reverence for life -- that have been passed from generation to generation.

But just as every moral quandary, no matter how common in the world, is new for each person who confronts it for the first time, a Buddhist must validate these precepts with personal experience, Shugen said.

Other traditions offer other tools. Generally, they call for a search for the highest good. Defining "highest" is the challenge.

Land of the Southern Baptist Convention sets up a hierarchy of values based on his reading of Christianity. His obligations run thus: God, family and calling. And his reading of the passages in the New Testament about how wives and husbands should submit to each other guides his answer to the question of how to balance family and career.

As a husband, he's obligated to put the needs of his wife and family above those of him or his work, he said.

Curran suggests turning to the Golden Rule, or to what the philosopher Kant called the categorical imperative: You should do it if you would allow all others in the same situation to do the same thing.

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The Markkula center offers a system of evaluation and consideration. Examples are on the Web site. First you describe the situation, then you evaluate it, Stenger said.

Where are your emotions and feelings taking you? What are the values that will dictate the solution? A consideration of the common good? The consequences? The rights of the individual?

"You need to be sensitive to the motivation and the circumstances," Stenger said.

Bounds of Emory University suggests finding ways to make the ethical considerations more obvious. Her university and some secondary schools in the area have students do community service, then reflect on how that work connects to the rest of the curriculum.

Something everyone can do is consider the family budget. Maybe once a year -- when you get the numbers together for your income taxes -- you take a look without thinking about the financial bottom line.

"Just look at your budget and ask what priorities it represents," she said. "Are those really the values that are important to me?"

Mayo offers two tips: Talk the problem out with a mentor; experience counts. And asking, "What would I feel like if this ran on the front page of The Washington Post?" doesn't hurt. It recognizes the fact that we sometimes play a trick on ourselves that we won't be discovered in what we do."

Islam offers the guidance of its sacred texts. But it also places the responsibility for maintaining ethical behavior on the entire community, Imam Kavakci said.

A boss who knows you have problems at home is ethically and religiously obliged not to overburden you at work, for instance. Everyone is obligated to help everyone else do the right thing.

"At least this is the theory," Imam Kavakci said. "I'm not claiming we're all organized that way."

Many situations don't have obvious answers, said Britt, the Missionary Baptist pastor.

"It's not always easy, cut and dry and clear," he said. "You just walk in the light that you have."

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(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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