The Fool's Walk Out of the Court

A question that has been on my mind for quite a few years is as follows:

What conditions can be set to bring about the good in people while in a bad situation or when met with stress unexpectedly? The term 'good' here is tricky, of course, because what may be good in one situation may not be so for another. The idea is to have constructive yet adaptive responses that take both our experiences and good natural tendencies into account.

As a child I recall being introduced to this scenario in mythological stories and folktales, be it what Arjuna had to engage in after meeting Lord Krishna or the stories narrating the paths of dervishes and the fool in the court in the books by Idries Shah. Several traditions deliberated about the same question. The dilemma used to be -- What is supposed to be good behavior when the conditions aren't ideal, challenging, morally dilemmatic, or marked with limited understanding?

Years later, when I was introduced to Psychology, it was refreshing to find the same question even in the scientific realm. Scholars who had studied the psychology of evil, or other destructive social processes, were keenly interested in what could bring the good in people with similar intensity in pressing times. Aside from social psychological research, a second revolution in moral psychology research in the early 1990s had already paved the way for a clearer appreciation of moral emotions (see Haidt, 2008). Before this time, morality in psychology was mainly understood from a developmental perspective (see Kohlberg, 1963). We, as human beings, are capable of moral emotions that became solidified with cognitive development. However, experiences are part of this developmental dynamic. Similar to learning a language, if the innate tendencies aren't shaped with a good moral chisel, we may lose many opportunities of developing moral decision-making as a skill early in life.

I'll list options that may become more conducive and visible based on various inherent and experiential factors.

Moral decision-making based on collectively upheld norms has been a favorite from the get-go. Sometimes, this is found in duty-based behavior or what may be called dharma in various Asian traditions. To me it is supposed to be a tight-rope walking like mindset according to which no degree of strong winds is supposed to make you fall down. This is promising. However, what about situations that evolve and present the question of whether you are standing on the right path?

So, then, the experience with moral emotions is what tends to be handy. In other words, the more we could be morally engaged, the more skilled and unafraid we are bound to become when faced with challenges as adults. Therefore, forging moral emotions from early on in all kinds of big and small ways may be the best gift any parent may give to their child.

Eventually, this potentially makes universal ethics more psychologically accessible to us later in life (e.g., protecting a child from getting killed). For a more entertaining understanding, see any other episode of the TV series HOUSE and you'll understand the meaning of universal ethics in the face medical dilemmas.

However, we may not always be well-calculated experts making only decisions in our domains of experience. In novel situations, the same dilemma extends to the following -- How can we know what to fight for or who to protect, in limited time with limited information?

More often than not, people generally polarize in the direction of greater social power and cohesiveness. We are social creatures, designed to survive for a long time, even if this may make us look weak, foolish, or oblivious.

By the time I had left graduate school, after a doctoral training from UC Davis in social-personality psychology, one thing had become clear to me. The problem wasn't in the realm of intent. The problem was in translating intent into behavior. Human beings are capable of understanding and even feeling what another person may be undergoing. They may even have a tear or two for you if you'll look closely. However, the behavior people follow is almost skeletally designed to protect the self and/or a group made of similar individuals in terms of the norms recognized. Even in emotion research, they have successfully shown how emotional experience is universally shared, and more variability is found in the behavioral possibilities of the same emotions. A few of the obstacles in the way of this translation from intent to behavior can be delineated as:

1. behavior being mainly shaped by norms;

2. the fear of risk of the intended behavior not working as intended;

3. failure of the intended behavior causing more harm than good or no change whatsoever;

4. struggling with the bias of any strong emotions deciding behavior being an irrational or dangerous decision;

5. the fear of over-reaction or looking crazy or foolish;

6. protecting the self takes precedence in a state of frozen fear or overwhelming empathy.

The main issue ends up being how can we stay alive, look sane and normal, while protecting others in unforeseen situations? Some of the solutions I have thought of while wondering about this issue as listed ahead.

Consider working with low intensity, milder emotions in the inceptual stages of the intended behavior.

Then transition to norm-building gradually, in steps. This may enable greater assessment of the situation in less time.

For example, if you find a person fallen across the street, you may want to begin by asking a stranger nearby, "Do you know if this person is drunk, unconscious, or unwell?"

(Reason for possible effectiveness: Pairing with a peer or person nearby makes the risky future behavior temporarily okay or someone will at least know that you have gone in the zone of risk, in case you may need saving later yourself)

As the above is repeated in steps in various ways, the likelihood of the appropriate emotions entering the picture should increase. Then, zero down to the emotional set in relation with the goal in mind. Be sure of what you want to be the outcome in the end (e.g., getting this person to the nearest hospital). When deciding your emotional set, know how some emotions are more conducive for behavioral action than others (e.g., contentment doesn't really have a clear behavioral response, righteous anger does, empathy does, and so forth).

In the end, you may find a drunk person lifting their heavy head with red shot eyes saying, "I'll be fine.', as I once found on a morning in a parking lot, while walking my dog in Flagstaff, Arizona. A man had merely parked his car asymmetrically which made him look like an accident scene. However, any day, it is better to be foolish than to never know what happened to a person who was possibly in need of urgent help.

References

Haidt, J. (2008). Morality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(1), 65-72.

Kohlberg, L. (1963). Moral development and identification. Teachers College Record, 64(9), 277-332.