Source Code

Another comment from the ether about my prior January posts noted that morality is largely a public matter, and that public views had not sufficiently evolved 30 years ago to judge parental action and inaction when it came to child abuse. In this reader’s opinion, it was unfair to bring 20/20 hindsight from a more enlightened time to pass judgment on these individuals.

           “Judging” is part of “learning from terrible mistakes,” because the latter requires acknowledging that “terrible mistakes” have been made. Since we are often reluctant to draw any kind of conclusion from someone else’s behavior—“Who are we to try and stand in their shoes anyway?”—it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to think in a reasonable manner about how things might have gone differently. Because this kind of caution leaves us in a muddle, it makes some judgments necessary.

The intended aim on this page will always be to “learn from” in order to “maybe do better” the next time around.  On the other hand, whenever you detect the smugness of a judgment’s moral superiority in these posts, I will count on you to call me out.

            There is no question that the extraordinary publicity around the abuse of children over the past 15 years has led to an evolution of public thinking about what Society accepts and what it condemns. In much the same way, the soul-searching after the Holocaust’s horrors were revealed and the Nuremburg trials transfixed the world led to more evolved societal thinking about prejudice, and how one of the paths where prejudice can lead is ethnic cleansing.

There is also no question that a more primitive public morality in a sense “permitted” those who preyed on children or Jews for centuries to follow their demons without interference. Maybe it was because children were viewed as less than fully human or as mere property that they could be secretly exploited. Maybe it was because the Jews had killed Jesus and therefore were “evil” that these societies encouraged or tolerated inquisitions and pogroms and a million acts of violence against them. But whatever Society had to say about such matters at the time, what do we think individual hearts were saying?

Do we really think that individuals in less evolved times failed to appreciate that sexual and ethnic violence against other individuals –family members, neighbors, your seven-year old daughter, the man you bought your bread from—was unacceptable?

On an individual level, did Society have to get around to confirming that certain kinds of violent and predatory behavior were wrong before individual conscience could reach this conclusion on its own?

Hasn’t it always been what your heart is telling you at such times that truly matters?

            In this regard, did the Philadelphia parents 30 years ago need Society’s blessing to shine a light into the shadowy corners where a child molester was doing his dirty work?  Did they really need to know what all the psychologists and other authorities would be saying 30 years later about the damage he was inflicting on those children to put a stop to it?

At what point does Society’s un-evolved state become just another excuse for not doing what you know in your heart needs to be done? 

Nowhere in the West today is ignorance so deep, lives so brutish and short, that hearts have gone cold.  There are pockets of alienation, but this is not where most of us live. In addition, most moral decision-making ends up happening in areas where Society has never gotten around to providing us with anything approaching clear guidance.

On basic moral issues, I’m proposing that we have the confidence to look within ourselves, instead of simply looking at what those around us are doing or, more commonly, not doing. That is where the source code for moral decision-making can be found.

Values at Work

I’m learning that input sometimes comes through the blog, but just as often from outside of it.

One reader was confused about what bystanders, and making excuses for not acting in the ways that we should, has to do with bringing more meaning and purpose into our work. Since that’s the point of the last post “Knowing What To Do,” let me take another stab at it.

When your principles are vindicated through your work, both your work and your life are enriched. But this doesn’t just happen.  It requires preparation.

Before you can take a stand on important things (and derive all of the personal benefits that will come to you from doing so) you need to know what your values are, and have some prior experience testing them out in real time.  When you have prepared yourself beforehand, you have a far better chance of knowing what to do when the situation demands a principled response from you: when a woman has fallen in your path, when your children are being victimized, when a truly serious issue is presented in the course of your work.

It’s about being ready.

On the other hand, when we don’t take the time beforehand to think about what we value the most, it can be nearly impossible to “think straight” when confronted with the emotional turmoil of a truly consequential situation. My example was child abuse, but there are similarly serious kinds of dishonesty and victimization that happen everyday in the workplace. 

In addition, when we have not gained the kind of experience that comes from acting on our values in small ways, it can be nearly impossible to know “what to do” when confronted with a serious set of circumstances that demands a strong and unequivocal response from us. Taking a stand in a situation where less is at stake can always prepare you for the situation where the stakes are higher.

When we don’t have these kinds of preparation, we make excuses for not acting like we should (such as thinking it’s enough to protect just your own children when there is widespread abuse) and worrying about things that are beside the point (like Conlin’s wife’s feelings).  In the last post, I was arguing that if the parents in the Conlin tragedy had been ready, they would not only have acted more effectively for the children involved, but also felt more empowered as human beings when they did what the circumstances required.

The same kind of clarity and empowerment are necessary in our work if we want to be truly happy doing it.

Dilemmas both big and small that challenge us to respond in a principled way present themselves at work all the time. When we understand beforehand what is important to us (like honesty, respect, helping others, valuing relationships), and test those commitments by acting on them regularly, we have a far better chance of knowing what to do when something truly serious arises in the workplace, when emotions are high, and maybe our job or the jobs of our colleagues are on the line.

When we know what to do, and our decisions about work are connected to our deeper motivations, we gain a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.

         

Knowing What To Do

Getting your work-life balance right means becoming the person you want to grow into on-the-job, while getting closer to attaining the goals you most want to realize. That’s what changes a job from little more than a paycheck into a vocation, a calling. When you can see the evidence of what you value the most in the work that you do, a deeper sense of happiness and accomplishment comes into your life—maybe for the first time.

Connecting your values to your working life requires a whole new set of decision-making muscles.  Above all, it means living with, and acting on, those values that are most important to you before you are faced with truly difficult choices. 

People who have never road-tested their values in their own lives usually don’t know what to do when they are confronted with a situation that calls upon them to act in the most basic human ways. It is when a woman has fallen down in front of you and is bleeding on the sidewalk. Do you stop to help?  

For too many of us, the choice is to walk around her and then make up an excuse for not acting:  I couldn’t stop, I had to get to work, to school, or the gym. I wouldn’t have known what to do if I did stop. Someone else will probably help her. I’d rather not get involved.

 

There is a name for this kind of paralysis, this not-knowing-what-to-do and its associated excuses.  It’s called “the bystander effect.”  

There was a gut wrenching demonstration of this dynamic chronicled in the Philadelphia newspapers just before Christmas. What floored me was the realization that I’d heard all of these kinds of excuses before, indeed had heard them over and over again when I was growing up—although the stakes were never as high as they were for the victims of this story.

Bill Conlin, a Hall of Fame baseball writer for one of the City’s papers, was pushed into early retirement a few weeks ago after a chorus of middle-aged women and men (some of them members of his own family) accused him of molesting them when they were as young as seven years old.  This kind of abuse, and another prominent individual’s involvement, are now numbingly familiar.  But I broke out in a cold sweat when the story started talking about how many people knew what Conlin was doing 30-odd years ago, and their willingness to talk today about what they did and didn’t do with their knowledge at the time.

         Those now talking include the kids who were once abused as well as the parents they told about it. As Kelley Blanchet, Conlin’s niece and one of the children he molested, told the reporter: “People have kept this secret.  It’s not just the victims, it’s the victims’ families. There were so many people who knew about this and did nothing.”

Well not exactly nothing. The adults generally found their own private solutions.

Kelley’s parents kept her away from her uncle after the abuse, and her father actually confronted Conlin.  But when Conlin denied that he had done anything and then started crying, Kelley’s dad found himself first pitying, and then believing him. Taking his word over their daughter’s, Kelley’s parents never alerted the parents of other children who frequented the Conlin house or even other family members about what had happened.

           And there were lots of little boys and girls who flocked to Conlin’s house to play with his little boys, Billy and Peter, 30 years ago:  like Barbara Healy’s children Kevin and Karen.

When Kevin came home one day complaining about Conlin’s touching him, Barbara told him to stay away from the Conlin house, but not to tell his father (“who had a terrible temper”) about what had happened.  However Barbara never stopped her daughter Karen from going over to play with Conlin’s youngest son Peter because “I thought [Conlin] was just interested in boys.”

Years later, Karen and one of her girl friends told her mother that each of them, along with a third girl, had been repeatedly molested by Conlin in his home and elsewhere.  Shocked, Barbara Healey picked up the phone and called the mothers of the other two girls. Collectively they agreed that one of their husbands should confront Conlin, but that the other two husbands should never even be told “fearing that in their anger they might harm him.”  

This time when Conlin was confronted, he neither admitted nor denied the reported abuse, merely acknowledging that he heard what the father had come to say.  These parents didn’t consider calling the police at the time, in part, as they recalled, out of loyalty to Conlin’s wife (“We didn’t want to hurt her," they said).

          Around the same time, another girl also told her parents that Conlin had repeatedly molested her, whereupon her father sought him out and challenged him angrily. “I just remember my mom holding my dad back and the two of them screaming at each other,” she reported.  But again, her parents never alerted other parents, and the authorities were never told.  Like the others, they chose to mind their own business.

         These parents all kept their children away from Conlin after the reported abuse, but never considered the lasting consequences the abuse would have on the children themselves. As they now readily admit, there was a strong desire to just put the unpleasantness “behind us.” As Kelley Blanchet recalls: “no one ever talked about it. No one got therapy. Everyone just went on with their lives” as if nothing had happened.

These parents also never worried (or never worried enough) about the other little children being drawn into Conlin’s orbit to sound a wider alarm. (As I write this, other victims have already come forward.)  On the other hand, even though Conlin plainly used his own little boys as bait to lure children like Kelley, Karen and Kevin into his home, their parents recall worrying at the time not only about Conlin himself (and whether certain fathers would hurt him) but also about Conlin’s wife (because she would presumably be either shocked or embarrassed to learn what had been going on).

           It is laudable that these parents have come forward today to recount what happened and to express remorse (as many of them have) that they didn’t do more at the time. Unlike classic bystanders, these parents responded—they just didn’t do nearly enough.

What may be fairest to say about them is that they didn’t know what to do in an era when adults were often believed over children, an adult’s feelings were thought to be more important than a child’s, men were often too angry to be of help, and prominent adults (particularly sports figures) were given too much latitude.

          But is it being too hard on them to say that these excuses are all unworthy of adults, when it comes right down to it?

What do you think?

Think of how different it might have been if these parents had taken the time beforehand to understand that because, in a sense, your child is every child, no parent can protect only their own children when they are reasonably certain that other unsuspecting children are likely to be violated in the same way.

How different might it have been if these parents had taken the time beforehand to understand the importance of speaking truth to power until the harm that the powerful are causing is stopped, and not merely re-directed?  

These aren’t realizations that just “bubble to the surface” when a seven year old is looking up at you through her tears to tell you that someone has just molested her.  In the heat of such moments, no one can think straight. You have to have done your thinking beforehand. Then the processing will already have been done, available to be summoned up at those difficult times when it is needed the most.

That’s how you know the right thing to do.

           In an extraordinary observation made a couple of months before his own demons came home to roost, Bill Conlin-celebrated sports columnist wrote about the sex abuse scandal then engulfing former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.  At the time, Conlin questioned whether those people, who were now saying that they would have intervened if they had witnessed Sandusky’s abuse, would actually have done so.

“Everybody says he will do the right thing, get involved, put his own ass on the line before or after the fact,” wrote Conlin.  “But the moment itself has a cruel way of suspending our fearless intentions.”  As he wrote these words, he clearly was recalling how the parents of his own victims had done so much less than their moment required.

Evil always depends on good men and women doing nothing, or not nearly enough.

In fact, it’s counting on it.