Choices V: Good Arguments

In this blog I have been trying to provide a sound ethical basis for humane decision making. I won't review all the arguments I have been making because you can easily look back on this blog and I provide a brief summary in my last entry. What I want to say is that I have been trying to suggest that many of the reasons people use for *not* making humane decisions just don't hold up to ethical or empirical, for that matter, analysis. One might not be a humanist but in that case ... well ... that is another problem. But, if you find yourself quickly saying "well, I don't want to be a humanist, then, if I have to make humane decisions ..." you might want to think again and about the company you keep.

Most people, I think, want to be considered humane.  They make wrong decisions -- that is decisions that are not really humane -- because they make mistakes. They logic and ethics are faulty; not their intentions. After all, we laud humanism in our culture all the time. We congratulate those who make big donations to charities, applaud those who coach the minor sports team or run the youth group, admire those who work in soup kitchens. In other words, most people both admire humanism and want to be considered humanistic (sports figures start charities, political leaders join international relief efforts, celebrities have their causes).  If you don't want to be humanistic, pause and consider those ideologies that are not. Fascism and Soviet Communism spring to mind. Part of the reason I am writing this series of blogs is not simply to propagate my perspective but because I believe my perspective is widely shared but runs into problems because people don't think through the decisions that they are making and so end up making the wrong ones.

To close off this line of argument, let me suggest, too, that my arguments are not saying "we should all be soft bleeding-heart liberals." I am not even certain what that means, but I am not trying to say that one needs to help everyone who asks. There are good reasons -- as I said in my last entry -- to not help someone. For instance, we don't have to crowd fund a new TV for someone who is filthy rich. They can afford the new TV themselves. So, to close off, let me suggest some other things we might want to bear in mind as we make decisions.

First, context is important (filthy rich-TV example above). You might give your lunch to a homeless person and that is the right decision because (a) you can afford another lunch and (b) they cannot. But, you are not bound to give your lunch to anyone who walks up to you and asks for it.

Second, we do need to prioritize. I rejected the slippery slope argument in my last entry but I should expand upon it. The argument "because I cannot help everyone, I should help no one" is an ethical a fallacy for the reasons I enumerated in my last entry but that does not mean that we cannot establish priorities. Those priorities should, I would argue, relate (a) to our abilities and (b) to needs.

Abilities: I can help more people than my students. Hence, I should because I have more ability to do so. You could look at the matter this way: should we raise money for new hospital equipment from the poorest members of society? I'd answer yes, but I would then quickly add that the richer members of society should contribute more because they have the ability to do so. Abilities need not just be money. It could be time. Years ago, when I was on a previous sabbatical, my church asked if I could help someone. It required several afternoons working around their house  because they were ill and could not get the normal things done that they wanted to get done. I complained about this: who are these people wasting my sabbatical. But, they were not. They knew I had more time -- or, what I might call more flexible time -- and so called on me. I would not have made sense to call on my wife who was in her work in the afternoons.  She could not come. I could.

Abilities can also involve skills. As much as many of us might hate to admit this, there are simply things we cannot do. The person I was helping on my last sabbatical eventually got to a point where they were asking me to do things I could not do, or could do only if I took a great deal of time to do them. I soldiered through for one afternoon but told the secretary at the church ... you should get another person (I had an example) because they can do this quickly. What times me several hours, will take them 15 minutes. Abilities should not be used as an excuse to not do something ("oh, I am no good at cooking and so I waited for my wife/husband to come home from work and cook me supper even though they worked ten hours and I was watching TV"), but it is an important consideration. If a decision involves you doing something you cannot do or would just make worse ... that is something you should bear in mind. I can coach certain sports, but not others, for example. Thus, I have coached those sports I could and not those about which I know nothing.

Needs: I don't in any way mean to sound neo-con here. I know that the opponents of the welfare state frequently underestimate the level of need in society and I am not trying to do that. What I am saying is that we might have to prioritize and that there is nothing wrong with that. Let me use some examples I've previously used to illustrate this point. My house needs repairs: the roof and plumbing. I only have so much money. I might, therefore, start with my roof (because without it ... nothing else much matters for my house) and then, after I have saved more money, I address my plumbing. I have two cars that need repairs. I get one repaired while I save money for the other recognizing that this might mean I need to drive family members around some evenings because we only have one car and they each have things they do at night to which they need a drive.

In assessing needs we don't want to become prisoners of fad. Some charities, I am sure you have noticed, jump into the spotlight. There might be good reasons to disregard some of these charities (particularly if you have not checked them out). The latest fad is not the most pressing need.

Third, don't lose track of the human being. In other words, don't use shaky ethical foundations to allow you to avoid doing something good for someone. It is those ethics that I've tried to look at and illustrate their fallacies in the last several entries. Think about how you would like someone to treat you. Sometimes people say to me "I don't want to do X but I don't want to feel guilty." No one does, but if you feel guilty, about something you might want to think about why. In other words, if you are asked to do something and you say "no" and you feel bad about saying no, reconsider, using sound ethics. You might still end up saying "no" but you likely will not feel guilty. If you feel guilty all the time about everything ... well ... that is something about which we should talk. But, if you feel guilty when someone has a request of you and you've turned them down, that just might be a sign that you are, in fact, doing the wrong thing and some part of you knows it (hence, the guilt).

Fourth, think about what you would tell your children. Would you say "it is good to be greedy," "yes, fighting is fine as long as you win," or "I break the law when I know I won't be caught so you should do the same."

Finally, remember that most of the things we do where decisions are needed are collective actions. You are not being asked, for instance, to solve world hunger by yourself so don't pretend that you are to avoid contributing to the local food bank. You are not being asked to run the new school library by yourself so don't use that as a rationale to *not* contribute some books to it. Because we do things collectively, we can also call on others to help us out. Let me return to the Bob and Mary example I used in my previous entry. Bob and Mary are both hungry and need good. You only have enough food for one person. Do you spend your time trying to figure out to whom you should give the food or do you call a friend and ask "got any extra food?" Most of us do the former whereas we should do the latter. The fact that you need to make decisions does not mean that the decision you make cannot or should not include efforts to change others minds to get them making the right decision. The fiver you book in the kids hospital charity rubber boot (at least it is a rubber boot at Mont A) does not solve children's health problems but a whole bunch of loose change from a whole bunch of other people does.

To conclude: the decisions we make, make a different to other people. Rather than just making them, we should make them in an intentional way and with sound ethics. If we start making better decisions, our society will be better. And, surely that should be our goal.

Choices IV: The Slippery Slope

I'm writing a series of posts on the ethics of how we make choices. I've tried to argue that not all options are created equal: some choices are better than others and we can be guided in how we make these  choices by a set of ethical imperatives. I suppose that if one disagreed with my ethics (say, my humanism), than a great deal of what I have been saying does not make a great deal of sense. For instance, I tried to argue that inclusion is better than exclusion. If we  can make choices that include more people than otherwise would have been the case -- all other things being equal -- than we should adopt that approach. Likewise, I have tried to argue that arguments for exclusion based on tradition (we have always done things this way), don't actually hold up well and cannot provide a sound ethical basis for, say, excluding someone from a club or team. Tradition can be a guide to action but it cannot serve as an excuse (if there are other options) for harming someone. Finally, I also tried to argue against the "the word is a hard place" type of thinking. We hear this a fair bit, particularly with regard to children. I argued that this basis for decision-making failed because it fulfilled its own prophecy and was grounded in metaphysics (the "world is hard" perspective is grounded in unprovable perspective; not demonstrable fact.)

What is important here is that we are each of us confronted with the opportunity to make decisions most days. "Will I can so-and-so and see if they want to come to the movie with us?" "Should I drop so-and-so a line and see how they are doing?" "Should we see if so-and-so needs help with their homework?" Making these decisions most of the time is pretty easy for us but they all involve an ethics. Every time, for instance, that we believe the worst of someone without checking the facts ("Why is Bob late for work?"), we run the risk of making the wrong decision because our ethics are messed up. We all know that we should check our facts before making a decision ("I'm going to fire that guy because he is late!") because otherwise we could mess up ("Oh, you were in a traffic accident? You were hit by a semi?"). So decisions really are not all that important ("shall I have a cookie or ice cream for desert?"), but my point is that in the normal run of our lives we have the opportunity -- through our decisions -- to make the world better or worse for other people. How should we make those decisions?

The argument  I have been putting forward is that saying "we should do things in a humane way" is not good enough. What I need to show is that other modes of decision-making (hence, what I was discussing above) are not good enough; they have problems because if they did not my perspective would not have much to recommend it. It can be recommended, however, if it can be show to have (a) positive results that other modes of decision making do not have and (b) that other modes of decision making are flawed in such a way as to prescribe their general use (even if they might serve some uses in some  contexts).

To continue this argument, I want to point to another mode of flawed decision making. Periodically, myself and members of my family or friends will discuss some sort of decision. Sometimes, it will involve a financial outlay. You know what I am talking about "if we all throw in some money, we can do X." In these decisions someone will, sooner or later, use what we might call the "slippery slope" argument. If we do X, we will be asked to do Y, and then Z, A, B, C ... where will it end?" In other words, the decision that we will make will need to a never-ending stream of requests to continue to do the same thing (say, donate money to some worthwhile cause -- to donate the cause, I'd suggest, should be worthwhile as a beginning point of consideration!) for others. If I give Bob some money, I'll have to give Mary some, and then Jane and Steve ... and ... and ... and.

There is also an ethical component to this argument. Without coming right out and saying it, this argument implies a decision to help one person and not  another is a bit hypocritical. At the least it would be arbitrary. Thus, one is better of not helping anyone (and helping someone, from what I can tell, is the context within which this type of slippery slope argument generally arises).

Let me quickly address each of these objections because I think they are inter-related.

First, the fact that one cannot help everyone is not a reason to help no one. The two propositions don't, in fact, connect to each other at all. In the first place, one might not be being asked to help everyone. Imagine a scenario where someone says "let us help Bob." The counter -- slippery slope -- argument is "No because then we would have help Mary." The truth of the matter is that we don't know whether we would have the help Mary. Maybe she has solved her own problems. Maybe she does not want our help. Maybe the context is radically different (maybe Bob has fallen on hard times because the plant laid him off. Mary got laid off, too, but she might be filthy rich to begin with and so does not really need help). In other words, the argument that we cannot help Bob because Mary might also want help works with an unproven assumption: that Bob's and Mary's cases are exactly alike. Since that is an assumption, the fact that we would deny help to Bob on the basis of an assumption about Mary's life ... seems a tad odd.  Mary might be getting help from other people! In that case, we would be denying help to Bob on the basis of an unproven assumption that turns out to be wrong.

The other issue that is connected to this point but not inherently logically connected to it is: no one has asked you to help Mary. It might be for the reasons given above, it might be fore some other reason. Or, perhaps, it might be true that Mary needs help as well (I'll get to this point below). But, the issue under consideration is Bob. The issue under consideration, then, is should we allow another issue to detract from making the right decision with regard to Bob. Let me use an example to illustrate my point. Imagine that your house needed plumbing repairs. Would you say "gee, my electrical might also be shot so I guess I won't repair my plumbing." Would that make any sense? Instead of solving one problem about which you know, you elect to ignore that problem because you cannot address another issue that might not even be a problem?

What is also pertinent here is that the argument against helping Bob is not based on the merits of Bob's situation -- as with my plumbing analogy.  In fact, the "we cannot help Bob because we might also have to help Mary" argument avoids any engagement with the merits of Bob's case. And, it is at this point that I start to become a bit suspicious of those who are arguing against helping Bob. After all, there many ethically sound reasons not to help Bob. By trying to help him we might, for instance, create a bigger mess. The help we are proposing might not be the help he needs. His problems are not all that grave and it might help his maturity to solve them for himself. And, we could go on. In other words, the slippery slope argument is notable for its avoidance of the issues at hand. It distracts from those issues ("what about Mary') while avoiding any consideration of the merits of Bob's case. Any time someone does not engage a specific case ... I start to wonder about their commitment to that case in the first place.

Second, let's turn to the implied hypocrisy argument because this one, in my view, is stronger. Double standards are generally things we seek to avoid and for good reason. Ultimately, I think, I'd argue that we can be far too concerned with double standards because I am not at all convinced that there is that much symmetry in the world, but that is an argument for another day. Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that some level of consistency is good thing in our interaction with others. As an instructor, for instance, I tend go give my students the same types of assignments because it would be arbitrary for me to pick some students (in the same class) and give them more or less work than others for the same grade. I think, therefore, that the implied hypocrisy argument is one that merits consideration.

Yet, I also think it tends to fail because it is amenable to a weird logic. It assume that because you cannot do everything, you should do nothing. Now ... pause and think about that. Do you use that logic in any other realm of your life? I can't repair both my roof and my plumbing so I repair neither? That is a recipe for your house to fall down and in short order. Imagine you have two cars. Both need repairs so you repair neither? Would that make any sense? I am hungry but I can't eat  both donuts and a salad so I'll eat neither?

What is even more problematic about this argument from an ethical perspective is that it provides a recipe for inaction. If we cannot help Bob because Mary also needs help, we cannot help Mary because Bob also needs help. We could use an economic argument to show the facile nature of this proposition from a practical perspective. Imagine that there is some utility (some good) that comes from helping someone. Just to put a number of it, let us say that good could be measures. We get 100 units of goodness for helping someone. If I help Bob, I get 100 units of goodness. If I help Mary, I  get 100 units of goodness. But if I help no one, I get no units of goodness. Hence, helping no one actually does not make mathematical sense either. In economic terms, inaction reduces the amount of goodness in the world under the guide of being fair. Instead of having 100 units of goodness, we have none.

Another good point I want to make from an ethical perspective is that old proposition: do unto others. Generally, this proposition is good ethics. That is why, a friend of mine tells me, it exists in virtually all ethical and religious systems in the world. Instead of imagining this question from our perspective, let us try to understand it from Bob's perspective. Bob asks for help. We  turn him down because Mary needs help too. Would you want to be in Bob's shoes? Imagine yourself in that situation. Imagine that you really are in need. You are hungry and have not eaten. Do you want to be told "no I will give you no food because there is someone else who is hungry?"

The final ethical proposition to make is that the slippery slope argument fails because it limits possibilities. It begins from the assumption that we cannot help both Bob and Mary but what if we could? Let us go back to hungry situation. Bob and Mary are both hungry and we have one meal to give them. Should we give it to neither or divide it between them? In other words, the slippery slope argument does not address the problem, it *stops" us from thinking creatively about how to address the problem. In this example, neither Bob nor Mary might have everything that they want but they have something and they are no longer hungry. There are other options (we could pool all our food, each taking a bit less and feeding Bob, Mary, and us well).

So, the upshot is that this argument -- the slippery slope argument -- is worth considering and its worth thinking about but ultimately it fails and so does not refute the humane argument for decision-making that I have been making.

Choices III: The Way Things Have Always Been Done?

Another argument I periodically here people use for making bad choices is: it has always been done this way. I will confess that this argument confuses me because it begins by conceding the point that I am trying to make: that the decision someone is taking is wrong. Have you ever thought of that. Imagine you say "we should do X" and the person to whom you are speaking says "we have always done Y." They have not said X is wrong, have they? I've noticed that when I speak to people using this -- we have always done things this way -- line of reasoning they are, often, more than willing to come right out and say "you know that is not a bad idea but ... we have always done things another way." Or, "that is a good idea, but ... we have always done things another way." I find this line of argument odd because when someone has a good idea, I try to *not* cut them off. I try to hear them out and then, if their idea is good (say, better than mine), I start to look for ways to implement that idea as opposed to finding reasons not to.

I think, therefore, that when people say "but we have always done things another way" that they are actually trying to say something  different, but before we get to that, let's think about this argument. It strikes me that it is based in a semi-traditionalist way of looking at the world: if it ain't broke, don't fix it; the devil we know, etc. There is actually much to recommend this way of thinking. As anyone who has read this blog knows, I am no fan of change for its own sake. But, this argument becomes problematic on a number of grounds. 

First, and most evidently, just because something has been done a certain way in the past does not mean that it should continue to be done that way in the present or future. Just because something has, in fact, been done a certain way in the past does not mean that it was done right. The weight of history can be important, but it is not a guarantee that the course of action people followed in the past was the right course of action. We can think, I am sure, of a number of important public policy issues where this type of argument has been used. The one that springs to my head is same-sex marriage. Those people who opposed same-sex marriage (or, more accurately, equality in marriage) often used an argument from tradition. "Discrimination is the way things have always been done in Canada." OK, they did not use those words. You got me. They used words more like "tradition," "historically," "in the past." The effect, however, was the same: why should we change the way we have been doing things because it worked well and reflected our values. 

It turns out that things did not necessarily work well at all. It depended who you asked. There were a bunch of people -- particularly in the GLBT community -- for whom things were not working well at all. The reason to make a different decision lay precisely in this: to escape the past. Moreover, it placed Canada in an odd position: a nation that supposedly committed itself to equality and individual rights and freedom of conscience was in a position of denying these to a defined section of the national community and, as it turned out, a whole bunch of non-GLBT Canadians felt very odd about this. Thus, the argument, "this is the way things have been done" disguised the fact that the way things have been done was not right. In the case ... why would you stick to something that is not right or, in other circumstances, not working. 

Imagine a different scenario. The French government felt it was a good idea to keep its troops in their brightly coloured uniforms when World War I began. That was, after all, the way things had always been done. But, it turned out that that was a very bad idea indeed. 

Second, the statement "that is the way things have always been done" is, in fact, almost always inaccurate. Let's look at the same-sex marriage argument again as an example. People who opposed same-sex marriage often said something like "I defend the traditional family. It is the way things have always been done." But, it wasn't. The traditional family time of Canadian history did indeed legally prohibit same-sex marriage, but it prohibited other things, legally and by social stigma as well, that no one in their right mind (not the most determined defender of the so-called "traditional family") would defend. Stigma prohibited marriage across ethnic and religious groups. Law permitted husbands to beat their wives; it allowed husbands to rape their wives; it deprived women of property. No one defending the traditional family was defending these things. That is not my point. My point is that their traditional family was an imagined traditional family. It existed as an ideal type. No one was arguing for the legalization of rape but that was, in fact, permitted under law. 

The problem is a lack of historical knowledge. If we knew more about the way things had been done, we would be less likely to defend that way. When people talk about the way things have been done, what they are actually doing is talking about institutions, ideals,  values, etc., that have already changed. Thus, the defenders of the so-called "traditional family" accepted some changes to it (they accepted the idea that married women could own property, that husbands should not beat their wives, that husbands should not rape their wives, and that people should be allowed to marry across ethnocultural or religious groups. In other words, they did not accept "the way things have been done" at all, but they embraced change. And, rightly so, those changes were good. But, to admit this would undercut their arguments by making them proponents of change as opposed to tradition. The point I am making is this: the problem with this argument (things have always been done this way) is that the people making it often don't know how things have been done in the past. They might be dealing with a modern institution -- the family, say  -- that has benefited from embracing change and might further benefit from continuing to embrace change; not a static institution. 

Third, the way thing have been done fails as a necessarily solid basis on which to make decisions because it assumes that contexts don't change. Let us allow, for instance, that there has been some institution, club, organization, etc., that has been relatively static and that worked well in the past. But, we don't live in the past. A friend of mine likes to say we live in the moment because the rest has either disappeared or has not happened so we can't live there. I'll say we live in the present and need to make plans for the future. Part of living in the modern world means that things change. We don't live in a static society and we need to respond to that change. Now, part of our response can be to say "look, this is a change I don't like and so I'm going to minimize it in my life." That would be fair enough. But, that needs to be a decision based on an understanding of context and it is different if we are making that decision (to not change) for ourselves versus decision that affect others.  

I'll give you an example. The way things are done at my church is different now than they were when I went to church as a kid. The sermon has powerpoint accompanying it, there are handouts, "homework", the music is different, its governance structure is different. Our pastor has a blog, there is a Facebook page, some sermons are recorded so they can be downloaded and listened to. Some people don't like these changes. They like the old hymn books, for instance. Fair enough. The people who ran my church, however, decided that we cannot stand pat. We cannot pass up something that is potentially useful just because it is new. We need to respond to our context. The people who don't like this say "we have always done things another way." Others said, perhaps but that is not a good reason to ignore the world around us and to take a pass on useful adaptions. 

Finally, there is a bit of a more ethical argument. I'll phrase it as a question. Should the fact that one does -- or has done -- things a certain way become a legitimate justification for hurting another person? I'll give you an example. Years ago I was a member of an amateur soccer organization. It was fun and I got to feel good about contributing to minor sport in my community. One night, we were meeting to discuss the budget and I noticed that the rep teams were having an unusually large amount of money spent on them. They got new uniforms -- and snazzy ones -- each year while the house league kids (of which there were many more) had to make do with the same old moth eaten uniforms year after year. When I asked why was this because it did not seem fair. The house league kids were paying the same fees as the rep league kids, the answer I was given was "it has always been done this way." I said, to the shock of one father whose son played rep, "that  is not a good enough reason to keep doing it that way." The kids getting the least out of this association -- less playing time, lower certification coaches, fewer tournaments and trips away, shorter season -- are subsidizing the kids getting the most out of it."

The association did eventually change and introduce new rules that stopped this type of thing but you see the point. The way things had been done was causing an economic transfer from those deriving the least benefit to those deriving the most. Does it make sense to keep doing something that way if it is not fair or is causing some level of harm? We could pick more serious examples, I suppose, but the point would remain the same. Is the weight of tradition suffice to sustain an injustice? I can't answer that easily for other people. For me, it is not. I prefer to address the injustice and make the changes to tradition in the same way that Canadians over time modified the traditional family to try to take the violence, prejudice in injustice of out of it so as to preserve what was valuable in it. 

As always there is more to say and I'll have more in the future. In the meantime ... feel free to chime in. 

Choices II

In my last blog I tried to show that there were was to make better or worse choices. Most people, I argued, simply understood this and this was why they took such time to explain the rationale for their choices. By looking at my objectives, assessing possible circumstances, and comparing courses of decision with my objectives, I could arrive at conclusions that made some choices better than others. Now, my argument fails, as I intimated, if one does not give a fig about other people. If one is purely greedy and does not care if their wealth is built on child slave labour ... well ... that person and I are having a different conversation. Most people, I would argue, however, don't think that way. Have you ever noticed how people who want to be wealthy -- or, who are wealthy -- will justify their wealth by (a) explaining the good they will do with it ("I just want to help people") or (b) with reference to personal character ("I worked hard"). They never say, "I'm just a greedy bastard and I'll sell my mother's oxygen tent if I can get a few bucks out of it." What this shows is that most people feel that purely self-interested perspective will not work: it will make them look bad and will cause people to question their morals. Hence, they try to justify their wealth on other grounds which, they believe (and, it seems, rightly) are more acceptable. In other words, other people's views matter to them. This is what their words indicate, whether we believe them or not.

In my previous blog, I tried to sketch out a humanistic approach to decision make with an example. What I'd like to do here is to address a couple of common objections to that decision-making process in order to show that they do not hold water. I have set my self a hard task. Someone could say "Andrew, I get your perspective and it works for you but it is just one perspective and other perspectives are equally valid". To make my case, I have to show other perspectives are *not* equally valid. I have to show that they have problems because otherwise the argument -- this is just your perspective -- would be correct. So, if my argument is to hold, there must be some sort of problem with other arguments. What are these? Let us look at a one of common objections to my arguments.

The first argument I periodically here to hear (in fact, far too often for my liking) to the humanistic approach to decision making I’ve sketched out is the “the world is hard” argument.  I’ll give you a variant of this argument. A coach is about to make a decision on whether or not to cut a player (see my previous example in my last blog). One thing they might say is that “I can’t take everyone and kids have to learn that the world is a hard place. You don’t always get what you want.” I’m pretty certain you’ve heard some variant of this type of explanation as well.  What is wrong with this type of argument? Several things.

First, it takes a debatable fact as a self-evident truth. Is the world a “hard place?” That is a matter of perspective that is, quite simply, not amenable to one-line statements. It is an ontological assumption; not a demonstrable fact. There is nothing inherently wrong with making assumptions about the character and nature of the world. I suspect that most of us do it every day. I assume that most people are rational and will respond to argument in reason. Hence, this blog. If I did not believe that ... there would be no good reason to write it. The problem occurs when we start to justify our actions on the basis of unproven assumptions. It is one thing to say “I will try to argue in reason.” It is another thing to say “I will have no military force for my country because everyone is rational.” However much we might like that to be the case, a government that made that decision would be imprudent. When we start to make decisions that affect other people on the basis of our assumptions about the world, our decisions start to be separated from the world. Since this assumption is neither provable nor inprovable, we cannot state for sure that the assumption is wrong but it is an assumption; not something we can demonstrate and here, to turn to my example, do we want to hurt someone because of our assumptions when we have other options available? 

The second concern I have with this line of reasoning — the world is hard — is that it is subject to what we might call the logic of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Again, consider my example. For the kid trying out for the team the world is neither hard nor soft and fuzzy. It is neither good nor bad at the time they are trying out for the team. It is the action of cutting the player (again, when other options are available) that makes the world good or bad. In this way, the assumption that has been made (“there is nothing wrong with cutting players when I have other options and it teaches them an important lessons that the world is hard”) actually creates the effect that was the initial unproven and unprovable assumption.  Thus, the rationale becomes the effect. The decision-making process has called into being the very condition that it assumed in the first place. The world indeed becomes hard but it is the result of a decision made by a real person (again, in my example, who had other options) and not some pre-existing condition. 

Third, I have heard people say “kids have to learn that not everyone gets a trophy.” This is a variant of the “world is hard” argument. This seems self evident but one might pause to ask: why? Why do we need to differentiate for kids? If having a trophy — or, some other award — accomplishes good things ... what is the problem? I know this sounds like a wishy-washy bleeding heart argument but bear with me. Why deny a kid a trophy or an award when there is no inherently good reason to do so? What does it accomplish? It isolates kids and makes them feel bad. Whereas giving them as award, can serve to help a kid commit to improving, it makes them part of the team (or, some other organization) where they can learn more and improve. If cutting the kid for no good reason teaches them that the world is hard, giving the award teaches them the opposite: the world is good, we support you, and we want you to succeed. Which approach do you think contributes the most to creating the conditions for succeess. 

But, there are other negative affects to the anti-award approach. One thing it does is that it creates “glory days” ... like the Bruce Springsteen song. It creates a situation where the high point of a person’s life was that moment that they won the trophy and beat everyone else. They were the best (which is what the anti-trophy for everyone argument seeks, in fact, to demonstrate: that we will honour this best person). But, glory days, as the song demonstrates, grow old. Does anyone want their glory day to occur when they are 18 or 15 or 21? Does anyone want that to be the high point of their life and what is left is only reliving those days? For kids this might be difficult to understand but as adults, we have all encountered this horrible moment at the class reunion or a chance meeting with old friends where we realize that someone is living in the past. Most of us, I think, really want our best days to lie before us, depending on our age, I suppose. Many people I have encountered find it sad when they meet someone who is 45 and still thinking about when they were 18. 

The other negative thing that occurs from the award for only the best approach is that it creates negative squabbling conflicts to win that award. I see this with academic awards all the time when I visit my kids teachers on those dreaded parent-teacher nights. The one that sticks in my mind were parents who were in front of me — and, hence, slowing me down. They had a list of all their daughter’s assignments, tests, projects, etc., and her grades and they were going through these one by one, questioning each grade trying to get more points for their child. I am not saying they are bad parents. Indeed, I suspect they are good parents who deeply love their children. What they were trying to do was to get the award for their child. Because the award was important — only the best got it — they lost track of what was important in school (that is, learning!) and focused on the award. They were not really concerned about whether or not their daughter learnt; they were looking for an explanation for each and every point their daughter “lost” and if there was no explanation, they her grade was going to go up. They were establishing, they believed, a track record of success for their daughter. Awards beget awards. If my daughter is the best student in Grade X; she has a better chance of being the best student in Grade Y, perceptions being what they are. The problem, of course, is this: this might get their daughter the award but it does not help her learn. Hence, there is a demising marginal utility because sooner or later, you encounter someone — usually at university — who will not budge on the grade. 

This happens to me a number of times each year. Students come to my office and treat grades as a matter of negotiation; not a signifier of what they have learnt and what they can to learn more, or what skills they can better develop. They are often deeply hurt — a number of students cry in my office each year — when I explain that the grade is the grade. If I have made a mistake, point it out, I’ll change it. But, if not ... I can show you how to improve your grades by doing better work but I’m not going to put a grade up. I have a young woman last year in tears tell me that without an “A” in my intro class, her chosen career would never be realized. If she did not, in other words, win the price and demonstrate that she was the best, she would never get into grad school. I tried to explain to this student — that this was not the case; that a grade less than A in an intro course did not end her chosen career before it began. She would have non of it. It struck me then that this might be a personal matter but it also developed out a particular sense about awards and “being the best.” 

For these reasons, and perhaps others, I have a hard time with the “world is hard” argument. There is more to say here, but I’ll hold off because this blog is already getting too long. Feel free, as always, to disagree, modify, question, correct in the comments. 

Choices

A new topic: how do we make decisions? How do we make choices? This is a bit of a flighty question for me because I don't really ever address such issues and they don't seem to have much to do with Canadian Studies. In my defense, I might argue that they have a lot to do with Canadians. But, really, this is a subject that has been on my mind lately. There is, of course, a whole bunch of social science on choices and why people make the decisions they make. This literature runs across studies of consumer culture, risk and trust, political authority and voting, public goods, etc. What these various studies tell us -- on a remarkably abstract level -- is that there are patterns to choices. Each individual makes their own choices and these are not the same thing. Individuals being what they are, they will make different choices  (I order X for supper, you order Y).  But, choices on an aggregate level line up into patterns. For instance, a whole bunch of people individually decide that they will vote, say, Conservative. Or, in consumption, each individual decides to buy a certain style of shirt but collectively we get a fad. Much of the social science on choice is about how these patterns emerge. Why do some people vote Conservative and others do not? Are there any correlations we can find with gender, sexual orientation, region, etc. Why do some people listen to a certain type of music and others a different type? And ... on down the line.

I make a great deal of use of the literature in political behaviour, consumption, sociology, etc. in my courses to try to explain these choices. Public opinion polling data helps. I find this useful and allows my students and I to ask questions that help us  to understand the dynamics of contemporary Canada. I am not talking about these kinds of questions in this blog, however important they are. Instead, I want to think out load about the ethics of choices that we make.  When we make a choice, what goes through our minds? And, I want to think about these choices in terms of our relations with other people. I'll tip my hand: like most people I think there are right choices to be made. This is not an awe-inspiring conclusion, I know. But, it might also be construe as arrogant: who are you, Andrew Nurse, to tell me that the choice I have made is wrong. That is a darned good question and one to which I don't have an easy answer. What I will do by way of partial reply is to encourage people to disagree with me, or modify my conclusions, or support them if they like. In other words, let's have a discussion of choices. But, I also want to suggest that in our interactions with others, there are ways we can make better choices.

Note, I said "better choices" because often times we do not know the results of the choices we make, at least not right away. In other words, we have to make choices often times without clear evidence that one answer we might pick is either right or wrong. For example, imagine that I am about to hire someone to work in my business. I have a number of applicants. I can review their CVs, check their references, make sure they have relevant work experience, etc. But, any choice I make is conducted without perfect evidence. And, we have all seen this happen. Someone who looks good "on paper" turns out to not be right for a specific job. It is not that the employer was not doing their homework (which can also happen), because in my example, they were. It is that they needed to make a choice with incomplete evidence. There was no way of knowing how person X or Y would respond to that specific job in that specific company until they were actually doing the job. Still one can make a "better choice" or a "worse choice": one can do one's homework, check the applicants records, have more extended discussions with their referees, etc. and then select the person who best fits on the basis of their record. This is, I am saying, no guarantee that the choice is right, but it improves the odds. Conversely, doing the opposite, checking the record and then selecting a person who does not appear to be the best fit would be  worse choice because one would be increasing the chances of having an employee who could not do the job.

That is, I am sure, so much common sense. It makes sense for an employer to want to hire the best employees (even if that selection is not a guarantee of that person being able to do the job). What about other situations? The short answer is that what makes for a better choice depends on one's objectives. For instance, an employer may not hire the best person for a particular job because they have  relative who needs a job and they are going to hire them. We might not like this choice (the best qualified person, surely, is supposed to get the job) -- particularly if we were the best qualified person who did not get the job because some  relative was hired -- but our critique of this decision (however accurate) misses the point. The person hiring had a different objective than we and so we each approached this choice from different perspectives that were not compatible. We argued "Hey, I am the best person I should be hired" whereas the employer's goal was not to hire the best person but to get one of their relatives work because they believe "family comes first" (or, say, because their deadbeat relative was living in their basement and they wanted to get them out). The conflict arises, then, not because any one is necessarily doing something wrong but because each person approach a choice with different objectives.

What this means is that when thinking about choices, we need to think about objectives: what are we trying to do with any individual choice. Some of these choices are, I concede, not particularly important. Our objectives may be very limited or idiosyncratic. We make choices with regard to what we might eat out of the spur of the moment, or to see a film because we find the trailer interesting. In these kinds of circumstances, the stakes are low. If we make a wrong choice -- or a worse choice than one we might otherwise have made -- no one suffers but ourselves. The choice has limited effects on others and no readily foreseeable effects and so it does not really merit intense scrutiny. No one suffers if I decide to have leftovers for supper. In this situation, I don't really need to think about my objectives. Sure, I could have made a better choice, but since that determination of that is both difficult and since there are no negative effects to other people, it simply not worth the time of trying to figure out a better choice and demonstrating exactly why that choise would be better likely could be done but … so what?

Things change when other people are affected by the choices we make. In that circumstance, we need to balance our objectives with the reasonably foreseeable effects on other people. Most of us recognize this and you can think about consideration of choices you might hear about you. Don't drive drunk because you might kill someone else if you hit them with your car. Don't fire a gun in a residential neighbourhood because you might shoot someone. Thinking about others when we make choices, then, is actually a normal thing. It is not airy fairy or softie or bleeding heart, but a normal mode of what I would argue is reasonable forethought. In fact, we would likely be concerned about someone who cared not a whit for others in the process of making important determinations. The implications of some choices are, in fact, so important that the state legislates parameters under which they can be made. You cannot, for instance, store radioactive waste in the shed in your backyard even though you own the property on which your shed sits. You cannot drag race through the centre of town (note, the state lets you drag race … just not in certain places where it is harmful to others). In employment, public agencies are bond by sets of formalized legal rules that constrain the choices people make viz private enterprise. If I own a business, I have every right to hire whoever I want, whether or not someone else feels they are the best qualified person. If I am hiring for my place of employment, I can't use the same criteria. I have to hire the best person (even if I can never be 100% sure of exactly who is the best person) because I am using public funds and I can't use public funds to hire my deadbeat relatives. (I don't have deadbeat relatives. This is just an example.) I take the rationale to be self evident. The negative effects to others (the students in the class, other scholars, the work others have to do to make up for a person who cannot do the job, public confidence in the institution, and others) are so pressing that most of us consider this type of nepotism wrong, even if we are prepared to accept it (or, at least feel there is nothing we can/should do about it) in the private sphere.

There are a number of reasons people will give for not making the right choice and I will try to address these in a future blog (or, making a worse choice), but before we consider these reasons, let us consider what makes for a better choice. We can acknowledge that a whole bunch of people give a whole bunch of reasons for the choices they make. The fact that they do this indicates that they fully understand that there are better choices and worse choices. If they did not believe this, they would not bother to explain their rationale. If they believed, for instance, that choices don't matter and they are "supermen" then explaining the reasons for a choice becomes a constraint on their liberty which is simply denied. But, most people don't do this. In fact, in controversial decisions, most people go out of their way to explain their reasoning to us. When they do this, what they are, in fact, saying is "I recognize that there are better and worse decisions. I want to explain to you why I made this decision so you will see that I have tried to make the best decision." I had a phone conversation the other night with a person who made a decision with which I disagreed and he spent 15 minutes going over his rationale for the decision point-by-point with me. This indicates not simply that he was responding to my questions about his decision but that he was at pains to try to say "look, this is the best decision because there are good reasons for it." In this case, this was a decision that did affect other people, hence his care.

I can also concede that decisions people make are grounded in their political or economic or social perspectives. For instance, a believer in capitalism will make certain decisions with regard to hiring people that I might not make and they will make no apologies for their course of action. I made this decision, they might say, because I will make money out of it. I acknowledge that it might case some people a significant degree of pain, but that pain ... well ... that is not my concern. My job is to make money. Conservatives I know often use a similar rationale: the world is a hard and tough place, they have told me, and yes, the decision that I made upset a bunch of children but they have to learn that the world is a hard and cold place. They may be upset but that is life.

I am going to stake out a different ground for making decisions. One of the reasons is that these rationales -- the one's I have just given above -- don't hold water. That is a strong claim but if you bear with me over the next blog or so I'll try to set out a reasoned argument why that don't measure up (preview: one argument, as you might imagine, is self-fulfilling prophesy. The Conservative actually makes the world a hard and cold place by the decisions that they make. If they had made a different choice - say one that did not upset children - they would actually be showing that the world is not a hard and cold place. Before they made that decision, these children who they upset thought that the world was neither hard and cold or nice and warm. The decision is what made them think that.) Instead of going over these rationales here, however, let me sketch out what I think is a better ground on which we should make decisions.

Because we cannot know the future for certain, our choices can always have ironic results. They can end up being disproved later. The appeasement of fascism, for example, is often looked at as a decision that went horribly awry even though it was made with the best of objectives: to secure peace and, hence, save lives and make the world a safer place. This is an extreme case, but you get my point. In this situation, in a situation where we are making decisions without full knowledge of what will happen as a result, we need to be double certain of objectives. In my view, the best ground them of making a decision is this: does the decision I am about to make stand a greater chance of securing good things? I should avoid a decision that has a greater chance of securing bad things, say hurting other people, but make the decision that has the better chance of producing positive results, say helping other people.

I'll give you an example. Imagine that I am coaching an amateur sports team. Normally, my team has 10 players on it. 11 players show up. Do I cut one of the players or keep them all. Imagine, too, that I am talking about minor team, say a bantam basketball team. 10 players might be ideal for me (two shifts, nice balance of guards and forwards, exactly two centres, I already have 10 uniforms, etc.). But, by cutting one of these players, I make a decision that has adverse effects particularly on a young person. They feel bad, indeed young people are often crushed in that situation. They don't play the game. They don't learn who to play it better so they might not be available next year. They might be isolated from their peers who are playing (imagine all their friends on the team).

Now, turn to my objectives. What am I trying to do in coaching this team? I state that I coach bantam basketball because I want to teach kids basketball, I like seeing their development, I can help them get ready to play in higher divisions, I can encourage sportsmanship, encourage teamwork, etc. The question that we need to ask is this: how does the decision to cut this one player actually fulfill my objectives. The short answer is that it does not. In fact, it might be detrimental to my stated objectives. I have the opportunity to fulfill my objectives with regard to this one player who was cut but I have chosen not to. I have chosen to set a limit which is artificial because I created it on the number of players to whom I will teach the game, who will learn sportsmanship, who will be physically active. Even worse, I might need that player (who I have cut) next year. I might only have 9 players show up next year and I need a tenth but the player I cut decided to quit because of my actions. Hence, I have harmed my own team in the future as well as undercut my objectives. In the process, I have also caused a high level of emotional pain to a younger person and, what is even worse in my view, I did so for an unneeded reason. In other words, my decision to cut this one player did not help me meet my objectives, it harmed my long term objectives, it had adverse consequences for a young person, and it did not need to be made.

What do I mean by it did not need to be made. This: I set the limit of ten players. I've actually coached teams with up to 14 players on them. Thus, I had room to include this player, to keep him or her with their friends, to encourage their love of the sport, to help them develop skills I -- as a coach might need next year -- and be inclusive. I also had the opportunity to show a child that world did not need to be a hard and cold place. I made it a hard and cold place for him or her by cutting them. I did not need to do that. All I needed to do was take that player on the team and field a team of 11.

One still might argue that there is a good reason to cut players if those cuts serve some other purpose, that is they avoid some other cost that is prohibitive. What was the cost of taking that eleventh player. In terms of practices, there are no costs. It does not matter how many players are at a practice. Since at the developmental level (and bantam is still at that level), we practice much more than we play (as we should so that the girls learn basic skills so that they can play in the future), the majority of time there is no added cost to having that extra child. The gym does not cost more to rent (the rent is fixed by hour no matter how many kids we have). An extra kid or two or three is no more demanding on the coaching staff and, in fact, might be helpful. It also adds revenue to my local basketball association because that player will pay a registration fee (and so I have 10% more money to work with the pay referee fees for games, for instance). No cost here and, however small, benefits. The only cost that I can see is that there will be a very slight reduction in playing time -- allowing that I will play all my players equally -- over the course of the season for each player. I say very small because we are talking about a few minutes per player per game over the span of a season. I could go on (and talk about bench depth and the player development and the like) but you see my point. When I sit down to make this decision, there is much to gain from taking that one player and almost nothing to lose.

In fact, the only area where there is a serious conflict lies in the disjuncture between my desire for a team of ten and all the benefits that come from taking this player on the team. I have to give up something: my comfort with a team of ten players. In this instance, I can see that my comfort is irrelevant because it is not what I am after. In my list of objectives, my comfortable love of 10 was not listed. So, even here, I have not given up anything that is fundamental to my goals. To argue that I should cut this player, I would, in fact, have to contravene my own stated goals (which opens me, rightly, to accusations of dishonesty or hypocrisy). The only thing I can argue is that my comfort with 10 is the deciding factor at which point the logic is: do I weigh my comfort ahead of my own stated goals (as I said, at which point in time people will not believe that I am honestly articulating my goals), ahead of the positive benefits that will come to this player, and against the future development of my team? The logic here strikes me as straight forward: there is a better decision and that decision is to take the player. The worse decision is to cut the player.

Now I want to conclude on this note: note that we have no way of actually knowing precisely what the right decision is. I could be making the wrong decision if the player I chose to keep on the team ends up, say, using his opportunity to play on my team to become a terrorist and attack a neighbouring community. I am exaggerating but you get my point. It is possible that that extra player could be a real problem player. Conversely, if I don't take him and one of my players gets injured I might need him or her. But, when I go and say "congrats, we have an injury. I can now take you on the team." This player might say "screw you. You are a mean hypocrite and won't play for you." And, you know what, this would not just be sour grapes; it would be right (because I had violated my stated own self-stated objectives for my own comfort and not out of any good reason). Not taking the player might end up, in fact, being the worse decision I could have made. 

My point, however, is not that that is correct but that we don't know. The only thing I can do is make a decision on partial information and on the basis of my objectives. I can make a decision that includes a person, helps me meet my objectives, and provides for the future or ... not. The question is which decision stands the greatest chance of being correct. Or, to put this in simpler terms: do I have a better chance of teaching this player basic basketball skills if I have them on my team or I leave them off?