In teaching, I’ve learned any
number of life lessons. Teaching journalism ethics, for example, taught me the
universal utility of developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of
moral development.
Kohlberg divides human moral and
ethical development broadly into three stages. Stage one is pre-conventional,
the moral level of a child. A child’s moral view is that he wants whatever he
wants and he doesn’t want to get punished for getting it. He’s amoral or sub-moral.
That’s to be expected in a child, but adults stuck at that level are invariably
trouble, often dangerous to themselves and those around them — people like
Benito Mussolini and Donald J. Trump.
Stage two is the conventional
level, and describes the bulk of humanity. They obey the laws, they go along to
get along. Generally good people as far it goes, they are nevertheless subject
to what Hannah Arendt termed “the banality of evil.” If they happen to look
around and see that everybody else supports slavery or the murder of Jews or
torture, then so will they.
Stage three is the post-conventional
level, those who recognize and stand up against injustice even if that
injustice is backed by authorities, and even at some risk to themselves. This
is the level of our heroes from popular culture and history. They’re Marshal
Will Kane and attorney Atticus Finch and Captain Kirk and Captain America.
They’re Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Ida B. Wells and
Edward R. Murrow.
The Milgram experiment demonstrated that the post-conventional
people are vastly outnumbered by the conventional people. But it’s always the
post-conventional people who count, who move the morality of the world. “Those who doggedly challenge the orthodoxy of belief, who
question the reigning political passions, who refuse to sacrifice their
integrity to serve the cult of power, are pushed to the margins,” Chris Hedges
noted. “They are denounced by the very people who, years later, will often
claim these moral battles as their own.”
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