1. Who decided the goal? Do we agree on the goal? If not, then motivations are fair game.jennypenny wrote: Do motivations even matter as long as the goal is accomplished?
I kinda do. The unspoken criticism I get in conversations about ERE is that it's a selfish way to live. Criticizing a lack of charity work reinforces that perception, so I get why people might be sensitive to it. (pinching where it already hurts, so to speak)Dragline wrote: I still don't think any of this discussion has much to do with ERE other than in a very tangential way -- i.e., personal choices about how to spend one's time.
If anyone claimed moral superiority it was Devil's Advocate (not for himself) when he overtly said the rich guy is a better human being because of his giving. Also, you might want to reread your paragraph above and reconsider who here is acting morally superior.Dragline wrote: And the whole idea of telling someone else that their chosen charity or philanthropy is "ethically bad" seems like a lot of sanctimonious and/or jealous bullshit. "I'm morally superior to you because I don't do jack for anyone other than me" just sounds kind of lame in a overly-rationalized teen-aged angst/jadedness sort of way.
I found this via Shankar Vedantam and his story on Moral Licensing in the corporate world.People who had previously purchased a green product were significantly more likely to both lie and steal than those who had purchased the conventional product. Their demonstration of ethical behavior subconsciously gave them license to act unethically when the chance arose.
VEDANTAM: ......... I asked her whether there was a relationship between corporate social responsibility and its evil twin, corporate social irresponsibility. Here's what she told me.
ELAINE WONG: Oh, yes. We're find a very strong relationship for that, in fact. So what our main finding is, is that engaging in corporate social responsibility at one point in time actually leads to an increase in corporate social irresponsibility at a later point in time.
and
VEDANTAM: Well, Wong actually is drawing on a large body of psychology that looks at the same behavior at the individual level. Here she is again.
WONG: People are actually more likely to engage in morally questionable behavior after they have engaged in moral behavior. So moral behavior can almost function like a type of monetary currency and you can bank this.
VEDANTAM: So I think what she's trying to say, Steve, is that all of us carry around the sort of mental account of our moral worth. So when we do bad things we feel the need to compensate by doing good things.
You know, a staple idea in the movies is a guy has an affair and he comes home and he buys his wife a diamond bracelet, right?
INSKEEP: This is the opposite of that.
VEDANTAM: Right. Now the wife doesn't know he's had the affair, so who is he compensating for? Who's the audience? He's actually compensating for himself. This is exactly the opposite of that; that sometimes we do good things, we bank them, and we cash them in. The theory is called moral licensing, and it's been demonstrated quite widely at the individual level. What Wong has done now is to show the same thing works at the corporate level.
