Dare to Use Your Own Understanding!

Today we take on the question, "Is it okay to change my values to fit in?" We talk about Utilitarian ethics, Kant's "An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?" and Rabbi Akiva bar Joseph. Also, peep the new segments: Moment of Latin and Ein Moment des Deutsche!

14:10 | An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation by Jeremy Bentham

16:05 | Ibid.

18:22 | Ibid.

37:34 | "An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?" by Immanuel Kant, trans. by Ted Humphrey

43:35 | "Muslim teen reveals father's response to removing hijab," Lamia Estatie, BBC News

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

If you grew up in American evangelicalism, you probably know a whole cast of characters that filled out the pantheon of Protestant Christian kids' media. Mr. Whitaker from Adventures in Odyssey, Bible Man, McGee and Me, Quigley's Village, The Donut Man, Gerbert, Superbook, The Time Traveling Bible. If you weren't raised in the same time and culture as me, I need to assure you that each and every one of these things was real. I remember blowing my wife's mind when I told her about Veggie Tales. She was raised in the Lutheran church and didn't have any exposure to most of these things, and the idea of talking and singing vegetables telling kids about God's love was like something out of a fever dream for her. I remember lots of snippets and chunks from all of these things, but there was one that I had a much closer connection to than all the others. Salty the Singing Songbook. Salty, spelled like Psalms with a PS, was a giant blue anthropomorphic Psalter, that is, a book of Psalms for liturgical use, that would hang out with kids, teach them about the Bible, and try to help them understand God and God's laws. When I was in fourth grade, my mom told me that on a random Saturday morning, I would be going to an audition with a bunch of other kids for some kind of musical. And apparently I got picked because, well, I just started going to musical practice once or twice a week for months. You know how sometimes when you're a kid, you don't really have a great idea about what's going on. You just kind of go where your parents tell you and figure it out from there. This was definitely one of those situations. I genuinely don't think I understood until mere weeks before the show went up that I was going to be performing in a production of Salty the Singing Songbook Live for the Indianapolis stop of the Billy Graham Kids' Crusade. Basically, it was a musical event where families could have fun singing songs and watching skits, learn about God, and perhaps connect with someone about the idea of learning more about Jesus Christ. This kind of outreach was a really important part of evangelicalism in the 80s and 90s, and it was a genuinely cool opportunity to be a part of something bigger than me. Tens of thousands of kids and their parents packed the RCA Dome, the stadium where Indianapolis' NFL team played at the time, to be a part of this. It was just fun to sing and dance and do theater on a huge stage, and my parents and teachers identified me as having some skill in those areas pretty early on. It's been almost 30 years, but one thing I remember really vividly about the whole experience is how when the kids at school found out that I was a part of this big giant event, they weren't jealous or even excited for me. They made fun of me. To use some modern young folks' parlance, they thought it was cringe. They called me salty and intimated that I was gay for singing and dancing on stage. It was honestly pretty hurtful, and a big part of my childhood was enduring the bullying that came with being a singing, dancing, boisterously nerdy ADHD kid with slightly effeminate mannerisms and a high singing voice. I wish I could say that the result of this little grade school vignette was that I endured the bullying and came out on top, even stronger and cooler and more popular than ever before. That I stood up for myself and didn't let anyone dim my light with their cruel words. That wouldn't really be true. Mostly, I just kept trying to be the best, most achieving little dude, and I kept getting bullied for various similar things. And I staggered my way to high school, where I enjoyed a little bit more social capital. Honestly, the biggest reason that I kept on doing the things I like doing was my parents never let me quit stuff. I kept on being in choir. I kept on singing and dancing and writing songs about flying pogo sticks. Yes, this is absolutely true. And my parents just kept encouraging me, and sometimes forcing me, to do the stuff that I was good at, and that I genuinely enjoyed doing, even when the bullying made me want to quit. Hi, I'm Peter. I'm a professor of ethics and your host for this episode of Things You Can Do, an ethics podcast of approximate regularity, where I take your ethics questions and transmigrify them into meaningful answers so that you can know some things you can do. He asks, Is it okay to change your morals to fit in? Dang, dude, just like hit us with the ethical equivalent of a tactical nuclear strike. But hey, we take on the tough questions here on this podcast. So I'm gonna do my best to try to really unpack this one and pull out all the parts. The first thing I want to acknowledge is that this formulation of the question kind of sounds like the question that the asker already knows the answer to, and is looking for some confirmation, or maybe for someone to disagree with a hot take. We might call this something like a leading question. Now, I don't think he meant it to be that kind of question. That was just how he asked it, very matter-of-factly. But I do want to talk about this, because I think the way that we ask and understand questions matters to how we approach answering them. So there are at least two senses of a leading question that I want to briefly outline here. One kind of leading question is asked in a sort of non-neutral way, and the other kind of leading question is asked in a way that it is impossible to answer correctly. Imagine you are on trial in one of those crime procedural shows or an anime visual novel about an up-and-coming crime-solving attorney. The sharply dressed prosecutor walks up to you, looking smug and confident, looks you right in the eyes, and asks you the question you've been dreading.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

Why did you kill your husband?

SPEAKER_02 7:01

The tension in the air is thick. A bead of sweat rolls down your neck and into the collar of your shirt. Your eyes flit back and forth, looking to your lawyer, then to the judge, then to the jury, back to your attorney. What do you do? Why did you kill your husband? Why? Oh why? But wait, you didn't kill your husband? And you realize that you can't really answer the question that's being asked, because it relies on a premise that is itself untrue. In order to respond properly, you would have to grant that this premise is true. In order for there to be a why of killing your husband, you have to have done it first. In United States jurisprudence, we would call this leading the witness. A good lawyer will object because, well, we've decided that that's kind of against the rules when you talk to a witness. You can't make someone comment on a fact that they have not established, and asking them a tricky question to make them sound culpable is foul play. In logic or philosophy, a leading question doesn't necessarily have to imply a secret premise to be leading. It can be asked in a way that heavily favors a certain kind of answer over another. Or it can be asked in a way that makes the subject of a question confusing. If I asked you, what do you think of the nasty, addictive habit of vaping? I've asked you a leading question because I'm setting a context for my own understanding, and I'm making you answer in that context. We also see this quite often in political polls. Do you agree that this party has egregiously overstepped their boundaries in prosecuting our great president? Or do you think this politician should respect the constitution instead of doing what they want? These questions represent a hidden bias, and they can make it more likely that certain kinds of answers will or won't be given. We talked a couple episodes ago about how there is no such thing as a completely neutral situation. And you may think that I'm sort of contradicting myself here, but there is a difference between I understand my values and where I'm coming from when I try to talk about this thing, and I'm gonna use language that can sway people into giving me the answers I like or don't like. How does this apply to our question? Well, many of us have grown up hearing some version of always be yourself.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Don't compromise your values. Go your own way, even if everyone else stands against you.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

You know, pithy phrases that are meant to encourage people who are feeling discouraged because they aren't fitting in or because their vision is hard to realize right now. And that's good. We definitely should be aware enough of what we believe that we don't automatically just go along with the way everyone else is thinking. But it also seems like, well, there are gonna be some situations that, for better or for worse, it's gonna seem like a good idea to do the thing that everyone else is doing. You're walking down a busy city sidewalk, and everyone is in their little groups, they've got their coats pulled up to their chins against the cold, waiting patiently at the crosswalk for the signal that will tell them it is safe to go. But you know what? I'm not gonna go the way of the crowd, I'm not gonna be a sheep and just follow blindly, I'm gonna cross wherever I want. And then you get hit by a bus or a cab or Joseph Gordon-Levitt on a bicycle. Sometimes following the crowd is a good idea because, well, everyone's doing that thing for a good reason. Maybe it seems like I'm belaboring the point here. Let me back up to the beginning and talk about why I think this is an important angle to take. What we've discovered so far is that the way we ask a question matters for how we answer it. So, how do we ask Schmelbenson's question in a way that makes it the most likely that we can get an honest, truthful, relatively unbiased answer? Well, what if we ask it something like this? How do I know when it is the right time to go along with the crowd and when it's the right time to deviate from what everyone else is doing? I like this way of asking it because it leaves a lot of things open to us. On the one hand, it acknowledges that there are times where, yeah, we want to do what everyone else is doing. If everyone is doing something smart or good, we don't want to stand out just because we want to be different. That doesn't seem like a wise rule for action. But on the other hand, I like that it's saying, it seemed like there is a way to make a predictable, intelligible rule for action when it comes to deciding whether to follow the crowd or go it alone. That is what I want to try to focus in on. I've been thinking about how in the intro I say, I take your ethics questions and transmography them into meaningful answers, and I want to make sure that I'm actually making a suggestion about how we could act, some things that we could do. There's an old sci-fi fantasy trope about the dangers of collective thinking. And it shows up in a lot of golden age of science fiction TV shows, movies, and stories, but probably the most famous is George Orwell's 1984, a story about a future world where no one really thinks too hard about who the country is at war with. It seems to change every month or so, or who is good or who is bad. They just make sure to follow what Big Brother tells them to do, and they'll be fine. Well, spoiler alert for this 75-year-old book, but it's not fine, and the reader finds out through the protagonist's predicaments that simply going along with what Big Brother says can lead us all into a nightmarish society. But if this kind of situation weren't at least a little bit interesting or attractive, it wouldn't be scary. The reason Big Brother is so persuasive is because the costs of not conforming are so high. You get tortured and you have your brain reprogrammed and everything. But maybe for some people, the cost of telling the truth and not having your whole life run by the totalitarian thought police is worth the pain. How do you decide for yourself what kind of thing is worth undergoing a lot of discomfort? We need to figure out a way to weigh the consequences of our choices in a way that doesn't feel so high stakes. Let's take up an idea that has been pretty central to Western ethics for the last 200 years. We're going to talk about utility as a guiding principle for how to make the right choice. Enter 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Now, usually when we talk about utilitarianism, as it's often called, we think about a different guy, John Stuart Mill, because he wrote a book called Utilitarianism, and well, that makes sense. But I want to start with Bentham because he gives what he thinks is a pretty formulaic and helpful way to measure all of the variables that go into making a choice. He writes in his book Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Thus, to take an exact account of an act's general tendency to affect the interests of a community, proceed as follows. Of those whose interests seem to be the most immediately affected by the act, take one and take account, one, of the value of each pleasure that appears to be produced by it in the first instance, two, of the value of each pain that appears to be produced by it in the first instance, three, of the value of each pleasure that appears to be produced by it after the first, this being the fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain.

SPEAKER_04 14:51

Four, of the value of each pain that appears to be produced by it after the first, this being the fecundity of the first pain and the impurity of the first pleasure. Then five, some of the values of all the pleasure on one side and of all the pains on the other. If the balance is on the side of the pleasure, that is the overall good tendency of the act with respect to the interests of that person. If on the side of pain, it's overall bad tendency.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Okay, Mr. Bentham here is a crucial and thoughtful philosopher for us in the 21st century, but his best work is absolutely not on display here. If your eyes started rolling back into your head about eight seconds after the start of that quote, you're in good company. This is, in my opinion, one of the weirdest things I've ever read in ethics. You mean the act of choosing the right thing to do is just some kind of opaque math problem? And wait a second, if it were that easy, wouldn't everybody always make the right choice? Just so long as they had their morality calculator set to the right coordinates or whatever? Well, not only does that seem pretty unlikely, it also isn't even the last step. Because guess what, math nerds? It's not just one person we have to do this measurement for, it's everybody.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Repeat the above process with respect to each person whose interests appear to be concerned, and then sum the results. If this balance is on the side of Persia, that is the overall good tendency of the act, with respect to the interests of the community, if on the side of pain, it's overall bad tendency.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Oh my gosh, of course we haven't achieved world peace. The dude who made up the formula is giving us the most dense algebra quiz ever assigned, and he came up with it back when folks were still using abacuses, and a calculator was a person, not a tool. Can you imagine having to pull your socks off to count on your toes and decide whether or not you were gonna let somebody go ahead of you in line to the grocery store? We would never get anything done. In fairness to old Jimmy B. Rhythmatic over here, he never meant for us to use this as an everyday device, like a moral slide rule we have to whip out every time we're faced with a choice. That would never work. Instead, we can think about this as his effort to show that moral choices were the result of rational actions, or at least that they should be. We've mentioned our old friend Immanuel Kant before, but he too was like Bentham in that he thought the primary purpose of philosophy for ethics was to find the right answer in any situation, and to show that it wasn't something that just changed based on feelings or cultures. Why was this so important to Kant and according to his text Bentham as well? Well, because they thought of morality or ethics as a science. And by that, they meant that it could give you truth that was stable and couldn't be changed. In this, they were following in the footsteps of the great astronomers and physicists, particularly Isaac Newton, who was able to show that the way we observed the earth and heavenly bodies could be backed up by reason and not merely by observation, which could be tricked or misjudged. Bentham says that the science of morality is tough, because the way that we measure it scientifically is through pleasure and pain. But we all experience pleasure and pain subjectively. That is, every person is different, and it's hard to compare those experiences. Well, thankfully, the principle of utility can help us compare these subjective experiences. And Bentham is quite confident that it is the only thing that can do so. He says, systems that try to question the principle of utility deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. That's real nice, Jeremy. But as we've seen, it doesn't really seem like it's possible to do all this nice moral math you've been asking us to do. And what are all these variables I have to add up? And using what units of measurement am I supposed to add all this stuff up with? And just what the heck is fecundity?

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Ugh.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

I need a break. Let's head to the agora and come back to this in a minute.

SPEAKER_06 19:30

Do you ever have a thought you maybe shouldn't say out loud and then immediately find yourself talking about it for an hour? We're Katie and Katie, and that's exactly how we operate. On I Suspect, a podcast for the curious and the chatty, we bring that dynamic to weekly conversations on topics ranging from the serious to the very unserious.

SPEAKER_05 19:51

We're two friends navigating life a decade apart with chemistry that would impress your high school science teacher.

SPEAKER_06 19:56

But for everything we agree on, there's just as much that we don't. We are not afraid to disagree and challenge one another's perspective. And you might find yourself picking sides.

SPEAKER_05 20:06

But one thing is true, we always leave the conversation with a fresh perspective and more to think about. And we hope you do too. Join us on Mondays for new episodes of I Suspect.

SPEAKER_06 20:17

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Questions like, Where do orcs come from? Why do dwarves and elves hate each other? And just who the heck is Tom Bombadil? Well, if so, I'm here to help. Hi, I'm Matthias Austin, and each week on the Lord of the Rings AMA podcast, I answer listener questions about Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and the Greater Legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, giving as in-depth an answer as I can, while trying to stick to a manageable 30-minute episode. If you've got questions about hobbits, elves, dwarves, or wizards, I've got answers. Check out the Lord of the Rings AMA podcast. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Okay, so we left off with Mr. Bentham by saying that the process he thinks we should take to figure out what choices will serve the greatest utility is a bit cumbersome. But I do want to highlight some of the things that he thinks are important in trying to weigh utility, because these are meaningful concepts to help us decide what sorts of effects we want to result from our actions. For example, Bentham says we could think about the intensity or duration of a pleasure or pain, or maybe the trade off that would come from combining them. We rightly tend to think that the intensity of the pain of getting a cavity filled is pretty high, but when Compared to the duration of pain from a decaying tooth, it seems like a pretty good trade-off. Or maybe we think of the duration of the difficulty of climbing a mountain, but the intensity of the amazing view we see at the top makes all that hard work and sore muscles worth it. Proximity and productiveness are kind of weird ones, but productiveness is what we mean when we say fecundity. See, I told you we'd figure it out. Basically, it just means how likely is it that this pain will lead to pleasure, or that this pleasure will lead to more pleasure? Proximity can mean literal nearness. Is this pleasure at hand? Or is this pain gonna get me right away when I make this choice? But it can also be about time. Maybe I'll be okay with a choice if the pain I'll feel is a long way off and happens over a long period of time. We could think about the certainty and purity of the results. So for instance, maybe we would rather definitely have pizza, even if it's from a pizza place that isn't your favorite, then maybe have your favorite place, but also maybe have nothing at all. We could add to this extent. Maybe it's worth it to certainly get mediocre pizza, because then everybody gets to have some. Whereas if you gamble with not having pizza, that's that many people that miss out on a meal. These are just examples meant to illustrate these points, and every one of these ideas doesn't always go into every single choice, but they can be helpful ways to make tough choices. When you're trying to develop a good habit or get rid of a bad habit, you tell yourself that it's all gonna be worth it in the long run. Think how great it will be to make the basketball team, or how nice it will be that your fingers don't bleed all the time from constantly chewing on them. This is your way of saying the pain is very near and very certain, but the pleasure that's far away is so good that I have to focus on that instead. Let's refocus for a second. If you've listened to any of my other episodes, you know I tend to do this thing where I zoom in and then zoom back out and then zoom in and then zoom back out. But I always try to keep the main idea in focus when I'm explaining another idea. So let's bring this back to what this has to do with our original question about whether or not it's okay to compromise our values in order to fit in. Jeremy Bentham would say, well, you've got to measure the utility. Will it serve a greater good for you to change your mind? Well then you should do it. But wait, how do I know what the greater good is? Isn't that the problem in the first place? Sometimes it can seem like being popular or staying out of the spotlight or avoiding the bully serves the greater good better than finding yourself in the crosshairs of some kind of conflict or ridicule. And honestly, as helpful as Bentham's system might be, it kind of just gives us a way to measure our uncertainty more complexly. Doesn't really give us a magic bullet, you know? The way that I tend to do this in my classes is by doing something that we might call a case study. Now, this term can be used pretty broadly, so what I mean when I use it here is, hey, here's a situation, hypothetical, actual, or even fictional, that I want you to imagine you have a stake in. So what we're gonna do is imagine that we have a stake in this situation somehow, usually by imagining that we're one of the agents. That is, someone who has a choice and or who experiences the effects of those choices. And then we're gonna give our analysis of how we might behave in that situation. In this exercise, honesty is important, but so is creativity. It doesn't make me a better person to say that I would just simply do something that's either impossible or improbable, or that I haven't even prepared for. That's why instead of going straight for really intense or contrived situations, like the trolley problem, or famous scenarios about organ donors and brains and vats, I prefer to stick to more everyday kinds of situations, or what we might call quotidian. As an aside, this is one of my favorite words. And it gives me a chance to do another version of our new segment. Moment of Latin Quoti. This one is pretty straightforward, quote meaning each of or every, and ds meaning day. Interestingly, it used to refer specifically to a fever that occurred daily. According to Galen, fevers could be understood not by what caused them, since no one in ancient Greek times or medieval times knew what germs or viruses were. Rather, it was based on how often they occurred or reoccurred. A quotidian would be a symptom that occurred daily and therefore was less likely to be pretty virulent, as opposed to a fever that burned through you really quickly and often ended in death. Shakespeare refers to it in his play As You Like It, saying that one of the characters had a quotidian of love come upon him. That is, he was lovesick. Anyway, back to case studies. When I do these with my students, I like to do them in three sort of categories. First, case studies based in popular media, like movies, books, TV shows, or comics. I do this because we have a specific example of how someone reacted in a situation, but we also have the benefit of the storytelling of that media, giving us all kinds of context clues to what the different pressures and potential consequences of that situation might be. Further, there's a sort of distance that the story gives us, just in case the situation hits a little too close to home, or it feels too scary to take on, or maybe it's especially taboo or heinous. If we're worried about that, we can always think about it in the third person and derive moral and ethical concepts from it in a way that allows us to kind of hold them at arm's length until we feel more comfortable. Second, I use hypothetical situations that use a student's own life to kind of fill in the gaps. Instead of thinking about what, say, Luke Skywalker would do, knowing all the things we know about him and Han and Leia and Yoda and X-Wings and everything, we can think about what we would do in a situation where the context is what we know, what's familiar to us. In this way, no two people really have the same challenge, despite the fact that we may all be talking about the same hypothetical situation. For example, imagine there's a conflict about a certain family member who always shows up to Thanksgiving and gets drunk and makes everyone upset. An unmarried middle son in a blended family might think a lot differently than would an only daughter of immigrants who has a husband of a different race. These personal details matter, and when we do hypothetical situations, we invite everyone to think about it from the perspective of their own unique contexts. Lastly, there are historical situations. I utilize these for a few reasons. I like history. I think that learning about history not only helps us know how we got here, but helps us understand the motivations of the people that did the things that led to our specific cultural moment. Also, thinking about historical situations reminds us that these things matter beyond mere intellectual exercises or therapeutic moral self-actualization. History is made up of people doing things that had consequences. And the more we think about the consequences that did occur, the more we're able to imagine other different outcomes that maybe could be better. Let's try an example. I've recently been watching the show Lost with my wife. I had never seen it when it came out. My friends and I were in college during most of it, and Meg wanted to rewatch it. One of the primary characters, Jack, has a flashback in one episode to when he was maybe 10 or 12 years old, and he's getting harassed by a bully on the playground. Jack had tried to stand up for another kid who was being picked on, and that had earned him a pretty merciless beating of his own.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Stay down.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

So let's break this down. Who are our agents or stakeholders in this situation? And what are the possible effects for those people? What's the environment in which these choices are taking place? And what are the effects that these actions will have on the people involved as well as others? These are the primary questions we want to ask ourselves in a case study like this, because the more we know about these answers, the better we can craft a response that fits with a certain set of values, such as our own, or within a particular ethical framework. By the way, ethical framework is just a way of saying, like, hey, here's a starter kit of values and motivations, and a way of analyzing our intentions and effects. Our agents in this situation seem to be the bullies, the kid that Jack is trying to help, let's call him Mark, and Jack himself. Mark doesn't really seem to have a lot of choice in the matter, he's pretty well getting his butt handed to him, so we'll leave him out for now. The bullies seem pretty determined to do what they're doing, and I don't think we aspire to be like them anyway, so that leaves Jack. What's curious about this situation is that the show pretty clearly communicates to us that if he tries to get back up, Jack is going to get walloped again. His efforts to protect Mark haven't been successful so far, and we're not led to believe getting back up will result in a different outcome either. So the choices seem to be something like Jack can stay down and admit defeat, and in doing so give in to the bully. Or he can get back up and probably endure more pain and suffering with little assurance that he will create any changes in the situation for our friend getting knuckle sandwiches force fed to him. But remember, even though the most obvious outcome, helping Mark versus not being punched more, seems to leave us with a pretty bleak cost-benefit analysis, there are other ones we can measure if we think about productiveness or fecundity. Maybe he'll still get punched, but Jack will make a good friend in Mark, who appreciates Jack's loyalty and it will be worth the momentary pain. Maybe Jack thinks that if he gives up now, it will make him more likely to lay down in the future, and dang it, that's just not the kind of person he wants to be. Think also about the proximity. Remember, we can think of this as temporal proximity, not just locational. Maybe Jack thinks it's better to stand up to the bully now that he's already taken a few punches. What's one more? A little bit of effort now lets the bullies know that, at the very least, they're gonna have to put in more work to make Jack and Mark do what they want. In a way, that puts a kind of moral math problem back on them.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

Oh man, is it really worth it to pick on these two when every time I can't just scare them off, I actually have to beat them up? That takes so much effort and leads to a greater likelihood that I'll get caught.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

We can see how this 30-second clip has so many little moments wrapped up in it that cascade into the future choices of all the agents involved. Do we think that Jack or the bullies are going through these choices in their heads while this is happening? Almost certainly not. We tend to rely on something more like either a moral sense, a kind of ethical gut feeling, or we use principles or rules of thumb that give us general guidance that we can apply to specific situations. We'd call the latter of these rule utilitarianism. It's the idea that we form moral rules to help us do quick calculations in common circumstances. When you hear someone say, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, or it's better to give than to receive, or Patience is a virtue, they're communicating a rule that yields pretty predictable calculations in quotidian, there's that word again, moral situations. We aren't told Jack's motivations, but the next scene in the show, where Jack's father chides him for losing to these bullies on behalf of another loser, helps us make some educated guesses. Jack probably feels a strong sense of needing to do whatever the right or respectable thing is, and that conflicts with his sense that he may or may not be disappointing his emotionally abusive addict father. You can imagine what a confusing situation that could be for a kid with a strong sense of justice, but a parental figure whose own moral predilections seem somewhat warped. As for me, I think I would still get up and take the punch like Jack did. I think my motivations would have been something like, I don't like bullies, and screw you for trying to tell me what to do. This describes me even now, but it maybe describes me better as a 10-year-old. In fact, the primary motivation in getting back up for me may have been that I was told by someone with the ability to coerce me that I ought to stay down. I really, really don't like being told what to do, especially by people that I consider to be morally bankrupt. But what about you? What do you think you would do, either as a kid or even as you are now? What long-term effects do you imagine would come about as a result of this situation and your choices in it? Being able to think through these kinds of situations isn't just about being prepared for a situation that could occur, although it certainly isn't a bad idea. It's also about clarifying what your core values are so that you can be creative about the choices you can make in a tough situation. Rather than feeling powerless or forced into a choice that we don't fully understand or like, it can make us confident that we know the outcomes that we're trying to produce with our moral actions. Even though we've been talking about utilitarianism, I want to wrap up today by talking about Kant. Immanuel Kant, who we've met a few times before, is sort of famously not utilitarian in his ethics. In fact, he thinks that in general, we shouldn't think about the outcomes of a choice at all when we're weighing our moral options. He thinks that the only good thing is a good will, and that means that the most important factor in a moral choice is the intention with which you make that choice. I'll get more into Kant in an upcoming episode, but I want instead to talk about something he said in an article he wrote while working on what is often called his critical project, the big three books he's most well known for. In the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift. It sounds fancy, but it literally just means the Berlin Monthly Journal. He wrote an article called An Answer to the Question, What is Enlightenment? The Enlightenment was kind of an interesting time in history because, in a sense, those who were going through it had an idea that they were going through it. They knew that there were big, interesting changes and new ways of thinking. And while it was called an enlightenment, there was a lot of conversation over what that meant practically. Was it about science? Was it about politics? Was it about new medical technology or colonization? Kant had a very specific answer that wasn't like these answers.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Enlightenment is one's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own individuality with out guidance from people.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

It's interesting that Kant uses the word immaturity here. Or to be more specific, it's interesting that Ted Humphrey translated the German as immaturity, but it is a word that really fits, especially if we take a closer look here in I Moment des Deutschen. The word for immaturity here is Unmundigkeit. Kite in German is an ending that denotes an abstract state, kind of like ness in English, as in kindness or openness. The mündig comes from the Proto-West German mund meaning mouth, and the un or un means pretty much the same thing as it does in English. So unmündigkeit means like unmouthedness, which doesn't make much sense until you think about how mündigkeit in German is the word for maturity or to be of age. Someone who is mündig is able to speak for themselves, such as in a court of law. They're someone who is able to advocate on their own behalf. So someone who has unmundigkeit can't make decisions for themselves. This has an interesting and pretty straightforward connection to enlightenment. The German for this is Aufklarung. Auf, as a prefix, usually means something like up or open, and something that is Klarung has been made clear, purified, or maybe more like elucidated. Hence, the Aufklarung is the time when people who dare to use their own understanding, those people who have emerged from Unmundigkeit, into being willing to speak and think for themselves, well, they're thereby able to open up, clarify, elucidate the way things are. Now, why this silly jaunt down linguists' lane yet again? I can hear the critics and the boring people who don't love words.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

What do all these semantics have to do with my actions?

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Well, do I have an answer for you? What Kant is trying to say here is that at the heart of what this enlightenment thing is, well, it isn't science or technology or secularization or any of that. Enlightenment then, as I also believe it is now, is about deciding that you want to be the kind of person who is going to dare to use your own understanding rather than just relying on someone to speak for you, to think for you, to manufacture your responses and values. What this absolutely does not mean is that you should distrust experts or believe conspiracy theories without compelling evidence, or decide that every authority is lying to you. In fact, I think Kant would believe that those would be spectacularly egregious examples of immaturity. Instead, what we need to do is decide what it is that we're trying to be, trying to do, trying to aim for when using our understanding. Maturity is deciding what you think you want for yourself and then using your own efforts to try to figure out what that means. It doesn't mean you can't ask for help or rely on someone else's expertise. But remember, Kant says have the courage to use your own understanding, not have the courage to make up your own information. Growing up can be confusing. Heck, being an adult is confusing. You never really stop growing up either. I'm just a couple revolutions around the sun shy of entering my fifth decade on this planet. And there are days I wake up and I think, I wish I had any idea what I'm doing. I know a lot of my friends will echo that sentiment, that anxiety really. But what I want to encourage you is that taking Kant's advice, sapere au day, dare to reason, have the courage to use your own understanding, that advice isn't about being smart or even about knowing what you're doing. It's about courage. It's about being able to take stock of yourself and say, this is what I'm going for. This is the kind of person I want to be, and I'm going to be audacious enough to try to make that happen. I trust myself enough to make the choices it takes to be that person. And I believe in myself enough to make the mistakes that will inevitably happen along the way. Several years ago, I remember reading the story of a young woman who wore hijab but was feeling peer pressure to remove it because of the way she felt like it made her a target in a very negatively charged political and social environment. If you don't know, hijab is a concept in Islam whereby men and women are required to cover certain parts of their bodies in certain situations. Islam is a broadly diverse religion, and many Muslim folks practice hijab differently, or not at all. In the US, you've likely heard the word hijab in reference to a certain kind of head covering that women choose, or sometimes are forced, to wear. After 9-11, there were a lot of really cruel and shameful anti-Arab and anti-Islamic sentiments. And this resulted in hate crimes against people of the Islamic faith, of Arab ethnic background, or even against people who were mistaken for being Muslim or Arabic. For example, many men of the Sikh faith, which is not the same as Islam, who publicly wear a turban as a part of their religious practices, endured violence and persecution because of the way people mistook them for Arabs or Muslims. So in this story, as I remember it, a woman was sharing how she was talking with her father about how nervous she was to keep wearing hijab at school. It was something that she had grown up doing and that she chose to do every day because that was one of the ways that she chose to honor God, similar to how a Jewish person might wear a yarmulk or a Christian might display a mark on their forehead for Ash Wednesday. But this young woman felt conflicted. It felt like giving in to a bully to take off her hijab just so that she didn't feel uncomfortable. But after learning stories about people being harassed for their hijab, she worried about being targeted. Which should she prioritize? Her faith or her safety? Her father's response has really stuck with me. He said to her, My daughter, I love you and I want to protect you. Allah sees your heart. He will not punish you for wanting to be safe, but this is a decision you must make for yourself. What a beautiful answer. The daughter was presented with what felt like an awful ethical dilemma. Do I sacrifice my safety or my relationship with God? But the father says, no, this is not what the choice is. He rightly identifies that this is what we call a false dilemma. In a false dilemma, we're presented with two choices that seem mutually exclusive, and we're led to believe that these are the only choices there are, when there are actually other possible outcomes. For the daughter, she felt like the outcome either meant danger or divine disappointment. But the father was able to help guide her choice by letting her know, hey, we don't follow a God who punishes his children for wanting to be safe. This young woman dared to use her reason and it led her to a difficult choice. And she wanted to be a faithful servant of God and to not be ashamed to show that she loved God. And that reason led her to seek the advice of one who was wiser than her, but who also loved her. I think about this story all the time, when I go to church or when I teach about the philosophy of religion, or when I think about someone feeling conflicted about the impact and image of their religious practices. And I think it's partly because I love the father's response. Allah sees your heart and he will not punish you. But I also think it's because I love the dedication with which this young woman approached her religious practices. I can't say I've ever been in a situation where I risked religious persecution simply because of what I was wearing, but I can imagine that due to my conciliatory nature, I would likely have removed my head covering without even really thinking about it. But this young woman said, Does this action align with the person that I'm trying to be? Does continuing this practice get me closer or farther away from the woman I'm trying to be, one who loves and honors God. Rabbi Akiva was walking home at dusk after a long day of studying scripture. He was deep in thought, and he missed his turn to get back to his home. Not realizing yet that he was on the wrong path, he passed this tower where a Roman guard stood watch. The guard, unfamiliar with the rabbi, called out to him, Who are you? What are you doing here? Rabbi Akiva, snapped out of his reverie, was startled.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

What?

SPEAKER_02 47:05

he said, calling up to the guard, only realizing as he said it that he had missed his turn to walk back to his home. Again the guard called out, Who are you? What are you doing here? Rabbi Akiva thought for a moment and then said, How much are you paid to ask such questions of me? To Trachma, the guard responded. Well, sir, Rabbi Akiva responded excitedly.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

I will pay you twice that amount to stand outside my home and ask me those questions every morning.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Who are you? What are you doing here? I think these questions give us maybe the best possible answer to the question we've been pondering. Is it okay to change what I'm doing, or who I am, or what my values are to try to fit in? And I think the answer to that isn't yes or no, but it depends on the answer to who are you? What are you doing here? What kind of person are you trying to be? What is it you're trying to accomplish for yourself and for the world? I think that when we ponder these questions, we'll have an idea of what our responses will be in situations of peer pressure or crisis or even everyday niceties. But you have to muster up the courage to dare to use your own understanding. And I think you can. I think if you start doing that as best as you're able, you'll get better and better at it. And you'll put yourself in some pretty good situations and maybe even better company. Thanks for listening. Tune in next time when we'll talk about some more Things You Can Do. Things You Can Do is a production of Pete Plays. It's written by me, Peter Owens. For references and citations, you can see the show notes. The Things You Can Do Intro theme is written by Brantgum. The outro theme, And Around the Sun Again We Go, was written by me. Also written by me were Signal, Introdictor Jedi Trance, Just Keep Punching, and Rub My Eyes. Other music includes Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and A major Movement 2, performed by the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York, directed by Alberto Toscanini, Sneaking Around by Gudo Lucena, Cascade 315 by Patrick Harding, Deutschland über alles Nationalhymna by George Scharf and the Grammophon Orchester. And Desi Ney by Achwa. If you've got a smooth groove you'd love to have featured on the podcast, email me at thingsyoucandopod at gmail.com. One final note about the story about the young girl wearing hijab. I've included in the show notes the link to a popular story where a girl asks her father about continuing to wear hijab. This is not the story in my memory, but I wanted to include it for a couple reasons. First, because my memory could be faulty. It's been almost 10 years since I remember reading the story. And second, because it at least demonstrates that there are many stories like these where someone feels pressured to choose between their religious practices and their personal safety. I hope the listener will be gracious and acknowledge that it is a truthful story, even if it doesn't end up being a true one.