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Lies, Truth and Morality
By Sally Dugman
Lawrence Kohlberg
What can be very interesting Is to look at yourself and others who you fairly well know and find out where you and they stand on the stages. It will well explain your family members, others and yourself. Why, it can even be used to define Modi and Trump, for instance. So you may wish to check out the link and materials at the bottom of this writing to get the information that, unfortunately, excludes the seventh set of data. Now, eventually Kohlberg came up with a seventh stage involving a spiritual dimension of morality. In addition, it is the highest level of involvement with ethics, values, principles, standards and the like while also having a somewhat possibly mystical and definitely transcendent, metaphysical dimension.
In any case, here is one of the moral dilemmas that he poses:
You have a relative who will die without a certain kind of medicine. Yet your family has no money to buy it. So do you steal it from a very wealthy pharmacy, which will not miss the drug, or not?
Some of his other examples are pretty daunting, too, in terms of figuring out your moral stances, I can guarantee it.
I, myself, after reading various works of his long ago figured out that I have a sliding scar of values. It goes something like this:
I don’t like lying. However, I will gladly lie under these circumstances since I value protecting life over telling truth despite that I highly am drawn to truth.
Here is one hypothetical example that I made up that exemplifies my stance:
Let’s say that I lived in Nazi Germany. Let’s say that I am hiding and tending Jews in my basement. Then Nazi people show upstairs at my door, the door of a blond, white woman looking close to the Nazi Aryan ideal to ask whether I know about the location of any Jews.
Facing them and with a straight face and anger lighted eyes, I will lie through my teeth and show great hatred of Jews. After all, I have no intention of having my basement Jews and myself sent to be tortured and killed in a concentration camp.
Well, I have other, more modern examples that I could share. And it is easy to figure out, so simple once someone figures out that s/he treasures morality, values, standards, practices and principles to preserve life on this planet more than other lesser aims like always telling truth even if it will get you killed or your rejected goals as being your top objectives like becoming extremely self-servingly wealthy, for example.
Scott Schaeffer-Duffy
In fact, when of that more high minded bent, one even becomes willing to lay one’s life on the line to serve the larger good as did my Catholic Worker friend of 35 years (The Catholic Worker Movement: A Definition), Scott Schaeffer-Duffy.
In fact, he protected a group of Muslim Bosnians from being murdered by Christian Serb soldiers holding machine guns pointed toward Scott’s chest as he shielded the would-be victims using his own body as a shield as he lined up Bosnian civilians behind himself and the Serbs, while swearing and grumbling at him, wouldn’t shoot him to get to them as they were afraid of repercussions from the U.S. government if they were to kill him as he had a sign on a little piece of paper on his chest and tied there like a necklace bauble attached to a string around his neck that announced, “I’m an American.”
Of course, he was scared in case one of the warriors might get twitchy and trigger-happy. So he knew that he may never see his wife, four children, other relatives and friends again. Yet he stood firmly still with his arms and legs spread while he signaled with a hand gesture to Bosnian women carrying babies and toddlers, old feeble folks, older children and middle aged adults to get behind him as he acted as a barrier between them and a clear, and certain death by murderous gunners.
So while we have narcissistic immoral or amoral psychopaths and Machiavellian sorts always ready to make life hell in exchange for their own personal gain (like Donald Trump), we also have in life the “angels” like Scott and his wife, Claire, always stepping forward to serve betterment for others as they move forward in life.
Meanwhile, Here you go if interested in more exploration of morality according to Kohlberg:
At this [a higher] stage, people follow these internalized principles of justice, even if they conflict with laws and rules. Page 2. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development and Education. Lawrence Kohlberg (1969) . Yes, like many of my friends who have been in trouble with the law for their stances as they refuse to pay war tax and repeatedly protest weapon manufacturers, they prefer jail terms over going along with the crowd and accepting grotesque acceptance of widespread slaughter.-###-
Sally Dugman lives in and writes from MA, USA. She, with absolutely no equivocation, has no qualms about doing whatever is the most right ethically when in difficult circumstances. She, like Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, has also laid her life on the line and survived the ordeal.
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