CHANGE YOURSELF AND YOU’LL CHANGE THE WORLD: Part 2
Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), a Harvard University
Professor of Psychology, developed a widely accepted theory on the stages of
our moral development in the 1970s.
Basically, he believed that people progressed in their moral reasoning
and ethical behavior through a series of six identifiable stages:
Level 1:
Pre-Conventional
1. Obedience and Punishment orientation—a primary school level of moral and ethical behavior where
people behave because they are told to do so; they’re rewarded for their good
behavior and punished for their bad behavior.
2. Self-Interest orientation—a middle school level of moral and ethical behavior where
people behave because it’s in their own self-interest.
Level 2:
Conventional
3. Social norms orientation—a high school level of moral and ethical behavior where
people behave in order to gain the approval of others.
4. Law and Order orientation—a mature adult level of moral and ethical behavior where
people behave because they want to be dutiful, law-abiding citizens.
Level 3:
Post-Conventional
5. Social Contract orientation—a personally intrinsic level of moral and ethical behavior
where people behave because of social mutuality and a genuine interest in the
welfare of others.
6. Principled Conscience orientation—a universal principled level of moral and ethical behavior where people behave because of their individual conscience.
Dr. Kohlberg believed that people cannot skip from one stage
of moral development to another, but that we can only progress through each
stage one at a time. In order to get to
the next higher stage of moral development, we must comprehend a moral
rationale for going to the next higher level.
In fact, most all of us often will regress to earlier stages of moral
development and have to relearn the rationale for getting back on track (e.g.
people issued tickets for moving violations, convicted criminals, those who are
trying to overcome addictions like alcohol, those suffering the consequences of
bad behavior, etc.) He also didn’t
believe the majority of us ever get to the last stages of moral
development. In the past century, maybe
only Mahatma Gandhi or Saints like Pope John Paul II or Mother Teresa ever
achieved these levels.
Contemporary Psychologist and author, Dr. David Lieberman in
his book Make Peace with Anyone
makes a compelling argument that to be happy, have good relationships, and
be psychologically balanced, a person must feel good about themselves. Feeling good about ourselves is called self-esteem
or self-respect or self-love. And
self-esteem is a byproduct of how we live our lives. If we do not respect ourselves then we cannot
truly love ourselves nor respect and love others.
In order to have self-esteem, Dr. Lieberman argues, we must
consistently make wise and morally good choices. In other words, if we do what is right we’ll
(more often than not) feel good about ourselves and improve our self-esteem;
but if we do what is wrong, we’ll feel guilt, embarrassment, and shame and lose
our self-esteem.
Furthermore, our personal freedom and independence allow us
to make choices; so if we’re coerced into making certain choices, it’ll rob us
of our personal freedom and harm our self-esteem. This is what sparks many human conflicts,
writes Dr. Lieberman.
Dr. Lieberman explains that there are three underlying
motivations behind our choices: 1) We can choose what feels good (Dr.
Kohlberg’s level one); for example, overeating, laziness, abusing drugs,
alcohol, or tobacco, or any immoderate, unwholesome, behavior; 2) We can
choose what makes us look good (Dr. Kohlberg’s level two); for example, not
living for ourselves but for our image; any behavior that projects a worldly,
materialistic, self-centered image; being consumed with money, power, control,
or vanity; or 3) We can choose what is good! (Dr. Kohlberg’s level
three). Only the third alternative of
choosing responsibly and wisely will give us true freedom, self-respect,
improve our self-esteem, and allow us to live at peace with others.
Reverend Robert Fulghum in his famous book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten eloquently describes the wisdom we all learned as
children:
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday school. These
are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and
paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold
hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the
Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows
how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little
seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word
you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere: The
Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation; ecology and politics and equality
and sane living. Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your
government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a
better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about
three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or
if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they
found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how
old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick
together.
In short, the keys to living well are really quite simple:
if we wouldn’t allow our children to behave in certain ways towards others, why
would we behave that way towards others?
In a popular motivational fable by an unknown author there
was once an old man who had a habit of walking along the beach every
morning. One morning when he went to the
beach he discovered there had been a strong storm the previous night that had
washed thousands of starfish up onto the beach.
Then at a distance, he spotted a young man dancing along the
beach. How odd the old man thought to himself; the beach is littered with soon
to be rotting starfish and this young guy is dancing? So he ran up to him to see why he was
dancing. As he got closer he saw that
the young man wasn’t dancing at all but instead was reaching down and picking
up starfish and very gently throwing them back into the ocean.
The old man asked him, “Good morning! What are you doing?”
The young man replied, “Throwing starfish into the ocean!”
“Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” the old man
asked.
The young man replied, “The sun is up, and the tide is going
out; and if I don’t throw them back in the ocean they’ll surely die!”
“Young man, don’t you realize that there are miles and miles
of beach, and there must be thousands and thousands of starfish along it. You
can’t possibly make a difference!”
The young man listened politely, then bent down and picked
up another starfish and gently threw it back into the ocean and said, “It made
a difference for that one!”
The old man paused a bit and contemplated the enormity of
the task and then bent down, picked up a starfish and gently threw it back into
the ocean....
Each of us has the innate ability to learn from experience
and make free choices in our lives. This
is what sets us apart from the animals.
We’re not locked into certain behavior patterns. Each of us has the freedom to choose to
become better people: more honest, decent, ethical, virtuous, and morally good
people. We can choose to continue to
live self-centered lives, or we can choose to live others-centered lives.
Bill FitzPatrik of the American Success Institute (www.success.org) wrote, You do not
need to prove your might at the expense of others. You do not need diplomas, awards or the
acclaim of others to know who you are.
You do not need an audience to do the right thing. You do not need a lot of money or many
physical possessions to be happy. You do
not need stand first in line. You do not
need coaxing to fulfill your religious obligations. You do not need lesions to act civilly. You do not need prompting to help someone in
need.
When we live honest, decent, ethical, virtuous, and morally good lives, we make life more meaningful and better not only for ourselves but for everyone else around us. When we change for the better we help make the whole world a little better. The Greek and Jewish philosophers all believed this, the science of psychology affirms this, and deep down inside we all know this to be true (natural law). Mahatma Gandhi said: We must become the change we want to see. So if we want to make our world a better place to live in, then, individually, each one of us must change for the better. Change yourself and you’ll change the world.
