From Shotter, J. (1980) Men the magician... In Models of Man, BPS

 

 

TREATING OTHERS AND OURSELVES AMORALLY:To appreciate the depth of the reality being created here (if 'reality' is the right word) let me consider the moral and experiential consequences of centering ourselves in such an 'objective consciousness' in our daily lives.  Let me first mention its consequences for how we treat others, and then for how we treat ourselves.

 

Treating others amorally If we treat other people as objects this does not mean necessarily that we do them harm; people do not usually go about damaging all objects in sight.  But it does mean treating them amorally and ameaningfully: treating them in a manner which ignores their ability to judge and control their own behavior in relation to their own standards and ideals. their ability to express themselves and their personal truths. We cannot legitimately see them as wrestling with moral dilemmas, as suffering disappointments, as trying to achieve (but not always succeeding) their goals. as being sincere, dishonest, as acting to put right wrongs, to achieve fame or another kind of reputation, and so on; to be, in short, the kind of person they think they want to be.  Not to take a moral attitude to others is to risk becoming incapable of spontaneous identification or empathy with them, of becoming bemused and mystified by their behavior - the authenticity of mutual identification not being a task requiring self-conscious effort, but, like hand-shaking, a matter of membership in a moral community. Lacking such a spontaneous identification, one has then to try to learn explicitly the function of facial expressions, the function of pauses in conversation, etc., as if there are clear rules for the use of such things - which is not the case (Birdwhistell, 1970); a facial expression is only a Smile in a certain context, to members of a community. Treating others as objects, as different kinds of being from ourselves, we think they merely act as external circumstances demand -smoothly, automatically, without feeling or fuss; it is we alone who suffer from self-doubt and irresolvable moral confusion.

 

On the social and political level too, there are consequences: it means that we attempt to replace politics by >social engineering=, that we think in terms of Skinner=s (1972) >technology of behavior=, or Eysenck=s (1969) >technology of consent=.  We see people=s problems as being solved by them (the people) being channeled, using neutral administrative methods, into Situations which others (we?) >calculate= will >do them good=.  Claiming to know the causes of their behavior and the nature of their social conditions, we feel we no longer need listen to their views: thinking we can determine their needs scientifically, what they themselves might want is ignored. Instead of treating them as moved by their experience - their experiences of fear and conflict, of anxiety and despair, their terror at being attacked by an in-group for being a member of an out-group - we talk of them simply as existing in morally and politically neutral >fields of force=, and >undergoing energy transformations= or as >processing information=, as if they were indistinguishable from the blind, unfeeling entities making up merely physical systems.

 

To deny people the opportunity to describe their experience, to explain and justify themselves, or at least to participate in the effort to illuminate the reasons for their conduct in their own terms, is, as I argue later, to refuse to confer upon them their status as persons in their own moral world.  It is to deny them their access to self-expression, and to confer upon them a merely instrumental status - to treat them not as ends in themselves (both >from which= and >to which= action is directed), but merely as the means to presumably, the ends of other people (Lewis, 1943).  In a moral world, people must normally be listened to and treated as meaning what they say; if they cannot be treated as knowing what something is and is not, as knowing what can properly be said and what cannot. then there is no way of discovering what counts in their world (Cavell, 1969). And furthermore (it is worth adding here as it will be of central importance later): it is not a question of whether in their judgements they have evidence in support of them; members of a moral community do not normally need evidence for what may be said or done legitimately in their community; as competent members of that community, they are the source of such evidence (Cavell, 1969) - if what happens is apparently abnormal or unusual then, of course, the matter is different.  How that evidence is gathered, evidence of a moral world=s >structure of normality=, I shall discuss in a moment; here let me turn to what happens if we treat ourselves amorally.

 

Treating ourselves amorally Personally too, in ourselves, there are consequences of taking inappropriately an amoral attitude, ones perhaps of a surprising kind. In becoming increasingly objective and detached in relation to ourselves we may become unable, as it were, to treat even ourselves morally. We may cease to think even of ourselves as beings who act in relation to interests and values of our own, we have both the ability and the right to monitor and evaluate our actions as we perform them in relation to our own personal ends. Viewing ourselves as merely the product of external causes, we may mistrust and debunk even our own judgements; we become afraid to say what we think, what we feel, what we want: perhaps we do not event bother to think certain things through to their end for ourselves - for who are we when there are >experts= for so many of life=s really important problems. Unable to commit ourselves to a position, to something in which we really believe, we lose the capacity for sustained, self-directed purposeful action (heteronomy rather than autonomy becomes our prevalent mode of being). Further: just as we are cast in the role of observers of others (rather than as co-participants in life with them), so we find a part of ourselves always seems to be standing to one side and to be observing, >objectively=, what we ourselves are doing; such self-consciousness not only prevents that effortless, spontaneous coordination possible in more unselfconscious interchanges, it also prevents us from making ourselves truly responsible for ourselves.  For even as we take a stand we are aware of the >social influences= upon us, the possibility of our having >unconscious motives=, an >ideologically distorted= or >false consciousness=. We are not sure whether our views are really ours.  There seems to be an absence of any clear points of reference to guarantee the validity of what we have to say.

 

We forget - when treating people objectively - that in an uncertain world, what matters most is that people learn what it is to take responsibility for their actions, then if they do learn what it is and how to do it, it means that they will do (or at least try to do) what they say they will do, or what their momentary position in the community commits them to doing. Without that determination of people to be responsible for themselves and their actions, without that kind of self-control, there can be no guarantee of order in the community at all.  In becoming detached from ourselves we risk losing exactly what it was we had hoped to gain: our own greater autonomy and self-control over our own lives. We risk losing it because we confuse becoming a free, autonomous individual in relation to all those with whom we share our lives, with living a life of impulse, doing what we like whenever we like. In such an impulsive form of life we might be acting as we (who?) please, but we would be in a social void, robbed of all our moral purchase upon human affairs. It is not by ignoring our society=s ways and means that we set ourselves free, but by increasing our practical knowledge of them thus to use them all the more in the reasonable and legitimate expression of our purposes.

 

In using our capacities to reflect upon and change the way we live to new forms - forms in which not only the human capacity to judge and reflect is ignored, but the way in which the evaluative basis of moral action is used, developed, changed and transmitted in a community is also ignored - we are dismantling just that aspect of our being in the world that distinguishes us from all else that there is: the peculiarly human way of doing things we have as members of a community, ways which have been long in construction throughout the history of our culture.

 To Return to Management Workshops