A Vote for Deontology

Utilitarianism is the doctrine saying that what is useful is good. As Jeremy Bentham and James Mill outline, the aim is the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This doctrine creates a series of calculations to determine best possible combination of intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent that a decision could create. The focus is on the ends rather than the means. It would be ethical in the utilitarian sense to torture one child in order to keep the whole town happy—an example so well outlined by Ursula LeGuin in her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

Critics say that this form of thought highlight the fact that it creates extreme pain for one person even if it means that everyone else is happy. It exploits minority groups who would be sacrificed in order to promote the majority. Additionally, it risks an unequal distribution of justice. The form of thought most prominent in the debate of utilitarian thought is deontology. Deontologists argue that predicting the outcomes of an action is impossible and that a person should focus on his own actions and the things that he himself can control.

Democracy is a form of government ruled by all the people, or all eligible people, of a state. It is often described as rule by the common people. It is characterized by designated equality of rights and privileges. Basically, all people have the same rights and abilities in a state. They are all entitled to an opinion. In a democratic society, the people would have to vote in order to decide actions of the state.

Critics, like Plato, display the downsides of democracy. It can often become difficult to make decisions quickly as people must discuss, vote, and semi-agree. Additionally, as not all people involved in government are influenced by higher knowledge, society is simplified so that all can participate. For Plato, of all the forms of government, aristocracy would have been the best as the good would be leading the bad from falling astray. Further criticism shows that control by the common people can result in what we often call a “majority rule.” The decision is made by finding the item receiving the most votes. Thinking back, this seems eerily similar to problems with utilitarianism in which the minority are exploited for benefit of the greatest number. In the case of democracy, it is not the ultimate benefit of the greatest good that is emphasized, but rather greater number simply overpowers the smaller no matter the outcome.

In this sense I think an extreme in either category of thought (utilitarianism or democracy) could be detrimental to a society or organization. I don’t necessarily agree with Plato, however, when he states that an aristocracy is the best form of government. I have thought in the past that the United State’s combination of republic and democracy made a successful form of government by the people that was also limited in what the majority could accomplish. However, it does not seem that exploitation of the minorities has been reduced (i.e. civil rights movements – though successful eventually, the trials and tribulations are extensive).

This leaves me with the deontological frame of thought. We discussed three main theorists of deontology – Kant, Gert, and Rawls. Of these three, Bernard Gert had the clearest reasoning in order to develop an ethical society. Gert states that “ethical principles are universal, unchanging, discovered not invented, and not dependent on the will or decision of individuals.” He also states that there are ten basic rules which “apply all other things being equal, and can be outweighed in very unusual circumstances.” Basically, there are certain principles inherent in our way of life that should be followed at all times – but there are also situations in which a leader must make a tough decision when the principles are challenged. If there were never circumstances in which hard decisions needed to be made, we would have no need for leaders.

Thus, I agree with the critics in the fact the complete utilitarianism and complete democracy may lead to mediocrity, or some form of detriment to society or an organization. There must always be balance in the extremes and it is often up to the leader to find the proper combination. By removing the ability to adapt as leaders, we set ourselves up for failure. Instead, we must stay open to all possibilities and find the frames of thought that guide us through often uncharted territories.

The Complexity of Leadership

If there is one thing I have learned during this fellowship it is that ethics are anything but simple. The complexity of various situations and the extent of ethical history leave me wondering for hours over what is truly “right.”

People, or leaders, who fail to recognize the complexity of ethical behavior become prone to rash, uninformed actions. This became clear in our debate over dropping the atomic bombs in Japan, to use an extreme example.

The decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima entailed a number of ethical considerations before the final decision was made – and even after all of that, years later, there is still a debate as to whether the right choice was made.

Truman had to consider the lives of American citizens in the country he was to be leading. He had to consider the lives of Japanese citizens who equally deserve simple respect simply because they are people—but also who were fighting under bushido code, meaning they would fight to the death no matter what. He had to consider the actions of other countries like the Soviet Union and what consequences those actions would have and how dropping the bomb would affect the way these countries viewed and interacted with the United States. He had to consider the long term effects of introducing nuclear warfare in to the world. 

With all of these considerations, a simple statement such as “don’t harm others” is inadequate. Without being critical or “playing devil’s advocate” as some would say, not all of these considerations would have been brought to light. It would not have been considered that a warning should have been delivered before hand, or why a conditional surrender was offered and what that would have entailed, or that communication with Hiroshima would be completely cut off after the bomb and what that would mean for the country. And many of these things were not considered – but are discussed in the present day as people still try to muddle through the bombing and what was or was not ethical.

It is true that these implications can create a substantial task for a leader as he considers a decision. It can be easy, then, to try and disregard several aspects. People may stop themselves from asking the hard questions or fail to push themselves to look at all of sides of a situation. They take the easy way out, or lump groups together and ignore certain consequences, thus developing the uncritical relativist approach to a more complex aspect of leadership.

To prevent this, a leader, or even a person simply trying to act ethically, must put himself in a position in which he is supported in all aspects of tough situations. We read an example of this in the speech at West Point – a recommendation that leaders should have solitude in order to think and reflect with themselves, but that they should also have someone around to talk to, bounce ideas with, and get advice about life and decisions. Someone one can trust and be honest with. Similarly, in a play I’ve been working on, two of the characters, though complete opposites, visit each other constantly and debate about current topics in their lives and in the town. They talk about life decisions and serious matters as well as frivolous things like gossip. They disagree often and they argue, but it helps them figure things out. When asked why they spend time together, Elsa, the younger of the characters, states that it is because Helen challenges her. She has developed a relationship that keeps her on her toes, thinking and questioning. Elsa knows herself and her beliefs better because of Helen. Even as I have been sitting composing this journal entry, I have been bouncing ideas off of Liz, and she’s been doing the same with me. Our entries are more thought out and well composed after talking and brainstorming with each other and figuring out the answers to the harder or confusing questions.

Often times, ethics cannot be figured out on one’s own. We all come from differing backgrounds and influences, with have different perceptions of the world and different ideas about the way people function. If we were to focus only on the way we think and feel, we would miss the ways of many different people around the world. Without these other perceptions, we lose the ability to perceive certain complexities when making ethical decisions and become blinded. We must surround ourselves with people who also make us think in order to really begin to understand the world around us and delve deep in to ethical discussion.

On the Nature of Humans

I believe it would be false to say humans are either entirely good or evil. If we leaned clearly in one direction or the other, there would not be a debate at all. We would all understand the nature of who we are. Clearly this is not the case.

Menxi makes an interesting point while defending Confucianism against Mo. He, however, states that humans are fundamentally good and go wrong because of poverty, competition, materialism, laziness, and lack of cultivation; i.e. the stresses and strains of daily life. He claims that Confucianism teaches people to cultivate the good and sacred things in life, keeping them on track in times of trouble.

While instead of believing that humans are fundamentally good and choosing to say that they exist in a fundamentally neutral state, I agree with the idea that Menxi presents. Humans are born as a clean slate. Our personality, though determined in part by genetics, it is also determined by our environment and interactions as we grow and develop. We are influenced by our surroundings and pulled to act in a positive or negative manner. The way that we develop and act then affects the way that we perceive people, leading us to think humans are either good or evil, contrary to our actual state of affected neutrality.

A good leader must have the ability to remove himself from an assumption of good or evil nature. He must be able to view each involved follower, the situation and context, and the possible consequences of his decisions before he acts. Only then will the leader be able to treat each human in a just fashion.

When a leader fails to act with this form of objectivity he makes assumptions not only about a person’s fundamental nature, but also of his motivations and possible actions. A leader expecting all humans to be fundamentally evil and therefore act in a negative fashion will close himself off from his followers, provide strict rules, and limit his followers. This will create a very cold leader-follower relationship. A leader expecting humans to be fundamentally good and act in a positive fashion may risk extensive openness with his followers. Though good hearted, he will be pushed over and abused, blind to the misdeeds of which humans are capable.

Instead, by viewing humanity through a lens of neutrality and removing assumptions, a leader remains open to all possibilities of human function. He is able to connect with and relate to each follower and truly understand actions, decisions, and consequences before acting on behalf of the group. It is with this form of clear, level thinking and interacting that the strongest leaders are realized. 

Thoughts on Drive

I’ve been thinking a lot about drive and dedication; passion and the desire for perfection; success and sacrifice. These are all things that I qualities that I think leaders need to embrace. However, I also think that they can also hinder a leader if not balanced by perspective. It is the line between the two – the one weight that keeps the scale from tipping – that I have a hard time defining.

I’ve been questioning this more and more as I continue to work in the theatre department to an excessive extent. I am driven to take on every possible opportunity because I want the experience. I want to learn the elements of theatre so that I can make myself more saleable and successful. But sometimes I am too driven and I take on too much. I take on so much that I can’t possibly put enough time in to each task to make it the best it can be, so my drive for success, in a way, cancels itself out.

But also, the intensity of my commitments and my resulting schedule is my choice. I chose to take on the opportunities; therefore it is my responsibility to do well no matter what it takes. I will come in early and stay late and I won’t ever let my team down. I make sacrifices so that my team can succeed and the projects get finished. It’s not always fun, and the end product isn’t always perfect, but it’s enough. In the end, I’m not sure whether my actions are good or bad. Although I am not necessarily completing my best work, I am learning and growing with each responsibility that I take on.

However, I also believe I take the idea of drive for leaders to an extreme. You don’t have to do everything to be driven; you don’t have to do nothing to be lazy. I started recognizing this as we struggled to reschedule class after so many people tried to skip the Friday heading in to spring break.

My first irritation with the situation was that it was necessary at all. We were all informed very clearly at the beginning of the year that Roberts Fellows is to be our top priority. We all know that we have class on Fridays. And yet…people scheduled over top of class and simply thought they would be excused. Some situations I understood – for other educational programs like Clinicals or Student Teaching Seminars that are mandatory and can’t be made up, exceptions have to be made. But in other cases, I think skipping class was an inconsiderate choice on the part of the other students. But that wasn’t what really irked me.

After realizing that we were never going to find a time that we could all meet, a suggestion was made that we should consider sacrificing something in order to make time. All well and good. But the only students agreeing to make sacrifices were the same students who had actually planned to be in class on today. The dedicated students inconvenienced by the cancellation that was out of their control were being further inconvenienced as the original students seemed to be refusing to budge. Talk about a lack of drive or sense of responsibility towards the group.

What frustrated me was that the Roberts Fellows was to be the group for which I didn’t have to sacrifice in order to pick up slack; the group of similarly driven and dedicated students that would put in equal effort in order to achieve to a level that met the expectations of the University—and this was not seeming to be the case.

But I suppose, when you think about it, we are all so involved on campus and in the workforce that we may not be able to make sacrifices. There are some things that simply require your attention and you have no choice. So perhaps the other students were experiencing a situation similar to my work in the theatre – a situation in which they commit and commit and commit to the point where something needs to be sacrificed, and yet, you can’t sacrifice anything without inconveniencing your teams.

So where is the line? I’m still uncertain.

Ahimsa in America

To live a life without suffering, the Buddhists preach that we must follow the 8-fold path. This requires the right outlook on knowing and avoiding suffering, the right resolves to renounce the world and do no harm, the right speech without slander and lies, the right acts abstaining from murder or thievery, the right livelihood to support this way, the right endeavors, the right mindfulness in realizing what the body is and what it requires of us, and the right rapture of concentration to find aloofness that removes us from our bodies and its desires.

This path is centered on the principle of “Ahimsa;” the principle of nonviolence toward all living things. But when one looks back at this plan, it is clear that a successful leader may struggle to stick to it. But this does not mean the ideal should be abandoned completely. An American leader can, and should, embrace this ideal and strive to implement it in all aspects of his life. But he must also be aware of the fact that he may not always achieve perfect Ahimsa.

A leader is someone who can take charge when charge needs to be taken; someone who can make the hard decisions when they have to be made; someone who can take the burdens of an action so others don’t have to. We discussed in a previous class the idea that one cannot live a life entirely of service and still be successful. When one acts and functions for other people, always making decisions in others’ best interests, we are walked over, ignored, and forgotten. A leader who is acting for other people is not grounded in what is necessary for the group, task, or situation at hand. But to lead in this sense goes against many steps in the 8-fold path. A leader is taking on suffering, rather than abandoning it. A leader is making decisions that could be against the desires of a portion a group, thus causing them harm – but these are the decisions necessary to advance the organization or group.

Most divergent from the Buddhist ideals and Ahimsa, leadership in the American sense is fulfilling a desire of the body rather than a desire of the soul. The aim of American leadership is not to eliminate suffering but to find success. To Americans, economic, financial, and leadership successes are thought to eliminate suffering. However, in Buddhist teachings, these successes are what we must eliminate to reach enlightenment for these are the things that bring us suffering. Buddhist leaders are to help followers eliminate the aspects, thus the principle of Ahimsa.

Rather than attempt to change the practices of American society and align them with the Buddhist teachings in order to achieve proper Ahimsa, American leaders can attempt to adapt the Buddhist ideals of Ahimsa and meld them to American practices. They can work to eliminate most suffering – they can embrace the Buddhist ideals and work with Buddhist intentions while working towards American achievement and success. Thus, the damages and suffering cause by the American way of life can be minimized.

The truth is that someone, or something, will always get hurt if we play by the rules (or lack of rules) in American society. It’s a similar case to the fight for political correctness – it’s nigh impossible. When take out all religious connotations of the Holidays, the Holidays themselves lose their meaning. The non-religious may be satisfied, but the religious feel suppressed. Either way there is harm. It may not be physical harm like a broken limb but, rather, a psychological harm like a broken soul. But we can seek to reduce this damage by recognizing that our way of life causes suffering and seeking to reduce it – even if we can’t remove it completely while still leading successfully.

Wisdom from the Leaders of Dow Corning

I learned so much from the Dow leaders with whom we spoke that I had a hard time pulling out an ultimate “take home” idea.

Something Tim Dyste said really stuck out to me – he highlighted the importance of finding your joy, which, to him, meant finding what you love to do and what you do best. It seemed to echo the ideas of Aristotle that I held so highly after our initial class discussion.

Aristotle, in addition to his prescription of a balance life, preached the importance of Eudaimonia, which is happiness earned from doing well that which you enjoy doing. “Human Flourishing” has been a commonly accepted translation of the word.

It makes sense, though. How can one flourish if he is constantly going to a job that he does not enjoy? How can one flourish if he is beaten down by the system day in and day out? If the system—the job; the leadership—does not encourage him to grow, thrive, and influence change…how can he do the same for his organization and his followers?

As we learned in the leadership theory portion of the Roberts Fellows Seminar, leadership is dynamic. It often requires a leader to analyze many different followers and many different situations in order to best handle the task in front of you. It deals with people, decisions, environments, the past, and the future. Although it may not be a high and lofty, unattainable ideal, it is in the very least a challenge.

The leaders of Dow reflected this idea. They discussed situations in which managing conflict amongst employees was a major challenge. Sometimes the hardship was recognizing the problem; sometimes the hardship was living with the problem long enough to truly understand it. They discussed situations in which communication was challenging. There is a language barrier when working in international situations as well as a cultural barrier. Sometimes the words simply didn’t exist or were unknown. Sometimes the Dow leaders didn’t know when they needed to be explicit or implicit. Sometimes employees were simply afraid to participate or communicate, or disagree because it was disrespectful in their traditional cultures. Most importantly, the Dow leaders discussed the challenge of continuous curiosity and awareness. They worked in new cultures and wanted to learn about what these cultures had to offer and why they functioned the way they did. They needed to continuously ask questions and talk to employees and learn in order to succeed.

How can a leader expect to take charge of these challenges develop and execute solutions with success, and remain open to the culture and the humanity of the organization if they are not in love with and excited about their job? Without passion and joy for what one is doing the actions would become lifeless and mechanical, possibly controlling and menacing. The human aspect to the job would be lost as it would become a necessity rather than a choice. The Eudaimonia of which Aristotle wrote is essential to dynamic, successful leadership.

Further, I believe achieving this Eudaimonia is half the battle—but also a challenged that was highlighted for us by the leaders of Dow.

It was mentioned by each of the panelist that we cannot set in stone the path that we plan to take. None of the leaders with whom we spoke were working in the field in which they got their degree. They had all made a plan and worked their way through that plan and willingly ended up in a completely different destination – and each of them was happy.

The strongest example was Bridget Sparrow. She spoke jokingly of her first plan: she never, ever wanted to work in the United Kingdom. Of course, she did end up living and working there. When she got there, she re-worked her plan: She didn’t want to stay for longer than a year and would never, ever marry and English man. Of course, she stayed for 23 years and married an English man. She continued to say that Shanghai was also not on her plan, but, of course, she worked there and loved and wouldn’t have changed a thing.

It is important to have a plan as it gives us motivation to keep working. It gives us a guideline of how to prepare and what we should be doing. But in the end, we may not have had the best idea of which plan we should actually follow. If we force ourselves in to a box and create tunnel vision for where we want to go, we will be unhappy with the result as we did not search inside ourselves and really find that one thing that makes us the most happy. When we allow our lives to be shaped by our plans and our paths, we allow ourselves to grow, change, and be just as dynamic as the leadership we hope to someday achieve.

When we really live our lives, we find our own Eudaimonia and we can then become true leaders.

A Place for Ruthlessness in Leadership (Or Not)

As we discussed Shih Huang Ti (a leader who ended the warring states and unified China through ruthlessness to the point of cruelty) and Han Feizi (a Chinese philosopher who prescribed this method), the question arose as to whether it is appropriate to be stern or cruel in order to gain power as a leader.

I have a very hard time accepting the idea that it is okay for leaders to be openly cruel to their followers. Though not a pacifist, I am a firm believer in communication before conflict, collaboration, and philanthropy. As a Humanist, I believe that we develop ethical values from human need and human interest; that fulfillment in life is achieved through service and humane ideals; and that we find meaning in relationships and thus working to benefit society (and these relationships) brings us happiness. Although I am not flawless in my actions, I am passionate about people and try my hardest to act in order to protect them from or help them through harm rather that put them through it.

This is not to say that we should be calm, collected, kind people, free of anger and harshness at all times (let’s remember my support of Aristotle in his prescription for balance in every human character). It is to say that I believe we can be too harsh or not harsh enough depending on what best serves humanity.

Unfortunately, this can be a fine line to draw as the definition of what “best serves humanity” may not be universal. For me, best serving humanity requires a leader to aim to develop followers, not aim for material power. This adds a form of depth to his leadership process. The goal should not be power, but empowerment.

A professor in the management department used an example from his work experience to demonstrate the importance of policy and follow through. In order to provide the best service for the customer, his policy was that if an employee ever neglected a customer, he would be fired. The situation in which a customer was dissatisfied resulted in an analysis of the employee’s interaction with the customer; when it was determined that the employee neglected the customer, her was fired. This proved that the manager was serious. After the first customer-neglecting employee was fired, it didn’t happen again.

I believe that this is an acceptable action for a leader. I do not think it was excessive or cruel, but simply necessary for the company to function as it should. Analysis of the situation with the employee and the customer showed care for the employee, the customer, and the company. The process was not done to instill fear but, rather, to set a standard and a work ethic. The manager’s policy created an environment that was controlled but empowering.

In the case of Shih Huang Ti, cruelty was enforced to show power and to show who was in charge. It was meant to subdue followers rather than rein them in so that the leader could help them succeed better. Rather than develop future leaders or empower people—rather than help humanity—the cruel leadership of Shih Huang Ti built power for the current leader so that China could be powerful, no matter the human cost. Shih Huang Ti’s own son wasn’t even empowered as a leader and was overthrown. The success of the power was purely on the surface; a material success. It is this abuse of power that is not justified in leadership.