The Trifecta of Consequence

A few months ago, a thought occurred to me:

If you’re driving down the road and somebody is infuriating you because they’re driving ten miles per hour below the speed limit, what is preventing the average person from chucking the heaviest object that they have within reach at that person?

Ethics are usually what keeps people from acting unethically; this is often the root of the question: anything involving ethics in any way typically returns to one basic fundamental question: what prevents people from acting unethically?

Perhaps several aspects govern one’s own willing intrinsic adherence to extrinsic rules:

…An internal guideline of behavior or expectations…

…Beliefs on what is acceptable…

…Necessity and/or impulsiveness of action…

…Legal repercussions…

…Accountability due to causality; one’s actions may have immediate consequences from the recipient of that action…

The fear of repercussion is what I think answers the question of what keeps us from acting unethically. It could be societal repercussions…or physical and/or emotional repercussion… or it could be spiritual repercussions. Perhaps the whole thing that drives whether or not we act on impulses can be diluted down to one thing: repercussions and the escalation of causality.

Over the last month, this has been on my mind quite a bit. From the assassination attempt on a former President, to the shuffling of the deck with supporting evidence, to a shift in political antipodes… so much has happened since my last post that it is nearly impossible to convey without losing my initial point.

What my quiet musings has brought me to is this – that there is a trifecta of consequences which shapes the behavior within a society/culture/nation:

Moral

Ethical

Legal

Moral: Faith or higher being. Most of us are raised with a basic core subset of what is right or wrong – either through organized religion or other structure of guidelines. In the above example of the retarded (slow in velocity – calm down) driver, my Catholic school upbringing sufficiently beat the “do unto others” rule into me; even though I may be a very lapsed Catholic, that imprinted sense of doom still stings. Violating these rules brings excommunication, damnation, or other “fire and brimstone”-type punishments.

Ethical: Willingness to participate within a society or culture. Throwing a 12-ounce can may eventually escalate to 124-grains of jacketed hollow point being thrown back at me as well (don’t pretend that this only happens here in the South). Violation of these rules brings isolation, mockery, societal pressure to conform, threats and/or actions of physical or emotional violence… or general stern looks of disapproval that farting in an elevator may generate more enemies than friends.

Legal: Defined by the agreed upon and formalized laws within a town/city/state/nation. Assault, Alabama Code Title 13A Criminal Code § 13A-6-22 or Criminal littering, Code of Alabama § 13A-7-29 would be what I would expect for trying to speed up traffic with aluminum encouragement. Violation of these laws results in fines, asset forfeiture, imprisonment, death… or none of the above if there is sufficient ethical repercussions to tip the scales of justice a certain way.  

Again, it is the threat of repercussions which shape the adherence to moral, ethical, and legal behavior. Most of us understand that, the participation and inclusion within a religious, societal, and organizational entity, our actions beyond the established norms of those entities carry the potential for repercussions.

What happens when the potential consequences of our actions overshadow the immediate reality of those consequences… or the second- and third-order effects of not taking action? What happens when the rules are not unilaterally enforced amongst all within those entities? What happens when the perception of consequence is that of inconsequence?

Consequences are absolute mostly only to the collective – it is only the moral aspect which fall solely on the individual; it is their choice to accept punishment on a higher, spiritual level. Perhaps this is the failing we see so frequently: that the trend is that, due to a lack of acceptance of that level of accountability, the impulsiveness of the individual in the here and now for the immediate gain is what drives more and more folks to questionable actions. After all, if the standards are lowered, what is the motivation to do anything but the new minimum? Or, to pull from a 1993 movie which was way deeper than most folks thought – “Groundhog Day”:    

Phil: “Let me ask you guys a question: what if there were no tomorrow?

Gus: “No tomorrow? That would mean there would be no consequences, there would be no hangovers. We could do whatever we wanted!

Phil: “That’s true. We could do… whatever we want.” [Casually drives over a mailbox]

Gus: “HEY! Phil! If we wanted to hit mailboxes, we could let Ralph drive.”

The problem I see, is that those boundaries can only get pushed so far when it comes to the extrinsic consequences of negative actions within a organization, society, community, or geopolitical entity. Causality is set in stone; and much like the train which followed the discussion and Phil’s casual reassurance that he was “betting he [the train] is gonna flinch first,” there will come a point where the consequences others feel for allowing the continuation of the individual’s actions of blissful disregard for the consequences which used to be understood indicates a drastic shift in norms. Limits can be pushed only so far and so quickly before there is resistance… or breakage.

Come to think of it, I have already touched on this before with “Invisible Sun and Friction”   

Presently, even though things seem to be extremely unbalanced, there is a certain level of friction keeping things in a sort of equilibrium from going too far to the extremes. We can discuss differences of opinions (even though I have been more reluctant to engage, lately), the laws are shaped by the shifts in society as a reflection of changes in what is – or is not – largely acceptable to the whole, and we can react accordingly when communication and legislation prove to be ineffective for whatever reason.

I hope I am wrong. I hope that clearer heads will prevail and that folks will understand that, while change is inevitable, it needs to be deliberate and methodical for it to be successful. Contrary to what the reader may think, I really don’t like to mull over where ethics comes into play on so many different levels; I’d rather be writing more about why getting punched in the mouth might not be a bad thing – in some instances.

[Considers the overlapping concepts.]

We shall see.