Ethical Problems - Not When You're Thinking for Yourself

Creating a successful life requires examining your choices and actions. It is the ongoing commitment to personal development and spiritual growth that ensures you will design the happy and healthy life you envision for yourself. Part of this exploration is to consider societal issues and ethical problems that arise on a daily basis. Here’s one you can consider to help you develop a framework for looking at these issues on your own.

Our question to ponder for today is: Fear of getting a ticket is the best way to stop people from using their cell phones while driving. Do you agree with this idea or disagree?

When we examined the statement, this is what we came up with.

Why would the local/federal government give tickets in order to stop people from using their cell phones while driving?

Through our work we have developed the belief that everything we say or do is to meet a need or experience something we value. The way we meet that need or experience what we value is by coming up with ideas that will help us get it. We call these strategies.  This quest for getting needs met or values honored holds true on a person to person level and on the cultural, societal or governmental level also. In this case the societal strategy is to give tickets to people that don’t obey the law of no hand held cell phone use while driving.

Okay now that we have established that every need or value requires a strategy for getting it met, let’s see if we can find the underlying value hidden in the strategy of giving tickets for using your cell phone will driving.

What values are people trying to satisfy with this strategy?

We guess the following might be some needs or values behind the strategy of giving tickets to stop cell phone use while driving:

• safety–so less people are injured or die on the roads.
• predictability–so you have greater confidence about what you can expect when you get on the road.
• effectiveness–by establishing clear agreement about what is and is not unsafe.

Can you think of any other needs or values that might be satisfied by using this strategy?

Why this strategy?

We have found the foundation of every strategy we choose, is a belief that guides the choice and our subsequent actions. So what’s the cultural belief that led the government to choose this strategy as opposed to any other?

Here’s a possible belief that might fit why this strategy was adopted:

• People need authorities who “know better” to set strong boundaries that will direct their actions.

Which may point to these deeper hidden beliefs:

• People can’t be trusted
• People only care about themselves
• People make bad decisions on their own

Can you think of any others beliefs that might be under making laws that give traffic tickets for cell phone use while driving?

Is this strategy working?

If people worrying about getting a ticket, is the final goal of this strategy, then we would say it’s working!  However if what society really wants is safety, predictability and effectiveness then probably giving tickets for cell phone use while driving is not working too well.

Now take a moment and think back to the last time you were driving. How often did you still see people talking on a cell phone while behind the wheel of their car? How about yourself? Have you hand held your cell phone while driving? Why is it that so many people still continue to use their phones even if the law tells you not to, even with the threat of a ticket looming?

We have come up with a few reasons for this, but for now let’s explore the concept of the difference between intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. We define the difference this way: being motivated from our internal values vs. being motivated from externally imposed consequences.

Since most of us have been brought up in a typical world culture then none of us is a stranger to externally imposed consequences.  From the time you were a tot, the authorities in your life taught you right from wrong, what is good and what should be labeled bad and of course what is appropriate and what is not.

The follow-up is that you get punished for being wrong or bad and rewarded for being good or right. So going back to our societal issue, the rule is "don’t drive while using your hand held cell phone". It is enforced by giving you a ticket that will cost you a lot of money and time if you disobey.

What really does this strategy accomplish?

Let’s review:

• There is a cultural belief: People can’t be trusted so authorities must tell them what to do.
• The society teaches using a system of punishment and rewards.
• Government came up with this strategy of punishing people who break cell phone use laws by giving tickets that costs them both time and money.

But what do most people learn from this strategy– starting all the way back in childhood and into adult life? In our experience the lesson learned is:

Don’t Get Caught When You’re Breaking the Rules

Given the number of people who still hand hold their cell phones while driving, it doesn’t appear that this strategy–or what people actually learn from it– is satisfying the underlying desire for safety, predictability, or effectiveness.

So what might satisfy these values?

Here’s where intrinsic motivation comes in. What would it take to cultivate intrinsic motivation to stop using cell phones while driving simply because this would be in harmony with their personally held values?

Let’s start with those hidden beliefs.

What if we were able to change our cultural belief from “people can’t be trusted,” to “people can be trusted to make decisions that are for the highest good of everyone involved” because they care for, and want to contribute to others and themselves? Where would this new belief take us? How differently would we teach our children?

 If our foundational cultural belief was that “people can be trusted to make their own decisions,” then most likely we would want to support them in being aware of what’s most important to them–what they personally value.

Our children’s education would probably include developing their emotional intelligence. This developed emotional intelligence would sustain their ability to make decisions based on how their actions might benefit or impact themselves and those around them.

We would still want to do whatever we could to maintain safety, predictability, and effectiveness on our roads, but with this being the basic cultural belief, what new strategy might we come up with?

Sadly, we’re not raised to clue into our internal values, or notice whether the consequences of our actions are in harmony with our values. Instead, we are constantly being distracted by external authority telling us what to do. Or we are moved to action by the extrinsic motivation of being threatened by the consequences if we don’t obey.

Where this would go and how it would turn out is anyone’s guess. But imagine being raised in a culture where your caring, kind and competent nature was valued and nurtured. Where your ability to reason and come up with successful, satisfying choices for EVERYONE concerned was respected.

Take a moment and dream about how different you and society would be if your education, both at home and in school, had focused heavily on supporting you in making decisions in line with your internal guidance. What would it of been like if through teaching and conversation you had experiences designed to help nurture these abilities?

Now envision that as a society we have decided that limiting hand held cell phone use while driving really will support achieving the goal of keeping our roads safe, predictable, and effective. What strategy might you use to achieve the greatest possible compliance with this law?

What occurs to you?