Moral Dissonance and Torture

In my last post I talked about the concept of moral dissonance, relating to our ability to accept the idea of the death penalty, specifically using our assassination of Bin Laden as the center of that discussion.

I wasn’t sure if “moral dissonance” was even a concept in use. I’ve googled it a bit, and found that (as you would expect) it is a phrase that’s used. Here’s an article on Wikipedia discussing cognitive dissonance, and tying it to the idea of moral dissonance.

We all find ourselves faced with decisions we need to make, or positions we need to support or condemn. Sometimes the decisions we make or the positions we support are at odds with our core moral compass. In those cases, we can either recognize, accept, and live with the moral dissonance, or we can justify our decision in some way – building a case that makes it an acceptable exception to our moral compass.

I think the latter is standard human behavior – it’s what we all want to do. There’s a great danger in that path though, because the better we get at building those walls of justification around our deep moral compass, the more likely we (and our society) will devolve into behavior that is increasingly destructive, immoral, and downright pathological.

Case in point: As a country, we’ve allowed our leaders over the past decade to ignore moral taboos against torture, and have joined nations like North Korea and Libya who are happy to use torture if they think it might help them in some way. I doubt that even 1% of the US population believes that inflicting torture and pain and torment on another human being is moral behavior. Yet, a large minority of Americans support our government’s evolution to a torture state, and I would argue that even a majority of Americans tacitly support the idea when we elect any leader not willing to denounce the practice.

Look at the headlines lately, and the vociferous justifiers of torture claiming that the lead to Bin Laden came from a GTMO detainee – presumably tortured. This is strong medicine to help us to take the torture we allow our government to perform in our name, and move that torture into a safe category of “justified” – carefully isolated from the moral compass that tells us it’s not OK. Never mind the rest of the facts – that using torture makes it more likely that our citizens and soldiers will be tortured, and that the vast majority of information derived from torture is less than worthless. We’re willing to ignore all facts except the ones that allow us to justify the immoral behavior.

Am I being clear here? We ALL behave in ways counter to our moral compass – we do it all the time. The issue I’m raising is the difference in how we deal with this internally when it happens.

The lack of tolerance for moral dissonance drives us to justify our actions when they are at odds with our moral compass. Doing this allows us to continue to behave immorally with (internal) impunity, as we’ve build walls of isolation around our moral compass as it relates to our own behavior.

The alternative? Accept the fact that we sometimes choose to behave in ways that are at odds with our stated moral beliefs. Each time this happens, it should force the recognition that the decision we’re making is immoral. I can then take a stand that accepts my behavior AND accepts the moral incongruity, or I can do the hard work of evaluating the moral positions that I’ve taken, to see if I still believe them to be correct.

This is essential work – both as an individual and as a society. I’ve pointed out a couple of places where we – as a society – need to do this hard work. Are there places in your personal life where you need to confront moral dissonance? I know there certainly are in my own.

On the death penalty, I choose to accept the dissonance, and live with it. I accept that I think it’s morally wrong, and I live with the fact that I support it in some cases. Carefully managed and humanely administered, it allows us to eliminate a few of the chronic threats to society.

On the issue of torture, I choose to oppose torture in all cases – I can’t accept it under any circumstance. If there was some evidence that it consistently “worked”, I would probably change my mind. But there isn’t any such evidence, and quite a bit of contrary evidence. The damage it causes far outweighs the gains it brings.

Where are your big moral dissonance issues? How do you deal with them when your moral compass threatens to expose them?

Next, I’ll bring up some questions on this topic as they relate to a real hot-button issue – abortion.

 

Moral Dissonance and the Execution of Bin Laden

The execution of Osama Bin Laden a week ago caused me to reflect again on the death penalty thoughts I posted just prior to that.

At its most simple, the assassination mission was simply a death penalty carried out. As I said before, I happen to support the death penalty in theory – when it’s used by society to terminate a force that is a significant threat to society.

This was exactly that – Bin laden was the self-professed mastermind of attacks on this country that killed thousands. He had confessed, was delighted with his actions, and was hiding from us to avoid execution. He didn’t seem to believe in “due process” himself, based on the delight he seemed to take in killing innocent people.

There are calls from some that his assassination was wrong, in that it failed to live up to the ideals and beliefs of this society. In denying him “due process”, our actions were wrong. The Executive Director of Human Rights Watch made these comments a week ag0.

He’s right of course. A strong moral argument can be made that killing anyone is wrong, and I’d agree with his comments that execution without due process is morally wrong.

This is where we all need to find our level of comfort with the moral dissonance created when we support an action that is immoral. For the good of society in general, I absolutely support the execution of this man who had caused many deaths and who would like to cause many more. There was no doubt of his guilt – he had proudly proclaimed his guilt over past actions and his intent for future action.

At the extremes, there are two reactions a person might have:

  1. A person can take the approach that the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch did, and simply stick by the moral argument, with no consideration of anything else.
  2. A person can justify the actions as “moral” in their mind – check out any of the right-wing blogs for examples of this perspective.

Both of these actions are the result of a low tolerance for moral dissonance. People who fall into these extremes want to see the world as very black and white, with no space for gray. They want to believe they have the complete and accurate set of universal moral rules programmed into their moral compass, and their way is the one and only way to see the world. If they support an action, it MUST be moral, and if it’s not, they’ll find a way to make it sound moral in their mind. Or they refuse to support it, no matter how “right” the decision is.

Our assassination of Bin Laden simply isn’t moral. Justify all you want. We invaded a sovereign country with our weapons and assassinated him and the people around him, and that’s simply not “moral”.

But in my mind, it’s OK. I have no problem with it. It was the right thing to do, as it removed an extremely harmful element of threat from our society – one that would surely cause grief and destruction in the future.

Moral dissonance might not actually be a phrase that’s commonly used – I just made it up because it seems to fit this dilemma. Look inside yourself, and ask yourself how much tolerance you have for moral dissonance. Your reaction to this assassination might be a good clue for you…

 

Crime and Capital Punishment

Right up front – I’m OK with capital punishment. Society overall does better, and fewer people are hurt, when we weed out folks who cause heinous harm to members of society. That weeding out can include putting the person to death if we deem that’s the only option to prevent them from causing more damage.

In fact, I’m such a fan of it, that I can’t figure out why we don’t start applying it to corporations. This overtly activist and extreme supreme court of ours has decided that our sacred Bill of Rights applies to corporations, so it’s time they start standing up to the same punishments that real citizens stand up to. If a corporation causes the death of a person, they stand trial for that death. If they are convicted of a capital crime, they are disbanded and liquidated as a corporation, with the assets they leave behind benefiting society as a whole.

But that’s another discussion…

Today I want to talk about a particular death penalty sentence – one that appears to represent systemic excesses and corruption in our criminal justice systems.

In 1991, Troy Davis was convicted of murdering a white police officer in Georgia. While there was no physical evidence connecting Mr. Davis to the crime, there were 9 witnesses – enough to allow the jury to convict him. While it troubles me a little that we’d impose the death penalty without airtight physical evidence, I’m giving the jury the benefit of the doubt, and assuming the circumstantial evidence (9 witnesses) must have been compelling.

The problem is, 7 of those witnesses have since recanted in signed affidavits. Most of them have testified that they bore witness only under the duress of police pressure and coercion. Of the remaining 2 witnesses, there is strong evidence that one of them may be the culprit who actually did commit the crime Mr. Davis was convicted of – multiple witnesses have signed statements that he has claimed responsibility. Apparently this man was the alternative suspect at the time Mr Davis was convicted.

I don’t advocate that Georgia let Mr. Davis go. I advocate that their case doesn’t seem to meet the bar we should be setting to allow us to kill someone. Their case seems to have been weak to begin with, and it has since fallen apart completely. In a trial today with today’s information, it seems unlikely there would be a conviction, let alone an execution.

This is where the corruption of the system becomes deadly. Rather than admitting this case is thin, putting the execution on hold until this new evidence can be evaluated, Georgia appears to be pushing full steam ahead to kill Mr. Davis. This is a case involving the death of a police officer after all, and the state needs to make an example out of somebody.

It doesn’t seem to matter to them whether or not the man they make an example of is guilty or innocent.

Learn more about the case here.