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Volume 3 Number 15 June
10, 2005 |
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Does motivation matter? Some see being 'disgruntled' as tainting
whistle-blowers Last week, when I wrote about mark Felt -- the legendary "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame. Some people wrote to ask about his motivation and repeated that he was probably motivated by the fact he was passed over to head the FBI. This, some people suggested, indicated that his whistle-blowing feat was motivated less by honor than peevishness and self-interest. I have to admit that I don't know exactly what motivated Felt. More specifically, I don't know what his prime motivation was, because very few of our actions stem from a pure, uncomplicated and totally altruistic motive. I often annoy people by claiming that all our actions are motivated -- at their very core -- by self-interest. Are you a utilitarian? Why would you care if your action brings about a greater amount of good? Because you want the world to be a better place, and that's rooted in your self-interest. Are you a deontologist? Why do you fulfill your obligations, follow the rules, or do your duty? Because, as people will gladly tell you, you want to feel good about yourself, be able to sleep at night, or be able to live with yourself. Even if you claim religious motivation, your good behavior is designed to whisk you into heaven -- the ultimate self-interest -- or keep you out of you-know-where. So, seeing as how we all ultimately act out of self interest, I don't think that alone taints actions that we take. But it still leaves us with the question in cases such as Felt's as to how we judge the action, given the types of motives the person has. Let's consider a group of people who are employed by a corporation or a government agency and who are all aware of some wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior on the part of a person or group of people within the organization. The "A" people have warm feelings about the people involved in the wrongdoing. The wrongdoers may be the people who hired them, may be friends outside the office, or are perhaps mentors. The "B" people have neutral feelings. "Hey it's a job. I come. I go. They pay me. No big deal." The "C" people have negative feelings. Perhaps they're overworked and underpaid. Perhaps they've been passed over for promotion. Or perhaps the boss just treats them shabbily. Now, suppose that each group is divided into two smaller groups. The "1" group decides to become whistle-blowers. The "2" group keeps their mouths shut. For all groups, there are risks associated with becoming whistle-blowers, perhaps even to the point of becoming career-ending moves. How do we assess the ethical worth of everyone's actions? You could make three arguments about the "1" people or, for lack of a better word, the whistle-blowers. The A-1 people were either disloyal for betraying a friend or mentor. You could also argue that these people were the most virtuous, because they had to overcome their personal feelings to right what they perceived as a wrong. They're motives would be seen as exceeding what we would expect. The B-1 people probably acted from a totally pure motive, since they had no personal feelings to overcome, and faced only the other dangers associated with whistle-blowing. The C-1 people acted from less than pure motives. They were "disgruntled," perhaps had an "axe to grind," or had less than pure motives for going public with what they knew. The implication in this is that the whistle-blowing was less than virtuous -- despite the fact these people still faced the same possible sanctions as the others. So, we tend to establish a hierarchy of virtuousness and assign people to it, depending on what we see as their primary motivation for acting. But what about the "2" people, or the "enablers?" Well, we could make three arguments about them too. The A-2 people were being loyal. They didn't rat out their friends and mentors. You could also argue that we spend a lot of time teaching our kids (or at least I hope we do) that friendship doesn't mean we should cover up for someone when they do something really wrong. The B-2 people were just see-no-evil, speak-no-evil drones who allowed the illegal behavior to continue, and were therefore complicit in it by failing to stop it. The C-2 people were worse, because they had a motivation to blow the whistle, and they didn't. Or you could argue that all of them were equally wrong, because the reason why they didn't blow the whistle, or their motivation, was less important than the fact that they didn't do it -- and were therefore all complicit by their silence. That seems plausible. We judge these people by their actions, and their motivation doesn't really enter into it. They should have spoken out. They didn't. But, if we judge the enablers solely on the basis of their actions, why are we so intent on trying to evaluate the motivation of the whistle-blowers? Shouldn't we just accept the fact that they took the risk and exposed the wrongdoing? If the enablers are judged solely by their actions, why aren't whistle-blowers treated in an equivalent way? Even if we do decide to count motivation, do we distinguish between pure disgruntlement and tainted disgruntlement? Do we count someone as less "heroic" if their motives for disgruntlement are somehow more noble than someone else's? There may be many reasons someone is disgruntled. An employee may have been chastised for doing something wrong and, in a fit of pique, decides to blow the whistle on wrongdoing within the company. Or, an employee may see corporate executives doing things that are destroying the company -- or government agency -- where he has spent his career, and decides to go public in order to stop them. From what I've read, this seems to have been what was at work in Felt's case. He thought the FBI was being corrupted by the Nixon administration and his being passed over for promotion was a result of the corruption. So, while he may have had some pique over being passed over, that may just have been the tipping point that activated his underlying resentment over what he saw as the destruction of the agency to which he had devoted his career. And when it's all over, and the dust has settled, all I can judge is your actions and what they bring about. I really don't know what your motives were. All I know about that is what you tell me, what I assume, and what others guess. It's not even clear if the person acting really knows what the primary motivation is. After all, we have a remarkable capacity to deceive ourselves. Our motivations for any act are so complex that it's a fool's errand to pluck out one motivation and say that this is the only one that causes a particular action. When you come right down to it, we all do what advances some self-interest of ours -- whether it's getting revenge, righting a wrong to make ourselves feel better, or getting into heaven. |
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© Copyright 2005 Carlton Vogt |