I have never trusted theories of ethics whose upshot is that most people are moral.
I think most people will “take all the pie” if they can frame it as harmless, and something they’re entitled to. Almost everybody, from homeless people to privileged college students to PTA moms, loves a freebie—it’s unusual to see people giving more, or putting in more work, than they’re socially constrained to. The reason the “tragedy of the commons” happens every single time there’s a commons (if you’ve ever lived in a co-op you know what I mean) is that people typically grab all they can get, and put in as little effort as they can get away with.
When we care about the social effects of our actions, we’re usually using a different set of mental machinery, and in a different frame of mind, than when we’re just trying to grab our freebies. It might even make sense to talk about your “spiritual side” versus your “evil inclination.” Because you will only sweep the co-op floor if you break out of your typical freebie-grabbing mentality, and realize, “Hey, if nobody sweeps the floor this will be a crappy place to live, and it’s kind of crappy of me to hope someone will do it for me.” You have to switch frames of mind—you might even say, switch your goal structure from “grabby mode” to “moral mode.”
I really don’t think only sociopaths operate in “grabby mode” some of the time. Otherwise there are a hell of a lot of sociopaths.
I have never trusted theories of ethics whose upshot is that most people are moral.
I think most people will “take all the pie” if they can frame it as harmless, and something they’re entitled to. Almost everybody, from homeless people to privileged college students to PTA moms, loves a freebie—it’s unusual to see people giving more, or putting in more work, than they’re socially constrained to. The reason the “tragedy of the commons” happens every single time there’s a commons (if you’ve ever lived in a co-op you know what I mean) is that people typically grab all they can get, and put in as little effort as they can get away with.
When we care about the social effects of our actions, we’re usually using a different set of mental machinery, and in a different frame of mind, than when we’re just trying to grab our freebies. It might even make sense to talk about your “spiritual side” versus your “evil inclination.” Because you will only sweep the co-op floor if you break out of your typical freebie-grabbing mentality, and realize, “Hey, if nobody sweeps the floor this will be a crappy place to live, and it’s kind of crappy of me to hope someone will do it for me.” You have to switch frames of mind—you might even say, switch your goal structure from “grabby mode” to “moral mode.”
I really don’t think only sociopaths operate in “grabby mode” some of the time. Otherwise there are a hell of a lot of sociopaths.