gaining while losing

Today is incredibly hot. After receiving a brutal amount of leg day torment from boxing (it’s the upper calves, hip adductors and that joint between glutes and hamstrings if you must know), I’ve decided to sit down at the cafe beneath my apartment to write about the topic of morality. From the perspective of a newly adolescent whose entering adulting, I’ve recently come to understand that people work for different reasons. Some enjoy their work, some don’t. Some enjoy their work at first and then don’t later. Some don’t enjoy their work at first and do later. Some work to not work while some work to work. You get my point.

For whatever reason a person may choose to work, I’ll solely focus on discussing why more and more people are seemingly running into situations in which they are forced to pick between career benefits or their own morals. What people work towards is often deeply connected with our own upbringing. What I mean is that, our values are inherently deeply tied with the work we chose to participate in. Example being: a person whose been raised in a low income family may be more inclined to work in abundance in order to rightfully secure money and security. From my view: Everyone’s moral boundary line is intrinsically different. However, once that boundary is crossed, we will never feel accomplished and or achieving no matter what financial, societal and even physical status we may reach.

“I feel like in order to achieve, I need to throw away all my moral high ground.” One friend exclaimed, “No pain no gain, right?”

Quite the opposite.

Going back to the original question, I think that this is definitely related there having so much gray areas for not only corporate relations but also the concept of networking. People connect with one another with the intentions of securing “something.” That in itself, contributes to the lack of authenticity in relationships from this newer generation. More specifically, I think that the moment when our career goals becomes a “possibility”, “chance” and or “potential”, is when people are forced to question their own morality. Taking this into a personal context: Bob is a newly graduated student. His original goal to the beginning of his career is to feed himself and his two dogs. Most importantly, do something that he enjoys rather than sticking to his accounting degree from undergrad. He’s worked hard all throughout his career to build the career that he rightfully deserves. Now being in a position of conventional financial stability and societal approval, Bob becomes lost of where to go from here. He is getting invited to participate in many social events where theres the opportunity to meet other people in the same field and general individuals involved in the industry. Being thrown into this wider pool of people made him prone to compare himself to everyone else whose focused in the same path. He grows lost and insecure about the direction which he is pursuing. Just then, Craig shows up. Craig is someone whose viewed as socially superior, networking addict and just screams the words “walking short cut to success,” as he strolls around the party. Bob sees Craig instinctively as someone who he must befriend. The twist here is, he’d need to ignore the fact that Craig is a serial dog eater. (Now, this is just an example for the sake of generalization and relatability.) I will establish the moral separation between these two with more emphasis by adding the fact that Bob is no regular dog owner, he is a dog loving extremist. He buys all sorts of shirts with his own dogs’ faces printed and is an active member on all animal rights councils. Meanwhile, Craig not only eats dogs but the reason behind his practice is due to his absolute hate for dogs. He has also openly declared his world domination plan on eating all dogs in the world! Our friend Bob the dog owner, is now forced to meet a conflicting point in his career in which he must choose between betraying his original goal which was to take care of his two dogs by befriending Craig the dog eater or continue carrying on his current career stagnation. Tough right?

According to a research study done by folks over at the Utrecht University, Mannheim University as well as Leiden University, “Because of the far-reaching implications of moral failures, people are highly motivated to protect their self-views of being a moral person (Pagliaro, Ellemers, Barreto, & Di Cesare, 2016; Van Nunspeet, Derks, Ellemers, & Nieuwenhuis, 2015). They try to escape self-condemnation, even when they fail to live up to their own moral standards. Different strategies have been identified that allow individuals to disengage their self-views from morally questionable actions (Bandura, 1999; Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996; Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008). The impact of moral lapses or moral transgressions on one’s self-image can be averted by redefining one’s behavior, averting responsibility for what happened, disregarding the impact on others, or excluding others from the right to moral treatment, to name just a few possibilities.” (SAGE journals) Tackling this into Gen Z vocabulary, it means that people will gaslight themselves while projecting their mistake on others. On god.

This is how everything connects. When people train themselves to ignore these immoral signals, there is much harm that becomes internalized which then later transferred onto our own behavior. For the sake of an example, let’s go back to Bob. If Bob has chosen to disregard the dog eating and befriend Craig. As friends who don’t gatekeep, each time Craig shares his own dog eating tendencies Bob will internalize his horror and disapproval. The more responsibility, obligation and questionable thoughts he omits, the less he feels. “At the same time, it has been noted that feelings of guilt and shame can be so overwhelming that they raise self-defensive responses that stand in the way of behavioral improvement (Giner-Sorolla, 2012). This can occur at the individual level as well as the group level, where the experience of “collective guilt” has been found to prevent intergroup reconciliation attempts (Branscombe & Doosje, 2004). Accordingly, it has been noted that the relations between the experience of guilt and shame as moral emotions and their behavioral implications depend very much on further appraisals relating to the likelihood of social rejection and self-improvement that guide self-forgiveness (Leach, 2017).” (SAGE journals) At the power of moral convictions, no one can live a guilt free life. This is why, even if Bob’s relationship with Craig did result in a beneficial outcome, Bob’s innate feelings of guilt and shame will override any other emotions for joy and let alone peace. Even worse, Bob can easily become the next Craig. As psychology explains, humans tend to change their self-defensive responses after being morally tormented. That’s how this society is cycling now, that’s how this all can poison us.

If we continue disobeying our moral boundaries, no one can be truly content anymore.

On a positive note, there’s still so much good and brilliance out in this world. My ramble for today is to simply say one thing, stay in your own boundaries. That’s all. Have a good day folks.