Paternalism Confounds the Moral Compass

Editor’s note: This article of mine was published in the October 10, 2008 issue of The Bison, Harding’s newspaper.  I was actually rather surprised that it ran, but I was also pleased.

Basic rules are essential for any organization or society, but when those rules begin to dictate personal moral decisions, they become paternalistic.  Many paternalistic institutions have the best interests of their constituents in mind when they create rules that govern personal moral choices.  Their belief is that the rules will create independent moral actors by forcing compliance.  Unfortunately, the opposite effect occurs.  Paternalism leads to intellectual and moral atrophy, and confounds the individual’s moral compass.

For an individual’s moral compass to develop, that person must contemplate deep questions.  Questions about theology and philosophy blend with societal and institutional messages to influence the individual’s moral reasoning capabilities.  Institutions can help individuals develop their own moral compasses by teaching them and exposing them to new ideas.  Under a paternalistic system, however, the rules become a substitute for moral reasoning rather than a supplement.

In a paternalistic system, individuals are divorced from the actual process of moral reasoning.  Instead, moral reasoning is delegated to the authorities who dictate boundaries of acceptable behavior.  Individuals are relieved of the need or independent moral thought, and in fact, they are often discouraged from such independence by the authorities.  Instead of developing an ability to think independently about moral issues, individuals in paternalistic systems are relegated to thinking in terms of rational self-interest.

Under the paternalistic rules, right and wrong are less relevant to the individual than reward and punishment are.  Thinking rationally, most individuals will only develop their capacity for thinking on that lower rational level in order to maximize personal reward and minimize personal punishment.  The well-intentioned paternalistic authorities may perceive that they are accomplishing their mission when they see compliance, but they delude themselves.

Once individuals graduate beyond the boundaries of the paternalistic rules and they are no longer under the system of rewards and punishments established by the authorities, what will they do?  They have not learned how to grapple with the serious issues needed to make independent decisions morally.  They are likely to continue operating under the rational self-interest model of decision-making in whatever other systems they find themselves.  They will adopt the behavior desired by whatever systems they find themselves in without any real personal grounding.

This is precisely the situation that develops at a Christian university like Harding.  Well-intentioned administrators see that the rewards and punishments they institute usually result in compliance.  Students generally follow the rules, and from the administration’s perspective, make moral choices.  But the surface-level compliance betrays the individual students’ vacuous moral reasoning abilities.

Although it is not in their nature, paternalistic systems must realize that their goals are best achieved by persuasion rather than force.  Harding must realize that it needs to teach students how to reason as independent moral actors, rather than just as obedient rule-followers.  The paternalistic rules, by their very existence, undermine the ability of the individual to develop a personal moral compass that can be used as a guide beyond the confines of this institution.  Without that compass and without a paternal structure to do the moral reasoning, Harding students will be lost after they leave this place.