Saturday, October 23, 2021

Push the Button Test: A Thought Experiment About the Moral State of Contemporary Man

A man arrives at your door.  He is carrying a box and asks to come inside to show you the opportunity of a lifetime.  He seems safe and well-intentioned, so you let him into the living room to sit down.  He opens the lid of the box to reveal a large red button.  He tells you "This is the opportunity of a lifetime.  If you push this button, some person in the world will lose their job.  It will take them 3 months to find a new job with a comparable salary.  But during that time they will feel depressed and discouraged, bewildered how they lost their job, anxious about their future.  However, you will receive $5000 cash immediately after you push the button.  You can spend the money on your family, or as a down payment on that new sports car you've been dreaming about buying.  Don't worry, the person will get a new job, and eventually recover emotionally and financially."

If I recall from my youth, this kind of story was an actual Twilight Zone episode.  I forget how the story ended, but it did not end well for the person pushing the button.  The universe somehow caused the main character to later experience some kind of existential crisis, after pushing the button.




My belief is periodically throughout our daily lives we all our faced with a similar situation, where we are tempted to rationalize seriously hurting someone's life because of selfish interest.  It could be telling a lie at work about a coworker or someone you are competing with in business.  It could be choosing to cut off all communications with a person, who was your friend, for no proportionate reason, except for some temporary self gain (like having artificial acceptance from others in your group setting).  It may not always rise to the level of causing someone to lose their job, with a reward of $5000, but the scenario often gravely affects people's lives.

And the chief character in this thought experiment is not the rare person suffering from psychopathy, sociopathy, or clinical-level narcissism, but rather every day contemporary man, such as 21st century North Americans or Europeans obsessed with wealth, power, and status, even the middle class and lower income classes.

It is a fact that modern education, media, and culture in general has taught people to deify themselves, to create their own special rights--i.e. "entitlement"-- at competition with the actual legal and universally moral rights (based on natural and divine law) of all human beings.  God, Christ, religion, the Ten Commandments, have been replaced by secular, materialist culture, political correctness, and the hyper-emphasis on self-esteem, clearly creating a level of selfishness in the average modern person that exponentially surpasses anything we have seen in human history.




Jordan Peterson talks about this, saying much of his research and analysis delves into the perennial question of evil, in particular crimes against humanity, the kinds we saw in the 20th century (especially genocidal murder under Stalin and later Hitler).  Peterson asks how the average German under Hitler could be so accepting or complacent with what Hitler did to the Jews (and other groups), and how some Germans, otherwise nice and law abiding citizens, who ended up working in the concentration camps, could end up capitulating and knowingly, intentionally, sometimes even not under immediate duress, could gladly organize mass murder in the gas chambers.  Those were not crimes of passion or indiscretion.  They were pre-meditated and willful.  

I am talking about an average man say from Berlin, sent to work at Auschwitz (my great-grandfather, a Christian, was gassed there for protesting Hitler publicly, so this example is personal for me), told that the next day he will be required to start rounding up thousands of inmates, herding them like cattle into a gas chamber, locking the doors, and then flipping a switch (perhaps pushing a button) knowing damn well that they will be murdering thousands of innocent people who broke no law.




Back to the "push the button test" metaphor--there is no practical, temporal reason why pushing the button will harm the person who later gets the $5,000.  Ask yourself, what percentage of Americans would push the button, cause someone to loose their job say for three months, to get the $5,000?

The optimist would say that most people are nice, law abiding, pay their taxes, so there is little reason to think many or most would push the button.  But why are most people fundamentally nice and law abiding?  Is it because to deliberately break a clearly just law for them is absolutely, fundamentally always wrong, and absolutely can never be done or justified?   




The data does not support this.  Most Americans do not subscribe to traditional, Judeo-Christian objective moral absolutes, because, even if they technically are registered with a church or synagogue, collectively Americans do not subscribe to traditional religious doctrine as something objectively revealed by God as the Law Giver, which requires absolute adherence.  Religion has almost entirely been converted into a feel-good social club for secular, psycho-social ends mainly, dressed in religious garb, not so much for a transcendent path of redemption, repentance, conversion of life, to God's laws, to the commandments, and the Golden Rule.  As a result, the common morality has been reduced down to utilitarianism, moral relativism, and situation ethics.

What we orthodox Christians, Catholics, profess on Sunday in the Creed, is treated as something alien, as in from another planet.  Our faith, morals, and values render us in the catacombs, figuratively speaking.

So applying this thought experiment to the on-the-ground reality of today's culture, the mysterious man with the box may as well add:

"By the way, the guy who will lose his job, only because you decide to push the red button, he kind of deserves it.  He is a fanatical, judgmental right wing Christian conservative type, who talks like he must hate blacks, gays, trans people, and anyone else who is tolerant of different lifestyles.  Sometimes too he says offensive things to people online or in person, and rejects as conspiracy theory the covid policies of the CDC and WHO."

Gasp, say it ain't so. 

Common sense tells me, for the majority, that statement will make it much more easy to push the button.   To get the $5,000.  Even though the guy actually did nothing to deserve termination, has a family to feed, is not in fact a religious bigot, and will seriously suffer in many ways at least for months.

As a result of pushing a red button, which may as well be any singular act such as lying, slander, cheating, discrimination, harassment, etc, based on any individual circumstances.

Conclusion:  most people would push the red button in a similar scenario--and in fact effectively do--that is deliberately cause some form of harm to another human being, through singular choices, seriously harming someone who did nothing to deserve that harm, for some kind of temporary gain (money, increased social acceptance and status, increased influence and opportunity for themselves in the world).  And then feel little or no guilt or shame afterwards.    




This is the way of our contemporary world.  Dog eat dog.  The majority are faced with making these kinds of choices on a regular basis, yet the majority hit the red button, or are disposed to hit the red button, because that fits their life philosophy.  That may not actually mean murdering someone, or getting someone fired, but it is usually smaller sins that lead to graver sins, the kinds that call out for vengeance from God.  

Yet when a People make a habit out of stabbing their neighbor in the back, lying, cheating, stealing, slandering, etc., as part of the game of social darwinism, then eventually when presented clear moral dilemmas, they will be that much more likely to do things like genocidal murder, seriously damaging someone's life socially or economically, or otherwise cause havoc in their life that was not deserved.

Consider that the data shows 10% of the population borders on sociopathy, that another 40% occasionally performs sociopathic, anti-social kinds of acts but with some guilt and shame.  The extremely self-centered, amoral, immoral kind of people are 50%, and they tend to control group dynamics such as government and business, whereby the other more benign 50% follow along.   The more narcissistic and godless someone is, the more likely they are to push the red button.

Call me pessimistic about the state of modern society, but I would even go so far to say that at least 50% of people in the thought experiment I described at the beginning, would actually push the red button.  Many would feel some guilt later, but they would go on with their lives content to have their $5,000.