Ethical analysis on everything from dog droppings to medical misconduct reached students last night as Randy Cohen, best known as the New York Times Magazine's Ethicist, addressed a full Pearson 104.
Cohen opines on ethics as a columnist for the New York Times Magazine and on NPR's "All Things Considered." He has also published "The Good, The Bad & The Difference: How To Tell Right From Wrong in Everyday Situations," which is based on his columns.
When it comes to ethics, it's largely circumstances, not character, that tends to make or break good conduct, Cohen said.
In his experience, he said, even honest and good people are almost inevitably led astray in compromising circumstances. "Character hardly comes into it at all," he said. "In fact, I've come to more and more think that there may be no such thing as character."
In turn, he said that either "ethical societies" or changes in circumstance are more likely to create agreeable outcomes than massive moral overhauls.
Even Ben Franklin, who as a young man kept a diary to practice 13 virtues, could not cultivate wonderful behavior through practice, Cohen said.
He cited two examples of terrible conduct in New York City that were improved by circumstantial changes. First, he dealt with the terrible scramble for taxis outside of Penn Station, where at one time "appalling acts of violence" were not uncommon among harried commuters.
The problem was not solved by vigorous personal self-examination, but through some yellow paint and a sign that said "Cab Line."
Another circumstantial solution: the dog waste that used to pepper the streets of New York City. This unsavory condition, he said, was abolished by a simple law.
Similarly, he said, music downloading and increased Internet plagiarism were a victim of changing culture, not eroding morals, among young people.
Far worse examples can emerge as well, he said, when common practice evolves to condone terrible ethical breaches, like the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib.
"What's regarded as appropriate treatment can shift over time; changes in conduct are incremental," he said. "What's striking in Abu Ghraib photos was that people were smiling," he said, noting how brutal behavior seemed normal to them.
While groupthink can shift patterns in terrible directions, he said, in the face of external oversight it can create accountability. "It doesn't let you off the hook. It puts you on a bigger hook," he said.
But when a group's moral compass goes astray, exceptional people with extraordinary moral courage can break from disgraceful patterns, he said.
"Sometimes people are saints. That kind of thing is very unpredictable and very rare," he said. Cohen used Oskar Schindler and Paul Rusesabagina, who each saved about 1,000 people during the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide respectively, as examples of people who did extraordinary things at great personal risk.
"We have to revere astonishing action, but we can't rely on it; we don't know how to create it," he said.
With no formal ethics training, the unassuming Cohen has forged his ethical sensibility through experience and contacts throughout the professional world. But he did bring to bear in the speech his past experience with humor as a television writer for the "Late Show with David Letterman" and Rosie O'Donnell's former talk show.
"It's filled me with vanity," he said self-deprecatingly of his work, and of how friends constantly ask him for ethical advice. "I think it's because I've become so incredibly smart. What I think it's about is it testifies to the awesome power of the New York Times. They could take any dog on the street and say, you know, you, Spotty, you're the ethics dog. People would ask the dog's advice. And I'm the dog," he said. "I like being the dog."
As the job's effect on his own life, the record is mixed. "Having the job has not made me even slightly more virtuous," he said. "I don't behave any better than I did before, and I don't have to. It's not my job to be a paragon of virtue. But what having the job does do is make me enormously self-conscious about shortcomings. It's very depressing."
After his speech, Cohen took questions, one from Nick Schroback, a senior and ROTC member, who is about to go into active duty, asked about the ethical duties of soldiers on the ground.
"It would be such hubris for me to take that position. How could I judge a person in that situation?" Cohen asked, though he did say people should not shrink from questioning the motives for the Iraq war.
Despite his experience, Cohen said he was not consulted about reporting ethics by his New York Times colleagues, but did say that a well-placed inquiry could have averted some notorious journalism disasters. "They should have said [to me], 'Hey, we're thinking of hiring this kid named Jayson Blair,'" he joked.
Cohen's talk was sponsored by Vitality, a health initiative at Hillel, as part of Chai week.
