The Death of Conscience

“I wrestled with my conscience, and I won,” the man said. It was not clear whether he was admitting or boasting; at least he did have a conscience with which to wrestle. If he won his matches often enough his worthless conscience could be discarded like a pair of worn out shoes, or would shrivel up like a dead leaf.

The story of Jacob’s nightmare, in which he wrestled with an angel (Genesis 32:22-32), so violently he was permanently crippled, illustrates how intense and painful struggle may be. It is a question, though, whether Jacob’s conscience was awakened by his fear of meeting his brother Esau on the morrow, or remorse for having swindled his brother out of his birthright.

There is a fad among some psychotherapists that conscience is the source of all neuroses and emotional disturbances. I have a friend whose counselor advises him to throw off all inhibitions and do whatever he feels like doing. Peace and contentment, he says, comes from returning to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve had no conscience. When they are of the forbidden fruit, acquired knowledge of good and evil, rose above their previous animal-like existence, and got a sense of guilt – that is when all human troubles began.

All the above ruminations are triggered by a gratifying news story. It recounts the efforts of a number of companies to bring a keener sense of ethics into business practice. Every businessman is forced almost daily into contests with conscience. Should he ship out a product which is faulty or may have serious side effects? Should he meet expectations of a customer’s agent for a bribe, and for what service? How is he to dispose of toxic waste? What about pollution emissions? For economy’s sake, should he slight safety programs and health endangering conditions in his facilities? Evidently these companies believe a little sense of guilt can be a good thing.

According to the story several corporations are holding seminars, not to lay down rules, but to study ethics as a personal concern. Leaders in religion and philosophy conduct the studies to try to develop sensitivity in the minds of management personnel toward ethical principles and standards. Instead of writing out generalized codes of behavior, these companies are seeking to create in managers an ethics element in their management decisions. DePaul University, in Chicago, now offers a Master of Arts degree in philosophy combined with a Master of Business Administration degree. Institutes in Cambridge, Mass. and Washington, DC are setting up educational programs for other companies which have intelligent and conscientious leadership.

It is a ray of sunshine in a dark world. We still have clouds. Stockholders still offer resolutions at annual meetings forbidding corporate charitable gifts. Skeptics are critical, saying profits are endangered by ethical decisions. The furor raised by conservatives against the Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter concerning ethical social values tells us that the enlightened leaders of the “ethics in business” movement are in the minority. But we rejoice in the fact that such leaders are here. The ray of sunlight may break into a new day if the religious leadership in America will proclaim the dawn.

The modern corporation, in which management is divorced from ownership, and both see customers as “market” and see “labor” instead of individual workers, makes it easy to smother ethics. In smaller businesses the personal relationships are more immediate and ethical issues become more apparent.

The problem creeps over into government. In 1980, the Reaganites charged that President Carter was too much concerned with ethical matters to give the country the leadership it needed. By implication, they suggested they would not be troubled by considerations of morality. They have kept that implied promise. Did the American people really buy that policy?

The two latest examples of amorality are the efforts of the Reagan Administration to postpone, emasculate and sidetrack any action stopping the use of cancer causing dyes in foodstuff and cutting back on smokestack emissions which produce acid rain. Appropriate action would cut profits for Administration friends, and would “disturb the economy”. Human lives can be sacrificed, and rivers, lakes and forests can be damages to keep industrial costs down and profits up.

Administration officials sometime wrestled with their consciences and defeated them. Now those consciences are suffering from terminal illness.