The Contours of a Moral Landscape
One of the questions was, What sorts of things are wrong, and what makes them so? (This question was usually put in terms of what children should be taught, in an attempt to make it less threatening or accusing.) The question tapped into the continuum between what can be called moral “depth” and “shallowness.”
The question about what things are wrong sometimes elicited answers of striking shallowness.
CQ: They shouldn’t swear, you know, do what your mother tells you to do, you know, do well at school, when you grow up, you know. Be careful who you mix with. Don’t talk to strangers, you know. Things like that.
Which is more wrong—bullying or swearing?
Hmm, swearing and bullying is wrong, both wrong in my eyes.
Both the same?
Yeah, both the same.
IQ: But they said I’ve set myself a pretty high moralistic standard.
What can you say about your very high moralistic standards?
Well, I don’t swear in front of females. I’m respectful. I mean I believe in opening doors, and if a female is walking along, be it a patient, or a member of staff, I let them go through the door first, and things like that.
Some were inarticulate when asked to go beyond listing specific things they thought wrong and to give reasons for items being on the list. But sometimes a more general view (such as “things you would not like if they were done to you” or “things that in the long run will not make you happy”) did emerge.
QA: One day I bought my wife a dozen red roses and put them on top of the television for when she come in and when my son see them he cut them off with a pair of scissors. Well, I didn’t chastise him. My wife chastised him.
If you had been talking to him, what would you have liked to put across? What do you think children should be taught about right and wrong?
Not to go out stealing. Not to go out fighting and just walk away. It takes a better man to walk away than just standing and fight. Not to go out and call people names and all that. Not to get in trouble, really.
But if you were bringing up your children, you’d think of telling them these things … They mustn’t cut roses off, they mustn’t shout after other people. Supposing the children said, “What makes all these things wrong?” What is it they have in common that makes them wrong?
Well, it’s just abusive, that’s all. It’s just abusive … being abusive all the time.
Supposing you were bringing up a child and he says, “You tell me all these things are wrong, but what makes them wrong?” What makes all these things—stealing and lying and abusing people—what makes them all wrong?
Well, it makes them wrong—it isn’t their property. It belongs to someone else. Someone else has bought it, or built it or had it given, or something like that, and it’s not your property. It’s their possession. It’s theirs.
What about shouting after old people? What makes that wrong?
Shouting after old people? Well, I find that’s mickey-taking [making fun of them] more than anything. That’s wrong, abusing old people … I used to chastise my two little girls when they used to shout at Mrs. Hopkins who used to live next door. She had two sticks and they used to take the mickey out of her … One day they could be the same and somebody could start shouting at you and how would you like it?
What is the distinction between depth and shallowness here? Depth can come from serious reflection on why things matter. This reflection might be about oneself. What sort of life do I want to lead and why? What sort of person do I want to be? It might be about religion or society. None of this necessarily involves much concern for other people. On the other hand, depth can come, not from reflection, but from an intuitive feel for other people and for what matters to them. The question about how you would like it if someone started shouting at you has at least some depth. But the emphasis on letting women go through the door first and on not swearing are shallow because conventional. They show no signs either of reflection on reasons or of a feel for what really affects people. This applies most clearly to the view that swearing and bullying are equally bad.
What principles of selection, if any, were they using? Why would they teach children to do some things but not others? Some interviewees oscillated between reasons that appealed to ideas of right and wrong or to concern for other people and reasons appealing to self-interest. The emphasis was strongly on self-interest.
When you’re talking about younger children, say children aged about 6 or 7, what would you teach them about right and wrong?
ZC: Well, I would teach them … not to misbehave, not to steal. I would tell them the reasons, though. I would not just say to them—don’t steal because it’s wrong. I would tell them the reason. Because if you steal, the police would catch you eventually, they would lock you up and you would suffer. I would tell them that way.
Do you know any other reasons?
Well, that it’s wrong. I would explain to them—how would you like someone to steal your property? You wouldn’t like. So don’t steal other people’s property. And also because it’s important—you’ll be locked up, locked in prison and well—you suffer. You lose your freedom.
Others gave reasons that appealed simply to self-interest.
What would you teach them is right and wrong? What have you got in mind?
NB: Um, teach them not to talk to strangers, um, not to get on the wrong side of the law, break the law, um, teach them things that I’ve been through, teach them not to do what I did, type of thing, so teach them different. Get a good education, get a good job.
Suppose you were teaching your children not to talk to strangers, get a good education, not to break the law. They turn ’round at the age of 13 and say, “Well, OK, you’re telling us all this, but why? What’s the reason behind it all?” What would you say?
Um. [long silence] Because you need a job in life and a good education in life to get anywhere. If you don’t, then you’re just going to be um, on the dole, living in hostels and bedsits for ages, no money, hardly any clothes, can’t get yourself a good meal. And that’s why you need a good education and a job, and when you’re on the dole and living in a bedsit, and you’ve got nothing to your name, then you start stealing from shops, food from shops. You get caught, you get in trouble with the law.
When the results of getting caught are so prominent in the replies, it is natural to wonder what the question about the ring of Gyges will elicit. Some, understandably, were a bit thrown by it. Sometimes it was hard to be sure how much their responses reflected a real attitude and how much they reflected the need to say something as an answer to questions they found hard and perhaps stressful.
In general you think people should do the right thing?
LF: Yeah.
Even if they could get away with doing the wrong thing? What’s the reason for doing the right thing if you can get away with not doing it?
Say again?
Well, suppose you could get away with not getting caught, what’s the point of bothering about doing the right thing?
Well, I don’t know [he laughs] to be honest. Um, depends, I don’t know, I don’t know.
There was once a philosopher who said that if we had a ring that made us invisible, there would be a question about whether we need bother about morality at all … What would you think about somebody who said, “Well, we don’t need to bother about right and wrong, if we can get away with it because of being invisible”?
I dunno.
Would you feel you had any reason to do the right thing?
No, not really.
You could steal but you were invisible so nobody would see it’s you. You’d do it?
Well, I suppose so, yeah.
Others were not so thrown by the question. Often the first response is to doubt the plausibility of what such fairytale thought experiments assume. Would invisibility really be a reliable protection against being caught?
The Greek philosopher Plato had the idea that if we had a ring that made us invisible, there would be a question that we had any reason not to steal. If we had a ring that made us invisible, we’d never be caught. Would there be any reasons for not stealing then?
ZC: Say you’re invisible, you may get away with it maybe one hundred times. But eventually they will suss [figure] you out—somebody who is invisible is doing this and they will probably be more … look out for.
So you will get caught in the end?
Yeah … They suss out that some invisible person is doing this. There’s some films where they show invisible people and eventually they caught them.
But the next response was often to think that an effective version would remove any problems about stealing, though the detail of this line of thought was sometimes bizarre.
But if I could get away with it—if I could really get away with it forever—supposing I just knew I could get away with something, would there be any problem in doing it then?
ZC: There wouldn’t. No, you’re right. There wouldn’t be a problem. If you were invisible and, say, kept killing people and you couldn’t be caught, then eventually, and you’d be the only person on the planet, and you would be lonely by yourself if you killed everybody.
One view was that wearing the ring of Gyges would not stop acts from being wrong, but that the lack of consequences would mean the wrongness did not matter.
If a child had that ring, what would you teach them? Would there be anything they …
JF: Be above the law, one step above the law.
Would those things that would still be wrong, even if you could always get away with them …
It would be wrong, yeah, but if you could get away with it, you’d be one step above the law.
Then, that’s all right?
That’s all right, yeah.
For some, the ring would have results that were better than “all right.” It would be a wonderful opportunity.
If we had a ring that made us invisible, would there be a reason to bother about right and wrong? Because you could still have a good life, because you’d never get caught?
NB: That would be my perfect dream, which would.
That would be your perfect dream.
It would, yeah. If you just did anything, could have anything.
And would you do that?
I would, yes.
If you could get a good life by doing things that are wrong, because you couldn’t get caught, then there would be no problem?
I do think, because I knew that I could get away with it, but can you use the ring in a way where you could not just do wrong things, but get a good life out of using the ring as well?
OK, how would you use the ring for a good life?
Um, houses, cars, boats, holidays.
However, not everyone shared the general enthusiasm for the ring. One thought conscience would still function.
If we could be made invisible … we wouldn’t have any reason to bother about respecting other people’s rights because no one would know it was us. What do you think of that?
BF: Er, I think if you had the ultimate psychopath with no conscience, then you may get away with it, yes. But I don’t think there is anybody here who … I can’t imagine, perhaps there is, that there is anybody whose conscience would allow them to get away with it. Or, I don’t know, it sounds, if you were in the sort of position where you want to do that, um, I could guess that you wouldn’t just be happy with doing that.
The widespread enthusiasm for the liberating effects of the ring of Gyges suggests the ruthless self-interest of simple amoralism. This fitted with my expectations, based on the stereotype about “lacking a conscience.” Against that stereotype, their outlook did not fit the conceptual core of amoralism: the rejection of the vocabulary of moral concepts. For the most part they did have a moral vocabulary of right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair. And for many of them, certain moral concepts and thoughts in particular were deeply embedded in their outlook.
Two of the moral concepts that had a strong hold on many interviewees were fairness and respect for people’s rights. Sometimes respecting rights was linked to letting people live their own lives, and fairness was seen as equal treatment. These combined in the idea that different groups, such as men and women, should be equally free to live their own lives.
ZC: In my sister’s case, I wish she did give birth to the baby, because I like to have plenty of nephews and nieces. But it’s not up to me. I mean, I can’t go and tell my sister—oh, go on, you have the baby, whether you like it or not. I can’t do that. It’s up to my sister. It’s up to the individual.
So one of your values is respecting individuals? What other values do you think you have?
Who, me?
Yes.
Values, eh? [long pause] Well I spoke to a psychologist a long time ago. I do believe in—I do believe that women should be as equal as men are. I believe women should be allowed to do whatever job the men do—they should be allowed to do it as well. If they are good at it, they should be allowed to do it. I also believe that the woman—I mean, if the woman goes out and has plenty of sex with men, some men would call her a slut. But I don’t agree with that. Men like to go and have plenty of sex with women, so a woman should be allowed to have plenty of sex with men.
Is this a matter of fairness?
It is, yes.
What is fairness? What does it mean to be fair or unfair?
Equality to everybody. Whatever they’re allowed to be, the others should be allowed to live.
Sometimes concern for fairness and for rights was linked to imaginative awareness of how others might feel when treated unfairly or when their rights are ignored. The man whose conscience wouldn’t let him get away with using the ring of Gyges appealed to imagination here.
Taking your car to get the groceries, what would you do if there was a shortage of space and there was a disabled space, would you park in the disabled space sometimes or not?
BF: No.
Not at all?
Not at all, no.
Why not?
Er, because there’s a specific reason. Disabled have trouble with mobility, and you know there would be nothing stopping me parking a long way away and walking with the shopping … but some people have a … need wheelchairs, whatever, to get around … or walking frames, so I wouldn’t, it’d be very unfair, um …
Yes, on any potential disabled person who wanted to use it. Yes.
How do you decide what’s fair and what’s unfair?
Um, I suppose part of that is down to, would it cause distress, create trouble for somebody?
Yes.
And, er, you know, it’s looking at pros and cons of any decision I suppose, er, yes it would save me time and effort if I parked there but the amount of effort and time a disabled person would lose would massively outweigh that.
So it’s partly a kind of greatest happiness for greatest number sort of issue (or least misery)?
Um, partly, but it’s not solely just that.
No. What else is it?
Um, I suppose it’s partly how I feel about it anyway.
When you say “how you feel,” what do you have in mind?
Um, well I suppose anybody has experienced at some point disabled people being ignored, their rights being ignored, and the way that can make them feel. And if you’re quite happy to just put up with that, then, er, you probably won’t have so much of a problem with using their parking space, but, er, if you’re not, then …
But this appeal to imagination was rare. Most thought respect for people’s rights was important, but it was not particularly linked to any empathy or sympathy for people whose rights are overridden.
Do you think it is wrong to park in a disabled space?
OA: Yeah, I do.
Why is it wrong?
Because there might be somebody who comes in to use the space who is disabled and can’t park there. It’s not what I would do.
Is that because you feel sorry for the disabled person?
No, it’s because disabled people have got rights just like normal people.
Yes, it’s just respecting their rights?
Yeah, I respect their basic rights.
It is worth exploring this strong commitment to fairness and respecting rights that does not stem from imaginative sympathy with people who are unfairly treated. It is a dominant feature of this moral landscape. Where does it come from?
The philosopher David Hume argued that we should follow the conventions for respecting others’ property because this would result in stability and other social benefits. One interview brought out a motive for respecting people’s rights that echoed Hume.
QA: I have never heard of a patient stealing from another patient in this hospital.
Why do you think that is?
Well, I suppose they respect each. I’ve got a telly, I’ve got a budgie, a Walkman—all that kind of stuff. And I leave my door open. Every patient has already got the same kind of things. They do a bit of swapping, wheeling and dealing between each other, but they don’t go stealing from each other.
You mentioned about respecting each other. Do you respect people much?
I respect people if they talk to me and treat me OK. If they don’t, I just ignore them. I won’t have nothing to do with them. I don’t want nothing to do with any troublemakers or anything like that now.
In the hospital the set of tacit conventions went beyond respect for property.
In the hospital here, is there a kind of moral code that people obey about what you do with each other, how you treat each other and so on? Or not? Are there things that most patients would agree were wrong when some person does it to another patient?
JQ: Yeah, I think so. There is nothing actually said, or written down, but it’s sort of generally accepted that, without anything ever being said, of what is and what isn’t done.
What would you say are the things in that moral code?
Um, I mean, like, homosexuality, in private OK, in public, no. Things like that, you know … It’s a sort of accepted rule that you don’t ask people about their history or anything like that.
The growth of such an agreement needs some idea of what others are likely to want and how they are likely to respond to the understanding being broken. But having empathy for, or caring about, the feelings of others is not essential. This strategy is at best a minimal step away from self-interested amoralism.
Sympathy is not the only route away from amoralism. Most people’s moral outlook comes from a variety of sources. Some are linked to sympathy and some are not. In the interviews, three elements not linked to sympathy played a large part. One is what can be called “command morality.” The other two are versions of fairness, one based on what can be called “primitive equality” and the other based on what people deserve.
One example of command morality is found in authoritarian versions of religion: “This is wrong because God has said so, and there is no room for further discussion.” Another version is the attitude many people have to the law of the land: “It is not for me to judge whether the reasons for a law are good or bad; this is illegal, and so it should not be done.” Immanuel Kant’s phrase “the moral law” brings out parallels between his secular morality and both divine and governmental laws. Some have complained that his approach has a hidden dependence on the idea of a divine lawmaker still lurking behind the supposedly secular moral law. And Freud famously saw, lurking in turn behind the divine lawmaker, the commands and rebukes of a child’s actual father. The divinely inspired “voice of conscience” was in his view the internalized echo of the guilt-inducing parental voice.
None of the interviewees mentioned God or gave religious reasons in support of their moral beliefs, and there was only one of them who even might have heard of Kant. Whatever truths or illusions underlie its various theoretical versions, command morality was a presence in the interviews. Unsurprisingly, parental commands were the important ones, as in the case of the man quoted above who thought bullying and swearing were equally wrong:
Why is swearing wrong?
CQ: Well it’s just the way that I was brought up, not swearing at people. It’s the way my Mum and Dad brought me up, you know. We were brought up as to what was wrong and what was right and that, you know.
Others hinted at parental authority as the reason for holding beliefs. In one case this was combined with the Queen being central to some of their content. Possibly being brought up with a command morality encourages a general willingness to defer to those seen as having authority.
LN: I think capital punishment for certain crimes should be mandatory.
For which crimes?
Murder of children, murdering people under the age of 16, er, arson with intent to danger, arson of Her Majesty’s property, arson, like arson in any place where the Crown’s at threat … If I was to [be in] Portsmouth and try to set fire to one of her majesty’s frigates I should be hung for it. Because it’s arson of her Majesty’s docks.
I suppose the thing you said that surprises me the most is the thing about “people ought to be executed for arson of her Majesty’s property.” That makes it sound as though, if somebody’s in prison and they set fire to one of the waste paper baskets, it’s Her Majesty’s prison …
That’s not arson. I mean like set fire to, like try to set fire to, say, Kensington Palace, set fire to Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, Glamis Castle.
Why does it make a difference if it is one of those palaces rather than just a block of flats?
Because it’s the Queen’s property, Queen’s property.
What’s special about the Queen?
It’s the way I was brought up, respect the Crown, respect the uniform, respect the royal family.
If I say I’m not so interested in respecting the royal family, can you give me a good reason why I should?
Where would you be without them?… I’d say to you, you got to look at it, without the Queen you ain’t going to have a decent way of living … I look at it, I mean, the way I’ve been brought up, the Queen, how can I put it, the Queen is the number one person, you know what I mean, after yourself. You know what I mean, you’ve got yourself, and then you should respect the monarchy because the monarchy respects you … [A] prime example is Prince Charles. He’s involved in conservation, he’s involved in art … He’s not like, even though he is royal, he will take time to sit, talk to you, and probably understands you better than yourself, probably.
I’m not sure I believe he understands me better than I do myself, but …
But he’s got more experience … I don’t know, it’s just the way I been brought up.
This deference to authority sometimes combined with ideas about loyalty to your own country. The result was a “my country right or wrong” belief in unconditional obedience to the demands of patriotism.
Some people say that one problem with the army is that you have to obey orders, sometimes you kill people if there’s a war, and it may not be right to do that always.
OA: To defend your country, yeah, too right it is.
In war, is it right?
Yeah, of course it is. You’re not just defending your homeland, you’re defending the women, the children, people in it. You’re defending their right to be free.
It takes two sides to make a war, and one side is defending and the other side is attacking. Can you always rely on our side to be the ones who are defending?
If you’re British, you stand for Britain, whether it’s right or wrong. You’re part of that country. If Britain says, “Right, I’m at war with this bunch,” you don’t argue. You just say, “Fair enough” and “Let’s go to do what we’ve got to do.”
Another source of moral beliefs independent of sympathy is the sense of fairness. One version is concern is for equal treatment. Most parents know the deep passion for this. This “primitive equality” seems deeply entrenched in children at a very young age. Anyone with three children and three pieces of cake, who distributes them in any way other than the obvious one, comes across this passion.
The strong support for equal treatment was often linked to primitive equality. One reference harked back to childhood, when one child was given pocket money and one was not.
NB: My Mum gave me pocket money but not my sister. That’s unfairness as well.
So fairness is treating people the same?
Yeah, to be treated equally to the other person … So I’d give you £1.50 and I’d give the other person £1.50 so it’s equal so it’s fair. He’s not getting more than you.
One version of fairness is about what people deserve: that people should be rewarded or punished, blamed or praised, according to what they have done. The deep unfairness of undeserved punishment was a recurring theme.
What is fairness and what is unfairness?
NB: Unfairness is like when someone is blamed for something they haven’t actually done. I’ve been blamed for things that I haven’t actually done and that’s unfairness.
There was also a strong sense of unfairness when others had not given them the support and loyalty they thought they deserved.
Do you think you’ll see anything of your family, or are they really out of the picture?
QA: I was in touch with my wife last year because my son died. I think the last time I hear from my wife was sixteen years ago, and it took my son to die for her to be in touch with me. I went home to see her for the day after the funeral. A couple of months later we went home. The staff took me out to visit my wife for the day, and me and my wife went up to the grave. Then we went back to the flat and she said, “I’ve all the paint and the wallpaper and all that indoors ready for when you come home.” I said, “I’m not coming home.” After sixteen years, she’s not been in touch with me and because my son died and she’s on her own now, she wanted me back. After sixteen years when I’ve been locked away. That’s not fair.
The importance of what people deserve was not just something that cropped up about undeserved blame or abandonment in their own lives. It shaped their thinking about more public matters. For instance, one suggested that although the killings by the Kray twins were not justified, the twins’ guilt was at least mitigated by the thought that their victims might have got what they deserved.
JF: The Krays only killed their own. They didn’t kill innocent people.
I see. Who did they kill?
They killed Jack “The Hat” McVitie and George Cornell. George Cornell was with the Richardsons. The Richardsons used to torture people and George Cornell was always shouting his mouth off about Ronnie Kray, calling him a fat poof and that and this business, saying how he wasn’t scared of the Krays and that they’re ponces and shouting his mouth off. And he worked with the Richardsons and he was a gangster himself. So Ronnie Kray shot him in the head. He was just killing another gangster. And Jack “The Hat” McVitie—he was supposed to be with the Krays but he was always shouting his mouth off that he was going to get the Krays … He pushed a woman out the car and she had her spine broke and she couldn’t walk again and the Krays had to look after her. They gave money so that she could be all right financially, and this Jack “The Hat” McVitie was causing nothing but trouble. He was doing the Krays out of money and he was shouting his mouth off. So Reggie killed him. He stabbed him to death.
Does that make it all right to kill him?
It doesn’t make it right, no, but he only killed wrong people. He didn’t kill innocent people.
What about people who do kill innocent people? What do you think should happen?
That’s bad. I reckon they should be hung.
There was a lot of support for capital punishment.
Why should we think it is all right to kill somebody because they’ve committed these crimes?
LN: Because it’s inhumane to do certain things like that. I look at it like, this is one of my opinions, anybody who can harm a child … doesn’t deserve to live … I mean if you hurt a child,—boom—you know what I mean, there’s punishing a child and then there’s just going out of your way to hurt a child. That’s out of order.
Some people say two wrongs don’t make a right. That it’s terrible to kill a child, but it’s also terrible to kill the person who killed the child? You don’t agree with that?
It’s just the way I’ve brought myself up, really, you know what I mean. Even though I’m a devout Catholic, I still think pedophilia is the worst crime in the world, and there is only one sentence for it—death.
Some supporting reasons were strikingly shallow, but this could be combined with a strong sense of the unfairness of innocent people being executed.
NB: I think serious offenders should be executed.
Why do you think that?
Um, I just look at England. There’s no spaces, there’s prisoners everywhere, there’s criminals hanging around and that, and I reckon that if there was execution then, more execution than normal, I think it’d be a more quieter world to live in.
Some people say that one of the problems with executing people is that people who are innocent sometimes wrongly get convicted.
Yeah, I think that, OK yeah, I think then the law should make sure you’ve got 100 percent proof before execution.
Yes, but you can’t always get 100 percent proof.
No, you can’t.
Some people would say, “Well, if it would hugely reduce the murder rate, never mind if a few people get executed because fewer people die overall.” Would you say that’s right or do you think that’s wrong?
I think that’s wrong.
Why?
Because they’re just killing innocent people. So they end up being murderers themselves.
Sometimes ideas of what made someone deserve execution were bound up with a network of other distinctive moral views.
OA: If a man murders a man, then, as far as I am concerned, that’s acceptable, because a man can defend himself. If somebody attacks a man from the front, or two men have a fight and one of them dies, someone hits him and he falls down and dies, that’s acceptable because they’ve had a fight and accidentally somebody’s died. If you go out with the intent of killing somebody, then you should lose your life. If you kill a child you should lose your life.
Sometimes, though rarely, support for capital punishment was linked to remorse about the person’s own past and to sympathy for his victims.
Some people think it’s wrong to have capital punishment. What do you think?
QA: In some cases—yes, and in some cases—no.
Which cases would be “yes”?
There’s been innocent people electric-chaired and the guilty one’s been found later. In rape there should be the birch—give them the birch, or cat-of-nine-tails—in the case of raping. In the case of sexual assault on children, the same and they should be castrated. In the case of actually murder, I would agree with hanging. I have killed twice—two people, and I never forget it. I didn’t only hurt them. I hurt their family mentally, not physically but mentally, and their loved ones.
A strong commitment to retribution and desert could lead people in different directions. The concern about the execution of innocent people led one interviewee to reject capital punishment, although he also thought that, where someone did deserve punishing, a private violent response could be justified.
LF: Say you got someone that’s … beating up and burgling, beating up old women and taking all their money. The police haven’t got enough evidence for conviction and they’re sitting there driving these nice motors and throwing all this money around and stuff like that, and then, I’d no compun … no guilt about, er, taking money off him or stealing off him, or what, lying to him or, do you know what I mean, or attacking him …
Do you think there should be capital punishment?
No.
Why not?
Well, it depends. If you admit it and it’s definitely right that they did do it, then maybe, but you always have these cases where innocent people …
Three themes stand out in interview responses: moral shallowness, the dominance of self-interest over imaginative concern for others, and a morality emphasizing fairness and rights, but again with its roots not in empathy for others. (These are the dominant impressions, but I have quoted comments by particular people that go against each of these generalizations.)
The shallowness is obvious in the triviality of some of the proposed moral teaching about letting women through the door first, or swearing being as bad as bullying. The few reasons that were given showed little thoughtfulness or any sense of what mattered to other people. The dominance of self-interest is obvious in the welcome given to the ring of Gyges, provided it works. These two factors taken together might suggest a group of amoralists who have no real conception of what morality is about.
But this picture of the flat amoral landscape is at most a half-truth. What goes against it is the highly visible outcrop of moral concepts clustered around ideas of fairness and what people deserve. It is a moral landscape, but a narrow and hard one. In a few of the men interviewed, beliefs about rights and equality grew out of a concern for other people being able to live their own lives, or out of imagining how disabled people feel when their rights are trampled on. But for most, imaginative concern for others was not central. The focus on primitive equality and on what people deserve seemed to come from gut reactions, without much thought about them. The ideas of what people deserve were often linked to their own feelings of being unfairly treated. In most of the group, these ideas seemed largely independent of empathy or sympathy.
Again, the shallowness is striking. This comes out in the importance attached to the Queen’s property and in belief in the acceptability of “attacking a man from the front.” It comes out in the view that if a victim has been causing trouble and “shouting his mouth off,” then it is less wrong to murder him. It comes out in giving as a reason for supporting capital punishment that “I just look at England. There’s no spaces, there’s prisoners everywhere, there’s criminals hanging around …” All this has the same triviality as letting women through the door first and believing that swearing is seriously wrong. Some of the shallowness may come from being brought up with a command morality, which is not about imagining how people feel. Nor does it develop thoughtful reflection. Instead, it encourages immediate and uncritical obedience: “If Britain says, ‘I’m at war with this bunch,’ you don’t argue. You just say, ‘Fair enough.’ ”