They Can’t Sell You a Conscience
an unflattering look at how to feel better and the fight against moral certainty
You would be hard pressed to find someone today who wasn’t foaming at the mouth to discuss their opinions of whole groups of other people. Forget the political labels, any and all descriptors or demographics are on the table as pseudo-affiliations. Cryptobro this, Tiktok-ers that, Chads here, Karens there. (I understand how Dr. Seuss got started in political cartooning now.) Yet, everyone seems to agree that divisiveness is on the rise and is one of our most pressing problems as a wider culture. All these conversations about divisiveness seem to be pushing us even farther apart, even within our own communities. How could this be?
The common denominator of every rant, comedy special, conversation, or monologue appears to be, “here’s my observation of other people, and I’m better because I see these problems.” Each of these conversations is always had from a clear, explicit affiliation with a specific subculture. I am definitely not the first person to acknowledge this. I once heard someone define our main social issue as moral certainty - that everyone believes they know exactly the correct moral guidelines and are completely unwilling to budge in any direction. Even simpler, a widespread lack of humility. We are seeing people fighting over the right way to be.
Alongside these conversations, we see a culture that is deeply pained. As of 2021, over 57 million people, approximately 22% of all adults in the United States, are struggling with a mental illness (1). Additionally, less than half of them are receiving mental health services (1). When substance use rates are included, as a reflection of an attempt to cope or disconnect from pain, it is clear that the suffering stretches even farther. In 2021, 46 million people over 12 years old met the criteria for a substance use disorder and 93% of them did not receive any treatment (2). There are valid critiques of our concepts of mental health and the system that is designed around it. However, we do not have to rely on the formality of statistics and jargon to see the distress that most Americans are facing. It is all around us - in our families, our workplaces, and our Instagram feeds.
Our instinct is to try to understand and name our pains before we begin trying to resolve them. Surely, the source impacts the way we properly approach the problem? But as we begin labeling the pain in our culture and our community members, with that comes an ideological association. We can call the same profile of symptoms a lot of different things and attribute it to even more possible causes. Four people can see the same behavior or suffering and it could be defined as poverty, trauma, genetics, or even a poor diet. It spins us in circles looking for the right question. For this conversation, I want us to remain as ideologically neutral as possible for talking about future directions and solutions. You deserve relief and it shouldn’t matter who you voted for, where you shop, or what feels authentic to you.
We do not have to rely on one explanation to describe phenomena that we see in our daily lives: lots of people in pain. In fact, the co-opting of psycho-jargon and social theory that has reduced the nuance of whole academic specialties into buzzwords of the general zeitgeist is a harm in itself. So we will be moving forward with a very simplified description of human behavior. We are going to try to define mental health without pathologizing it through use of the diagnosis and terms from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). I will only say that the utility of these labels does not extend into this conversation. Mental health, simplified, is the trend or pattern of how our behaviors make us and those around us feel. I will not invalidate the utility of labels and the reality of suffering. We feel bad and so we don’t react well to the things that hurt us.
There are two major institutions that claim to ease our suffering and guide us how to live properly. The mental health system is one place. Religion is another. Sticking to our lens of ideological neutrality, religion provides people with a moral code that guides their lives. In our culture, we can recognize that many people do not necessarily use this code to guide their actions. However, that statement applies to all available pre-packaged moral codes. Let’s just agree at this point, that religion is one way that moral codes are taught, learned, and utilized in our wider life perspective.
Alongside the skyrocketing commonality of suffering, we also see a shift in where religion sits in our lives. The religiously unaffiliated group of the United States has risen from approximately 16.1% in 2006 to 26.8% in 2022 (3) based on the 2022 census of religious affiliation. For context, 26.8% of the American population would be about 89 million people (4). Many of these people choose personal faith, spirituality or fall into the “nones” category. Mind you, I am not here to imply that people with mental health struggles just need God. Especially when mental wellbeing struggles are prevalent across any and all demographics. This is an exercise in drawing parallels and I ask that you trust the process.
Morality is often taught from an authority figure of some kind. In this case, religion and their specific deities are often considered the highest authority. An additional realm of authority which provides moral guidance for many is our criminal-legal system. Many folks align themselves with the current laws as a sign of morality. In recent years, American faith in the legitimacy of justice and legal authority has declined (5). One scholar discussing these phenomena even referred to current “plethora of crises in authority” (6). In fact, as of 2022, the average confidence in all major institutions is at an all time low across political affiliations (7). The loss of confidence is in organizations including religion, criminal justice, the military, the government, the police, and public schools (7). It seems that many are shirking the beliefs, decision-making, and moral signaling of the larger societal culture.
These shifts may seem tangential to feeling better and curing our divisiveness but I believe they show us something important. Where we go for our answers is changing. We know we have a lot of people in the United States moving away from institutions assigning moral codes, and that the treatment for our pain so far has been insufficient. I believe that we are moving in favor of our own personal moral codes, but few of us have made that a deliberate choice. We were faced with suffering and the organizations that were supposed to support us, give us answers, and help us choose who we wanted to be, have lost our trust.
Our self, and our expression of that, have become our only guiding force. The subcultures that we are a part of, our identity labels, and our understanding of where we sit in the social network give us answers to who we are and what we should be doing. This is why fashion, collectables, brand loyalty, and self-care “treats” are a key feature of many of our lives despite living in an era where many Americans are struggling to make ends meet. Currently, over 37 million people meet the criteria for being considered “in poverty,”(8) which may be an exceptionally generous measure of income security. This poverty measure through the Census is calculated using the tripled cost of an average food diet in 1963 (9). And yet, we all have to purchase our favorite musicians' merchandise. This is because it represents something so much bigger than that. The association with that musician represents a pseudo-political affiliation - it tells everyone what and with whom we align.
These alignments reflect an endorsement or critique of what social issues are being addressed. When we buy a beer or a coffee, when we frequent a venue, when we wear a particular company’s clothing - we are suddenly affiliated with the political implications of each of those corporations as well. Although “the personal is political” has floated in the vernacular for long before this article was written, we can acknowledge the recent shift in our politicization of self. Politics have become exclusively moral, and they have become individual. There are no guiding moral institutions that we have faith in, so we look for morality at a micro-level of every individual, every choice, and every purchase. When our favorite TV star tweets something ignorant, we are on the hook for defending our streaming choices.
Now, I believe everyone deserves their treats and there should be accountability for all harmful actions. My problem in this discussion is with the advertisements. We are sold everything from front-porch delivered pre-decided dinner recipes to specific mental health medications. In fact, the United States is one of only two countries that legally allows direct-to-consumer advertising (ads for drugs) and are not FDA regulated prior to airing (10). We are stuck in a cultural hostage situation: we have to purchase things, why not make them things that reflect who we are and how we think we should live? These purchases represent our attempt to solidify our self-expression because we are our only reliable source of morality and judgment. So, we broadcast it, verbally and visually, because we do not see our own morality enforced anywhere else. Remember earlier, when I said that all demographics and traits have been politicized? It’s easy to do because everyone can observe what we believe.
Thank you for following me in this journey so far. I’d like to push this assertion (and my egregious arrogance) one step farther, by offering a potential solution. I’m not saying you have to stop feeling better than other people, but I think I can give you a way to feel better so you don’t have to keep talking about it. Discussing virtue signaling doesn’t seem to be productive since it typically fulfills the same function as virtue signaling itself - getting external validation for perceived moral goodness. And that external approval proves unfulfilling, so we have to do it frequently.
Ultimately, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, shaming others (no matter how much you think they deserve it) is counter-productive to community building, behavior change, and resolution. In a future article, I will detail exactly in what ways, but for now I want to focus on ways that we can work toward resolve and emotional reward. It is important to acknowledge the quiet but extensive harm moral certainty can have on our culture, especially as most of the folks in these conversations actually pride themselves on not being harmful.
If you want to feel like a good person, the best way to do that is to be your version of a good person. Now, I say your version because I am not trying to sell you something. American culture resides heavily in a context of individualism and commodification. Which means most perspectives that are reasoning out your mental struggles say that it’s intrinsically your fault and that you need to pay for something to fix it. Yes, even therapy. But we can do this here, now, and alone. Even in an individualistic culture, what could we do to help you feel better without deconstructing your entire belief system? What if I said regardless of who you are, reader, that we can work within your belief system? You don’t even have to buy anything.
Morals, values, and beliefs are not necessarily something that are consciously decided or explicitly named but we are taught them nonetheless. So how are we making our decisions with our learned values and how do we know if we’re in alignment with them if we don’t ever name them? When we are acting against our values, simply put, we feel bad. Inauthenticity breeds shame, which negatively impacts and exacerbates our mental distress (11, 12, 13). The solution then, is living authentically. This isn’t revolutionary. In fact, Forbes has already published a similar concept (14). Additionally, Dr. Devon Price’s book Unmasking Autism describes this process in the context of Autism.
Building a personal moral code, or values-based decision making can be accommodated alongside almost any pre-existing lifestyle or belief system. It is merely making your moral code explicit. The values that I carry with me are non-judgment, communication, growth, connection, and effort. These have changed since I first began practicing this model of building my own moral code and this list is non-exhaustive. I recommend beginning with up to three to begin with because these exercises will be challenging but should provide positive results. The only values that this does not work for are those that violate the rights of others, such as supremacy or domination.
Identify your values. The first step is to identify and name your personal values. This can be more challenging than it first seems. There have already been times that you have acted in line with your values and there have been times that you have acted, willingly or unwillingly, against them. Identifying them, in the most accessible way, means reflecting on these times - although that may bring up a myriad of emotions. I recommend doing these exercises in written form, but there are certainly numerous ways to complete them. For every exercise the goal is to identify the value in that moment.
Think first of the times that you have felt most joyous, connected, authentic, or the most you. Who was there? What made it special? How do you know you felt that way? What can be replicated? When you were making decisions in that moment or leading up to it, what did you consider? Look at your photo album of “happy” in your mind, and what commonalities those memories have. An example from my values roster would be connection. One of my “happy places” is a concert when everyone was singing together, another is sitting around a table with my closest friends sharing vulnerable stories. Between these two experiences, connection is the key in what makes them deeply memorable and important to the concrete pillars of my sense of self.
Next, think of the memories that bring with them shame, embarrassment, or righteous anger. Try not to stew and remember that with discomfort comes growth. One important source of information in these memories would be any situations that were unjust. These can be second-hand experiences as well, like the last time you watched a news story that boiled your blood. While reflecting on these unpleasant, but informative moments, here are some questions to elicit core values. Who was there? What made it distressing? How do you know that it felt wrong? What can be avoided? When you were making decisions in that moment or leading up to it, what did you consider? What would you consider now, instead? What did these experiences cost you? Again, find the commonalities in these memories and experiences.
Although these are the two rich sources of guidance for finding values, there are some extras I would like to provide. Who do you admire? What about them inspires you? What are their admirable qualities and behaviors? What inspires you to take action? What feelings motivate you to act? What have you risked in the name of something important to you? What did you risk and for what? What do you gain or lose by taking action? What situations do you feel authentic or at ease? When are you able to relax? Who is around? What activities are fulluling?
Familiarize yourself with your values. I don’t mean write them down in a notebook that you’ll never look at again. Keep them close - on your lock screen, on your bathroom mirror. Find a way to acknowledge your values every day somehow. The goal of this is to make them second-nature but the first step to that is internalizing them. This will take practice. It is very possible that you will start this process and it will slip through the cracks of your daily stress until you find your values on a post-it note on your bedroom floor two months later. That is okay. Pick it back up again and get familiar with what guides you. The good news is that these values are already a part of you - they’re already walking around with you. The difficult part is keeping them in mind for the next step.
Your decision making process should start at your values. The goal is for all decisions to come from a place that is aligned with something of importance to you. This is tricky because we all make decisions without thinking, or with as little thinking as possible. Our brain is primed for using heuristics and short-cuts for decisions (that’s where bias comes from!) Using these values to guide your decision-making will come with resistance. This is only because there are conflicts with values and if you’ve recently been living out of line with what is important to you, it will be a change from what you’ve been doing. This part takes commitment to wanting to be authentic despite the immediate inconvenience. There may be a job, a relationship, a hobby, or a habit in the way of the rewards of being true to yourself. I promise, though, that there are rewards.
An example could be that you are approached by a friend who wants to vent about something that you know will be lengthy. If your values are connection or effort - you may be surprised when you find it difficult to want to sit down with them. However, avoiding that conversation isn’t going to make you feel better, it’s just going to save you time. The conversation, in line with your values, may be rewarding. You just have to overcome your mind's perceived cost because it’s trying to make things easy, not fulfilling.
Set specific goals in line with one or more values. This has two benefits, practice and familiarity. Growth is exponential, so the more you practice, the easier it gets to do the practicing. Specifying goals can be a simpler way to begin changing your decision making. Instead of trying to insert your values into the beginning of every single decision all at once, you can build a personal project and start there. One way to identify a specific goal would be to choose one of your values and identify one way you are currently not living by that value. What is a bad habit you have? What’s a small way that you can do something slightly better? It can be as tiny as you need to get started. Something is always better than nothing.
For example, I began my journey with “explicit gratitude” as a goal. My values of communication, connection, and effort were all a little deficient when it came to being vulnerable enough to even say “thank you for listening to me because I had a really hard day.” For me, this meant turning my apologies into thanking people (sorry for being late versus thank you for being patient) and deliberately thanking my friends for everything that I appreciated no matter how often, how small, or how strange. As corny as it may sound, this small goal changed my life significantly. Once you have a good idea of the core values that you want to live by and that are important to you - you can level up. This can be expanding your list of values, modifying them to an aspirational goal, or being more specific.
Finally, let’s talk about ethical dilemmas. Life is not simple, water is wet. An ethical dilemma has three features: 1) you must make a decision, 2) two or more of your values will be in conflict, and 3) there is no right answer and one of those values must be compromised. There will absolutely be times when you have a decision to make and you can’t fulfill all of your values perfectly. Although there is plenty to discuss in this realm, the simple answer is: fulfill what you can. The key to this system is not perfectly mastering moral goodness. The key is being able to name your values and make informed decisions that will re-energize you. It isn’t radical, just refreshed.
Thank you for listening. I hope it helps.
For additional materials for the activities noted in this article, please contact me. Also, please feel free to share experiences related to practicing values-based decision making or your reflections!
References
*Note: Any referenced materials from a website have been left as links at the end of the article for ease of reference checking.
https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/declining-confidence-in-the-judiciary/
Tyler, T. R. (2023). Whither Legitimacy? Legal Authority in the Twenty-First Century. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 19.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-down-average-new-low.aspx
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-month.html
https://www.health.harvard.edu/medications/do-not-get-sold-on-drug-advertising
Zhu, P., Lau, J., & Navalta, C. P. (2020). An ecological approach to understanding pervasive and hidden shame in complex trauma. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 42(2), 155-169.
Miller-Prieve, V. (2016). Women, shame, and mental health: A systematic review of approaches in psychotherapy.
Westerman, G., McCann, E., & Sparkes, E. (2020). Evaluating the effectiveness of mindfulness and compassion-based programs on shame and associated psychological distress with potential issues of salience for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse: A systematic review. Mindfulness.
From a young age I was taught what to believe, what to value, and how to use those beliefs and values to view the world. Political party affiliation, gay marriage, abortion, the middle east, religion - you name it, it was instilled in me to think a certain way. It wasn't until college that I realized the world is much bigger than the small nuclear bubble my parents made it out to be. My lens of perspective shifted and it turned out I didn't feel the same way as my parents about most, if not all, of the things they taught me or led me to believe.
With this in mind, it seems like there is a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to go against the grain in any capacity - your family, your friends, your community; there are positive and negative outcomes associated. I was afforded the opportunity to expand my knowledge and gain more of an understanding of the world through education. I knew that changing my beliefs and values to be true to who I am wouldn't cost me my family, my community, my safety net in life. Sure there was a fair amount of heckling from my parents and a few people who 'knew' me from a young age, but on the whole I knew I wasn't going to be excommunicated from the groups I loved and that loved me despite our fundamental value differences.
There are many groups that are not afforded the same privilege. Coming out, going to therapy, renouncing religion (to name a few) - can, and often do, come with consequences that mean being disowned, cut off, imprisoned, threatened, or even killed.
From what I see, the divisiveness and struggles we see in the world today are based on everything you wrote above, but also the fact that we have more access to knowledge than ever before and there is a tug of war happening between those that want to maintain the status quo and those that want to change the world to make it a better place. I want to believe (probably naively), that the status quo group is only unamenable to the 'change' part of the narrative, and not the making the world a better place part. But that tug of war causes enough chaos that the origin of the discussion is lost in the noise. That begets struggle, that begets infighting, which leads to individuals attempting to work through things by themselves to avoid adding to the cacophony around them. This leads to mental health struggles and a silent tug of war happening within oneself.
In order for anyone to be able to really get 'better,' we need the conversation to shift into more common ground. As cliche as it sounds, we are more alike than different. It's the systems built on racist, sexist and ableist foundations that create a domino effect of poverty, incarceration, mental health crises, and health deteriorations. We live in a society where it is the haves and the have nots that distinguish who can and cannot thrive while the discussions about our country paint us as this super power where anyone can achieve their dreams and we are gaslit as a society into believing it is our fault when the latter does not come to fruition.
I hope we can and do change the world to be a better place; it's just going to take a hell of a lot more than 'thoughts and prayers' or the wishful thinking of a naive little girl who was told if she tried her best, she could achieve anything.