its interesting that you assume I mean then that cynicism is the answer. I think we have an economic structure that uses fear as its primary motivator. Fear of depression, homelessness, suffering, and death. Working toward a solution of quantifiable inspiration would be a much more meaningful approach.
I think you can intentionally inspire people, since we all have experienced people who do it to us over and over again. So all that must be done is treat that as an abstract principle rather than intangibility, define it, and apply it more broadly.
I agree but I am not moralizing, which I believe are different things. If there is an immoral action or event recurrently happening it is because the structure of society is allowing it to happen. It will not be solved through shaming anyone.
It makes no more sense to shame poor people who are desperate for welfare than it does to shame wall street bankers. Both are products of the same system, and both groups can be given the space to change themselves through modifying the way things work rather than who is working in them.
Shaming and moralizing aren't the same thing either. I agree with you about the structure of the system producing immoral actions, however I think that in order to change the structure, we must recognize the immorality otherwise this is just an empty abstraction.
If someone is acting immorally, rather than condemning them think about how they came to be. Look at how the system corresponds to that. And then, ask how to change that system to encourage different behavior without using more abuse/punishment/rat traps to induce that new systemic output. I think you will find that few people desire to act immorally, but they also are bound within their system. They get defensive when you tell them they have to be different; they know it will not work given the framework they operate within.
If instead you ask them how to change the system, allowing them to be better, they can be your ally. I do not think approaching them with a pre-formulated answer will as effectively draft them into the cause as genuinely asking them how they would do it.
I'm asking you, and it isn't working. That's not a good start.
Also really, while I'm sympathetic to the idea that people's behavior is a largely a product of circumstance, if I ask a poor person who had resorted to crime to survive how to change the system, I expect familiar answers about making the system more fair.
If I ask a Wall Street Banker, who is happily extracting maximum profits from the poor, regardless of cost, I expect familiar answers about how they shouldn't make poor economic decisions.
I have actually spoken to people at all levels of society, and I haven't heard a lot of great solutions about how to change the system.
Since you have either had different results from your conversations, or have ideas of your own, I invite you to share some here.
Those are great points, it is not an easy thing to induce in a single question. I attempted, in perhaps a way that will seem too distant,in this short piece I wrote here:
It is possible. It's asking people to abstract themselves from their material circumstances and consider the underlying principles of their world and,given those principles, think about how they can be shifted toward something better. I did not need to moralize first against the school system's injustices in order to reach that little girl in that moment; that is a displacement from the actual thing I wanted to do. I had to think about how to reach her in that moment itself within the boundaries as they are. Directly addressing the moment itself rather than ways to make the future version of this moment more palatable.
That sounds a lot as though you engaged in a spontaneous act of something like process oriented psychology, which is often very effective as a method of healing. Maybe if more people in a leadership or teaching role understood this method, they would do less harm.
And, to use your framing from earlier, I'm curious about what change in the system would make you able to be better?
I work in medicine, and find that a lot of the limitations to what I am able to do for people are related to money. Everyone knows this, I am saying nothing new there. My component of that equation is my salary, or at least it will be upon the completion of my education (a late life decision to become a doctor). It seems reasonable to accept a reduced salary in order to free myself to properly care for people. Satisfaction is far more important than gross purchasing power.
I do not however have any desire to by a martyr. I want to do a good job and show that outcomes can improved via new modeling that was otherwise cost-prohibitive to attempt, it can subsequently be expanded out and will not require others to accept the same sorts of pay cuts that I anticipate. Admittedly this is in the planning phase, but I was a visual artist for a long time before this and so the prospect of not having much money is not frightening. I proved long ago that I could live on a relatively minor amount of resources. It is, in a way, an investment of my own earning capacity into the development of new ideas.
Determine the end goal, figure out how it is possible given everything that I have the power to modify, figure out how to compensate for the things I cannot modify myself, and then use that to show that it is a meaningful thing to do systemically. Sounds lovely. I'll let you know how it goes in real life and how I adjust as I proceed.
I think it's not too hard to come up with ways to change things, it requires some rigor in the approach: how did they come to be, how have I been granted any role in that, and how can I change it.
I think you can intentionally inspire people, since we all have experienced people who do it to us over and over again. So all that must be done is treat that as an abstract principle rather than intangibility, define it, and apply it more broadly.