Even three-year-olds are old enough to know that everyone should be fair, honest, kind, and that everyone ought to keep their promises and help others when they need help.
Let’s call this “ethics for three-year-olds.”
What happens when many people suffer under a leader who makes a point of violating every one of these ideals every day?
Unfortunately, America has elected a president who lies all the time, who routinely breaks his word, and basically can’t be trusted. This is a big problem, not only for the citizens of America, but also for America’s neighbours as well as the rest of the world.
Advice I would give to a parent of a three-year-old: Parents should set a good example for their children. Try to be honest the vast majority of the time. Never make a habit of lying.
If you don’t understand how something works, don’t pretend you know, just to save face or impress someone. If your child’s playmate refuses to play by the rules or cheats — tell her to find someone else to play with, someone who is willing to play by the rules.
Let’s think about what kind of world we want to leave our kids. Maybe one where the natural world is still healthy and has enough space to thrive. Maybe one where children can grow up without getting asthma or cancer from industrial pollutants. Maybe a world where everyone has a fair chance of thriving and being a productive citizen.
We shouldn’t let people get away with abusing others, and there are many kinds of abuse. What they all have in common is people exercising arbitrary power over others they consider their inferiors — disrespect, manipulation, exploitation, causing physical harm, etc. Children, women, foreigners, poor people, people experiencing homeless, and those with mental health challenges, should not be mistreated.
When people have prejudices, it means that they believe bad things about people of a different gender, colour, religion, ethnic group etc., without any real consistent evidence.
There’s something called confirmation bias — we all have it to some extent.
But it’s much worse for prejudiced people because no evidence about the people they are afraid of will change their mind. No matter how many examples you show of “those people” being competent and honest, the prejudiced person will keep believing the worst about them as a group.
They will look for and remember evidence that confirms their bias, and avoid and forget any evidence that is positive.
But it gets much worse, because the deeper the prejudice, the more likely that a person will believe lies about “those people”, especially if the lies correspond to what that person would like to believe anyway.
They are alright with hearing or spreading malicious gossip even if it is not true, because “those people” are the enemy.
They think kindness, and consideration toward our enemy is wrong. Meanness and cruelty toward our enemies is good.”
This is the way confirmation bias can feedback into lynching, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
When these things are allowed to happen, society is in moral collapse.
We want to avoid this at any cost.
