A Plan for Moral Fables

There are eight ways to morally disengage. This allows humans to do bad things and not feel bad. The reverse of these are eight ways to morally engage and not do bad things. I can use these sixteen moral principles to make fables that will illustrate the lessons.

Humans naturally morally disengage. We don't have to try to do these things. The eight ways that people morally disengage are: moral justification, sanitizing language, exonerative social comparison, diffusion of responsibility, displacement of responsibility, minimizing the injurious effects, attribution of blame, and dehumanization. Five years ago I wrote on article on how we can reverse these ideas for 'Moral Engagement': https://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2020/04/moral-engagement.html When I held political office that is the only article that I printed out and hung on my wall for the entire four years, as a reminder to myself.

These fables could be done in many different ways. One way that all of them could be done is with a wolf, a flock of sheep, and a guard dog. I could potentially bring in a shepherd if needed, but I like the idea of it being all animals, it's more playful for children, and interestingly symbolic. Just last night I was reading fables to my niece and nephew, from Aesop and myself. Immediately the kids started working on adjusting and playing with their own fable ideas. It comes naturally, which is why these stories are useful for teaching reading and writing, as well as life and virtue lessons.

In the print books the moral disengagement version can be black, as a black hat book of cautionary tales. The moral engagement book can be white, as a white hat book of prescriptive tales. There could be a combined book with one white cover and one black cover. If you read it through one way it's the moral engagement tales, if you flip it over and read it through it's the moral disengagement tales.

I'll run through some basic concepts for these stories.

Moral justification: The guard dog cuts a deal with the wolf to only take a certain quota so that the dog doesn't have to work and doesn't get in trouble, plus it protects the rest of the sheep the rest of the time.

Sanitizing language: The wolf convinces the sheep that he's not killing them, only neutralizing them.

Exonerative social comparison: The dog kills a sheep and points out that the wolf has killed many sheep.

Diffusion of responsibility: The dog says that all of the sheep are responsible for protection, not just him.

Displacement of responsibility: The sheep say that they don't have to worry about protecting themselves because the dog should be doing that.

Minimizing the injurious effects: The dog makes the case that just losing one sheep here or there isn't really that big of a deal compared with the herd.

Attribution of blame: The dog blames the sheep for getting caught and eaten.

Dehumanization: The dog says that the sheep are just stupid animals anyway, so it's not a big deal if they get eaten.

All eight of these can be done with different versions and aspects of the story. For kids to really absorb these lessons through narrative is useful for life and good for society. In most of human history, from ancient Greece and Rome to the American Founding Fathers, there was an emphasis in education on moral development. That idea has been lost in modern industrial education, and this could help bring it back.

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