A senior executive starts making out-of-character decisions that reflect his personal fears. Teams are frozen in indecision as the ground continually shifts beneath them. Days become punctuated with emotional meltdowns from people you have always relied upon in a crisis.

At home, you might be disagreeing with loved ones about the right response to COVID -19. Is the situation as serious as officials claim? Or are people exaggerating the risks? What is the right amount of physical distancing? Why should the whole of a society bear the costs for the sake of the few? Is this even a fair way to frame the questions?

These are some of the signs that the prolonged impact of COVID-19 is causing moral fatigue in the people around you.

Moral fatigue can occur when the “right thing to do” is unclear. Who should bear the cost of protecting a business? What if personally caring for elderly parents risks exposing them to deadly infection? It can be exhausting to make decisions in this kind of ambiguity, day after day.

Michael Baur, Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Fordham University and an Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School, says moral fatigue comes from situations where attempts to do good also result in “destroying a good”.

“People have often referred to the idea of moral fatigue as compassion fatigue or moral distress,” he told me on a zoom call from the US. “What we have in the current context is a situation that makes it increasingly difficult to understand if I’m doing the right thing. It’s no longer possible to assume that the good that I’m doing is unambiguously good,” he says.

It could be dangerous to keep running a business, for instance, if it means employees are in danger. “There’s a real conflict there. And there are no rules.”

Why people panic

Usually, as people go about their normal lives many actions are performed on “autopilot”. Typing on a keyboard, for instance, is done out of habit; the decision of which keys to hit doesn’t exercise mental exertion; one’s finger ‘do the work’. Baur says a crisis such as COVID-19 “jumbles” the keys on the keyboard. It changes the rules and worse still, you don’t know what those new rules are as they can change, minute-by-minute.

“It’s really disorienting,” says Baur. “People go back to what they know is safe, and they become more infantile, more self-protective and defensive.”

This is the kind of response that decreases our capacity to make good decisions. It leads to the hoarding behaviours we have seen in supermarkets, anxiety about money and a focus on individual survival.

Slow down and be more forgiving

Thinking about ‘just getting beyond this’ assumes a future state where the problem no longer exists and everything is the same as before. It’s too simplistic to suggest we will all be ok – many of us won’t be, unless we adapt.

A common result of moral fatigue can be impatience. When we try to think through frameworks that no longer serve us well we can become increasingly impatient, the more we do so, the more mistakes we make – leading to even more frustration.

Baur likens our situation to building the raft at the same time that you are using it to survive. He says, it’s okay to make mistakes because we’re all trying to refashion this raft, even as we’re stepping on top of each other trying to stay afloat. Mistakes will be made.

“You’re not alone. Everybody feels the same way. We have to be more forgiving of others and I think individuals have to be more forgiving of themselves in the sense that it’s okay to be freaked out. Everybody is.”

You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken a way of life we previously took for granted – going to work, celebrating weddings, seeing friends and wandering aimlessly down fully-stocked supermarket aisles.

However, one of the biggest changes for many parents is that kids are being urged to stay home  unless it is absolutely essential they go to school. Overnight, parents have had to become teachers, along with everything else they are attempting to squeeze into already overfilled schedules.

Where a few weeks ago home schooling was a vague and unfamiliar concept, it’s now become the norm. Parents are scrambling to find a new routine where kids are at home while continuing their education.

As a parent, former school teacher and professional educator who now runs The Ethics Centre’s education programs from my lounge room – with two young kids and a husband in the same room –  I’m struggling to do the same.

The juggle of schooling at home

What’s happening here is not home schooling, it’s crisis schooling. Parents who home school have made a conscious decision to educate their child at home. Those parents have spent time organising their resources and routines, deliberating over how to ensure an optimal learning environment for their child, specific to their own needs. Home school parents often have networks of other parents who have also chosen this option, and together, they collaborate and socialise their children.

Crisis schooling is different. With very little notice or choice, suddenly kids are home. Crisis schooling has opened a range of dilemmas which parents are now facing, including:

• “How do I prioritise between helping my child learn and continuing to do my job?”
• “I’ve always tried to teach my kids health and fitness and limit screen time, but giving my child a device is now the only way I get a break.”
• “My wife and I are both working full time while the kids are at home, which one of us must sacrifice our work time to learn with the children?”

So how do we navigate these new challenges? 

As we often teach in workshops at The Ethics Centre, there are no ready-made answers to ethical challenges. Instead, we have to respond to the circumstances and relationships at play – which will be different for each of us – and try to balance these with our personal ethics; our purpose, values and principles.

It may help to keep in mind some advice from Greek philosopher, Socrates, who maintained that in order for education to occur a person must accept what they do not know. Parents don’t know how to be teachers, except for those who are trained to be so. Let’s not pretend to ourselves or our kids that we’re fully equipped to do this. We’re not.

As parents, we can use the resources that teachers have readily made available. We can admit to our children that there are some things that we don’t know how to do, and that we need to figure it out together.

What we can control

What parents do know is how to love and care for their children. Parents understand their children better than anyone else in the world and can provide them with the love and support they need. During this incredibly uncertain and anxious time, that really is their most important need. Rather than being overly concerned with how much they are learning, whether or not they’re reading enough, practicing fractions or working on their fine motor skills, let’s focus on our children’s mental wellbeing.

The world is a stressful place right now and anxiety is contagious. Children need to feel supported and comforted. Home is supposed to be a safe space for children, regardless of what is happening outside in the world, and this applies today, more than ever.

So, let’s throw out the rule book on schooling. Let’s remember we are in crisis and although we have moved rapidly to this point, we do not have to adjust with the same speed to a new home-based education system. Do what feels right for your family, even if that means throwing out the schedule. Try not to compare what you are doing to others posting about their experience on social media. What works for one family, might not work for yours.

Human beings are incredibly resilient, children especially so. We’ll all adapt. One day soon, normal life will resume – with a much greater appreciation for the things we took for granted before. What our kids will remember is the extra time they got to spend with their parents; the extra cuddles, the extra stories.

Right now, let’s all take a deep breath and cherish the closeness that comes with distancing.

You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.

You’ve been hitting us up with your COVID-19 ethical questions. We’ve been sending our ethicists into the philosophy lab to cook up some answers.

This week, we’re tackling how to deal with people who you don’t think are doing their bit to socially isolate and help restrict the spread of coronavirus.

How do I talk to loved ones who have a ’this won’t stop me living’ attitude to staying at home?

There’s a quote I’ve seen floating around social media lately that comes from British author, CS Lewis. It’s from his reflections on living in the age of the atomic bomb, but plenty of people seem to be seeing a link between it and the current crisis. It’s a chunky quote, but this part gets to the gist of it:

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Lewis’ message is being shared as one of defiance: better to die on our feet than live on our knees. Don’t let the fear of a microbe stop us from doing the things that define meaningful life. I reckon some of your loved ones would happily share this quote on their Insta Stories if given the chance.

I’m also very confident that Lewis would be livid at the use of his quote in the context of the current pandemic. There’s a big difference between living through the threat of nuclear bombs – where you have little to no ability to affect what happens – and living through a pandemic where each of our individual actions make a real difference between life and death. I promise you this: if Lewis had thought there was something people could have done to stop an atomic bomb from killing them, he would have advised them to do that. Indeed, Lewis himself willingly lived on limited rations during WWII – not the kind of behaviour for someone who thinks we should live it up in the face of death.

But there is a way of reading Lewis’ quote that is helpful in the COVID-19 pandemic, and which might help you navigate your loved ones’ mindset. We should read Lewis’ quote as an encouragement not to let our external circumstances dictate our happiness. Rather than seeing ourselves as ‘waiting out’ the coronavirus, or living in fear of infection, perhaps it is helpful to keep living – just doing so indoors.

I’ve seen plenty of people suggest that they’ve cancelled screen limits on their phones so they can continually check live updates on the coronavirus issue. It’s tempting for it to be the only thing we talk or think about. It’s dominated most of my group chats for the last month. And here’s where we need to ask: is this really living? Wouldn’t it be better to go about our days as best we can in isolation, knowing we’d done all in our power to address the pandemic – and have made the most of life – rather sit in fear and anxiety?

Your loved ones need to get the message that nobody wants them to stop living: they just want to stop other people from dying. But the rest of us need to remember that life hasn’t stopped: there’s meaning, connection and value all around us – if we can just turn away from the fear and see it.

My flat-mate/parents/family aren’t observing physical distancing. I’m so worried, but they won’t stop. What do I do?

If you follow the advice of some politicians, you might consider reporting your flat-mates to the police. However, I’m not convinced that’s great advice for several reasons which I’ll come back to.

In situations where we witness someone else doing the wrong thing, it’s worth being aware of how our biases can kick in and cloud our judgement. We’ll often infer from someone’s behaviour the worst possible intentions.

Let’s say we see someone walk past a homeless person without even looking at them. It’s likely we’ll assume they’re callous or cold, rather than that, perhaps, they just didn’t see them. By contrast, if we did the same thing, we’d know whether or not we were being callous, because the only minds we can truly read are our own.

What this suggests is that you should begin by engaging from a position of curiosity. Do those not observing physical distancing actually know the rules? They certainly should, and ignorance isn’t an excuse at this point – being a good citizen and neighbour means knowing what we need to do to protect people – but if their behaviour is coming from ignorance, the solution might be easy: inform them.

Of course, there are plenty of people who know what they should do, and just don’t care. Here’s where things get tricky – especially if you’re outnumbered – because it’s very hard to persuade someone to be altruistic when they’re fundamentally motivated by self-interest. You’ve either got to convert them into a much more empathetic person or target their selfishness. The former is a long game; the latter is fraught with risk.

For instance, you might threaten to report them to the police if they keep flouting the rules. However, not only might that be a disproportionate response, it also robs your household of the community and solidarity that you’re probably going to rely on to get through isolation.

One possible solution is to leverage the power of shame. We’re social animals – desperate for inclusion and acceptance. If you can show these people how at odds their behaviour is with social expectations and norms, that will create a powerful impulse in them to self-correct. We don’t like doing things that might cause us to be ostracised – that’s probably the reason you haven’t spoken up until now.

But if you can harness the collective moral expectation for people to socially distance from one another, if you can show them that their behaviour makes them a pariah in the eyes of the community, you might find they change their behaviour on their own, and learn something in the process.

You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.

In the sixteenth century, a cool thing to do if you were a political philosopher was to contrast human beings in society, with human beings as they would be if there were no society.

This thought experiment, performed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, paints a pretty bleak picture of humanity. Hobbes described his picture of the “state of nature” – a world without society as:

“A time of war, where every man is enemy to every man… there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

This bleak picture of humanity – a time where people would clash and war over their own interests, with no hope for co-operation or camaraderie – is precisely why Hobbes thought we needed the state.

Nobody wants to live in the state of nature; it sucks. Instead, we all hand over a portion of our power to the state, who then create a world where everyone can get by and, ideally, flourish.

And, as a bonus, with a state to run the show, we can start to think about things like justice, ethics and morality. In the state of nature, Hobbes surmised these wouldn’t exist. He writes:

“The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.”

I can’t help but think of Hobbes at the moment, as I wander through supermarkets empty of supplies. I imagine the swollen pantries, garages and bathrooms across Australia, stockpiled in preparation for a pandemic that threatens us all. Individuals are scrambling for resources, squirrelling away supplies and taking care of their own interests first. It sounds a lot like we’ve reverted back to our nasty, brutish nature.

That probably wouldn’t surprise Hobbes. His state of nature isn’t meant to describe an actual period in human development; it’s a philosophical ghost story. It’s not a story about who we are, but who we might be if there were no law, order or state to restrain us.

Despite this, we should reflect on how, irrespective of all the social infrastructure Australia seems to offer, we’ve seen self-interest dominate on such a grand scale. The panic buying, hoarding, racism and at times scapegoating responses all demand interrogation.

How can this happen? How, in a time when we do have notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, can parents – OK, this parent – be scrambling around supermarkets looking for children’s pain medication for his teething daughter to no avail? How can wipes and nappies be in such short supply? When Hobbes envisioned the ‘war of all against all’, he didn’t envision the goal to be a clean bum in a time of crisis  – yet here we are.

Three Australian women fight over toilet paper. pic.twitter.com/EAhErm4QaD

— DailyMirror (@Dailymirror_SL) March 8, 2020

We can perhaps find an answer, and some guidance, in the work of fellow social contract philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau thought Hobbes hadn’t gotten to the nub of the issue. The problem with the state of nature wasn’t lawlessness. Rather, it’s the belief that people live in perpetual competition to one another. Hobbes introduces the state to stop us from killing each other as a way of getting ahead, but he leaves in place the source of the problem: the mindset that we need to “get ahead” of one another.

Instead, Rousseau spent an enormous amount of energy discussing what he called “the general will”. This was his fix to Hobbes’ problem. To stop people from acting in competition to one another his idea was simple: decisions should be made with reference to what the whole of society, willing together, would support as a good idea. This way, nobody would be permitted to take more common resources than they needed, or was deemed fair under the circumstance. This way, no individual could have undue influence over society.

Imagine that. Imagine what happens if people rock up at the supermarket and think: what does everyone need right now? Imagine a mindset, a society and a marketplace where mutual obligation, care and concern were the primary motivators instead of self-interest. Imagine how much more – or less – toilet paper you’d have now. Imagine how much more sleep I’d have if my daughters teething pain could be medicated.

Unfortunately – and tellingly for us today – Rousseau told us that many societies would be unable to develop a sense of the general will if individuals lacked the virtue to set aside their personal self-interest.

However, I think Rousseau is being unfair here. Virtues aren’t practiced in a vacuum, they’re enabled or disabled by the context and the environment. And our society allows an enormous space where people are permitted – and encouraged – to pursue their own self-interest without regard for others. The market.

The influence of the market on, and at times over, the state is conspicuous in trying to understand why our shelves are so bare. When we act in the market, we act as consumers. And as consumers, there is only one rule: consume.  If that everyone else misses out, so be it. Like Hobbes’s state of nature, the laws of consumption have no sense of right or wrong, justice or injustice.

Ethically, what’s required of us is to step into an environment of consumption without becoming consumers. Instead it requires us to maintain ourselves as citizens, who have concern for those around us and are eager to act in the shared interest and common good of all.

In part, it’s on us as individuals, not to leave our humanity and morality at the door of the supermarket. But it’s also on the market to more clearly align itself to the general will. Corrections that prevent overbuying toilet paper are an obvious step in that direction, but it’s akin to howling at the moon. The panic will shift to another product, and soon we’ll be playing whack-a-mole with a panicked consumer population who see their own security and comfort in competition with that of other people.

At times when we’re threatened and feel unsafe, our instinct is to batten down the hatches. However, that’s a game that guarantees there will be winners and losers. If we can find a way to see beyond ourselves, to pass a roll of paper under the stall to a neighbour, we might just find a way to get through this together.

You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.