This activity is designed for participants to think about their duties in light of their theory of justice.
Participants will practice self-scrutiny, courage, and open-mindedness.
People have duties to resist oppression and mistreatment, even when they are bystanders.
Why do bystanders have duties to resist?
When bystanders do nothing, they fail to respect the people who are oppressed or mistreated.
When bystanders do nothing, they lack self-respect.
Some bystanders fail to live by their values because they haven't thought enough about what living by those values would really require.
Some bystanders are lying to themselves about their own values and motives.
Some bystanders are weak-willed/lack courage.
When should a bystander resist?
Bystanders do not have duties to make themselves victims.
Sometimes, complicity is better than resistance because resistance would be counterproductive.
HOWEVER, it is very easy for bystanders to tell themselves that resistance is too costly or counterproductive when, really, they are motivated by convenience and self-interest.
What does it take to be a better bystander?
1. Bystanders should exercise due care in deliberation. Figure out the facts and think about what your values actually require.
This is a duty to have the right beliefs.
Conscientiousness in moral judgment is required.
Ignorance can come from negligence. In these cases, ignorance is blameworthy.
Bystanders are also required to check empirical facts
Bystanders should investigate what their moral beliefs entail and be aware of their basic values.
2. Bystanders should scrutinize their motives.
This is a duty to have the right motivation.
Bystanders are vulnerable to self-deception.
Most people tell themselves stories that make them seem better to themselves than they are (e.g., the Hero/Victim narrative).
Bystanders make excuses for themselves.
Passivity can be motivated by a desire for ease.
3. Bystanders should practice virtues like openness, courage, and commitment.
This is a duty to be the right kind of person.
We all have a duty to commit ourselves to act rightly, but we also have a duty to become the kind of person who can carry out right action when we are called to.
Just as we should reject self-interest that would motivate us to steal, so too should we reject fear that would motivate us to be passive in the face of injustice.
Bystanders should cultivate moral fortitude/strength of will
A Problem for Bystanders:
American politics is very polarized. People’s opinions on a range of unrelated topics tend to cluster around their partisan beliefs.
Yet there is no reason to think that reality reliably aligns with one party and that another party is reliably wrong about such a wide range of things.
This suggests that political polarization+ partisanship undermines the reliability of people's moral judgment.