By Carl Greaux
One of the most difficult things to understand about human behaviour is the disjunction between morals and behaviour. We all can attest to the fact that believing something is wrong does not always prevent us from doing it. Very often, in fact, we engage in acts that we believe are bad, such as lying, stealing, and cheating. In any group of people, such as a class, a majority will be engaged in some type of wrongful act at least once.
Why do people engage in behaviour they believe to be wrong? Criminology has tried in vain to explain why people commit unlawful acts. According to Lickona (1976), Psychological experiments show that a large percentage of school children would cheat when given an opportunity, even though they know it is wrong. Some individuals in various professions espouse ethical principles and are often exposed for engaging in extremely unethical practices.
Theories that endorse everything from learning to biological predisposition abound, but we still have not answered fundamental questions of causation. Psychology and psychiatry attempt to explain what happens after the action has taken place. For instance, defence mechanisms such as rationalisation and denial help absolve guilt. Personality theory may help us to predict what types of individuals are likely to engage in deviance. Yet with all these scientific and philosophical attempts to explain human action, we are still left with troubling questions when we read or hear about people who kill, steal, or otherwise offend our sense of morality. People's inhumanity to people is one of the great mysteries of life.
St. Kitts-Nevis, ironically, seems to endorse one set of beliefs while glorifying just the opposite. Examples of this glorification include that of some politicians and drug dealers, who are in some ways cultural heroes even though they were and are known criminals. We have also glorified some of these same polititians and some business executives when their actions could be defined as exploitive.
We are dismayed by the amount of violence and crime in our country, yet the television shows that play these themes are the most popular. We abhor lying, but politicians who tell the truth are rejected (you'll know who there are) by the voters. We profess to be a country that cherishes our Constitution and due process rights, but we clap and cheer when the bad guys get-away from felony charges and not going to Her Majesty's Prison, knowingly that they have committed the crime.
Why do we idolise people who have done things we know and believe to be wrong? In some ways we sublimate our wish for excitement and our greed through their exploits. At present, many of the ideas of success in our country involve aspect of ruthlessness and aggression; traits hard to reconcile with an ideal conception of a good person. Thanks be to God that at least in our culture some individuals considered a ‘good’ person as one who upholds the ideals of honesty, charity and selflessness, while other see a good person as a weakling or someone soft.
The fact that the people of St. Kitts-Nevis has mixed values regarding what is considered good and desirable, is reflected both in our political and social culture and in individual action.
