Jeffrey Alexander Martin

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...

Fables contain a type of narrative wisdom that connects with humanity in a more truly human way than boring knowledge divorced from story. Not that humans ever really learn the lessons anyway, but there's a reason that stories persist. Wolves and sheep are a classic subject of Aesop, and new versions are still being made. One version is: One day a flock of sheep were grazing in a field when a wolf appeared. The wolf attacked and killed one of the sheep. The next day the remaining sheep had a meeting. "Did you see how the teeth flashed and killed our friend?" said one sheep. Another agreed, "Teeth are very dangerous." The sheep voted and decided to remove their teeth so that they wouldn't be in danger. The next day the wolf appeared once again. The sheep were even easier to kill. Moral of the story: Disarming yourself makes you easier prey. This is a common human mistake, the mistake of misidentifying the cause of danger and taking action that mak...