by Dick Lyles
It’s easy (and appropriate) to criticize the business executives who put self-serving interests and greed ahead of investor interests and the common good. It’s also easy to criticize those politicians who base every decision on how it affects their next election. Likewise it’s not hard to find fault with unions and other special interest groups who subvert the service goals in their respective industry segments in order to gain counterproductive gains for their members. The problem is that when we launch these problems we tend to address them as though they are the cause of society’s ills rather than symptoms of a much deeper and more troubling malady.
The Penn State sex abuse scandal can serve as an apt metaphor for a problem that permeates society at almost every level. That problem is our culture’s “norm” of making self-serving choices that border on narcissism. At the very least, these decisions lack empathy, show little to no love for others, and are clearly self-serving.
Let me explain.
At Penn State, the graduate assistant coach witnessed a child rape in progress and didn’t intervene. He didn’t even ask if everything was okay. Instead, he waited until the next day and reported it to his boss, not to the police. Paterno reported it, but didn’t follow up. Administrators didn’t act.
I don’t accept the assertion that each of these individuals were protecting the Penn State Football program. A more logical explanation is that none of them wanted to be seen as whistleblowers, thereby risking their own jobs or careers. In other words, it was more a matter of “self-preservation” than of “program loyalty.”
Even the janitors who witnessed and discussed a similar event in 2000 said the reason they
didn’t report it was out of fear for losing their jobs. In 1998 abundant evidence was presented to the County District Attorney, who decided not to bring charges. We can only speculate, but it is easy to envision that the County District Attorney weighed the matter and concluded that the political risks to his career might be too high for him personally to pursue the case.
We could cite more examples, but a reasonable way to interpret all of these individual decisions is that they were certainly more self-serving than they were a demonstration of caring and love for the victims—victims ranging in age 7 to 15.
There was—and is always—another option!
We do have members of our society who are willing to take risks and who regularly put their lives on the line for others. We see it every day among our troops, our police and fire fighters, and others who are paid to take these risks. But it is becoming more rare that we see ordinary citizens take even minor risks out of love, charity and a commitment to serve others and the common good. In a nutshell, “sacrificial love.” Self-serving has no place in sacrificial love.
There is a saying, “no greater love hath man than to lay down his life for another.” This kind of love, which was once the norm in our culture, is slowly disappearing from society. The Penn State example demonstrated its absence from top to bottom, from people in every walk of life, including laborers, blue collar, white and new-collar workers and professionals.
If we can’t find the right behavior in society-at-large when situations like this arise, then neither can we expect to find it in the executive suite, in political office, or in special interest group leadership. These individuals are simply a product of culture, of our society-at-large. If we do what we can, with God’s help, to change culture—local and national—the new norm will become self-giving, not self-serving—at every level of our society.