Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
It’s time to put morality at the heart of messaging about environmental and social responsibility. (See Part One of this two-part series.)
“Responsibility: what’s your policy?” That’s the tagline for U.S. insurance company, Liberty Mutual. The company has been charged by some for being somewhat less than responsible in it’s “deceptive” use of social media, but its tagline and “Responsibility Project” campaign show that the firm’s advertisers know moral messages are powerful.
It’s a lesson the CSR and sustainability movements need to put more into practice. Many seem to think the way to the public’s heart is appeals to reason or self-interest. But, as Pascal’s adage goes, “the heart has reasons that reason cannot know” — and self-interest only works if the benefit promised is immediate and takes priority over other perceived more immediate interests. E.g., when environmentalists who say we have to get off oil because it will destroy our future are countered by the carbon club lobby shouting, if we have cap and trade, gas prices will soar at the pump; what’s a down-sized, foreclosure-threatened consumer going to choose?
But moral messages penetrate straight to the heart, the site where real motivations and behavior are born. The cognitive linguist George Lakoff says it best, “all politics is moral.” He goes on: “Facts matter. But for their importance to be communicated at all, they must be framed in moral terms. Facts by themselves are not meaningful to most people. Just arguing the science of global warming is not effective.”
Lakoff argues empathy and responsibility (both personal and social) are moral values that need to be incorporated into the messaging of advocates for environmental and social sustainability. And they need to be contrasted to messages of the conservative right and market fundamentalists, who have hijacked moral high ground since the reigns of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
He points out conservatives speak about individual responsibility as moral but neglect the moral importance of social responsibility — it’s time, for example, to label privatization as “government for profit” and tax breaks for the rich as “public theft.” (A wonderful example of going up against right wing attacks with moral force is provided by the global antipoverty organization, Trickle Up. After being attacked as a “leftist charity” by Glenn Beck, the NGO invited the right wing pundit to visit a rural village in India to “witness poverty alleviation in action.”)
One person who embodies the power of moral messages to move people to action is environmental activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement. The (literally) groundbreaking NGO has organized poor women in planting millions of trees, restoring forest cover and teaching empowerment skills. The GBM’s mission is “to empower communities worldwide to protect the environment and to promote good governance and cultures of peace.”
Maathai’s new book, Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World, says moral values are the core of environmental discourse. She explains the Green Belt Movement isn’t just about fixing material needs. It is about “meeting something intangible within people:
“I came to realize that the work of the GBM was driven by certain intangible values. These values were: love for the environment; a gratitude and respect for Earth’s resources; a capacity to empower and better oneself; and a spirit of service and volunteerism. Together, these values encapsulate the intangible, subtle, nonmaterialistic aspects of the GBM as an organization. They enabled us to continue working, even through the difficult times.”
Maathai is inspired by her own Christian faith, but stresses the values outlined above are common to all faiths. Indeed, they are “part of the our human nature.” She draws on precepts of other faiths that foster environmental stewardship, like tikkun olam (healing the world) and the Japanese concept of mottainai.
While a moral commitment to environmental and social responsibility motivates as many nonreligious as religious, faith-based appeals more often focus on the moral imperative in their messaging. And more faiths are getting into the act, as evidenced by such efforts as the Muslim Seven Year Action Plan on Climate Change, Evangelical Environmental Network and work of evangelist Jim Wallis, as he writes in his recent book, Rediscovering Values.
It can be argued that a moral/spiritual sense is an evolutionary trait for survival. As David Korten said recently in an address at the Interfaith New Economy Planning Group Meeting sponsored by the Church Council of Greater Seattle, “Cooperation, material sufficiency and spiritual abundance are our only hope for a livable future — as the spiritual teachers of all the world’s great religions have continuously reminded us down through the ages… The underlying issues are moral issues. Our collective future depends on a spiritual awakening that transcends our individual faith traditions.”
Talk of the future brings us to our moral responsibility to our children and succeeding generations. I recently interviewed Mark Hertsgaard about his newly issued book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years On Earth, for my radio show, Writers Voice. He writes from the perspective of the father of a young daughter who, like all the world’s children, is part of “Generation Hot.” He says every parent must see fighting climate change as part of their responsibilities as parents, just like providing food, clothing, moral instruction and protecting against child abuse.
And about child abuse: isn’t robbing our children and grandchildren of a liveable planet the most monstrous child abuse of all time? We teach our children to be fair; is it fair the international fossil fuel lobby is condemning us and our fellow creatures on the planet to a hellish future in the service of their short-term profit? Ecocide is a crime that dwarfs all others. It’s time to get the message out.
About Francesca Rheannon
CSRwire Talkback’s Managing Editor is Francesca Rheannon. An award-winning journalist, Francesca is co-founder of Sea Change Media. She produces the Sea Change Radio’s series, Back to The Future, and co-produces the Interfaith Center of Corporate Responsibility’s podcast, The Arc of Change. Francesca’s work has appeared at SocialFunds.com, The CRO and E Magazine, and she is a contributing writer for CSRwire. Francesca hosts the nationally syndicated radio show, Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon.
Talkback Readers: What other campaigns have you seen with moral appeal? Are they effective? Tell us on Talkback!
