On the “phenomenon of amoral majority”

The Free Academy recently held a lecture-discussion dealing with the “phenomenon of amoral majority.” The guest lecturer at MediaHub, which hosted the event, was the Ukrainian psychologist, sociologist and public figure Yevhen Holovakha.

“Problems of morality have always been studied in purely theoretical ways,” asserted the scientist. However, the situation is changing. Recent developments in sociology have allowed objective scientific methods to be used to determine the actual state of morality in Ukraine.

Of course, studying such issues is a complicated affair. Holovakha admits that, on the one hand, you never know why “one person can sacrifice oneself for the sake of principles, while another would sacrifice others to benefit oneself.” However, on the other hand, the sociology methods make it possible to collect data, and based on it, to analyze society at one of its deepest levels.

Morality, according to the sociologist, is formed by the existing system of a given society’s values. This makes it the key to understanding what is important for the majority of Ukrainians, how we think, and what changes occurred after 2014. It is not surprising, then, that a talk about morality became an occasion to talk about the state of the Ukrainian society as a whole.

The starting point of the discussion was the assertion that the majority of Ukrainians consider other people amoral. For example, the question whether the Ukrainians were able to act dishonestly for personal gain was answered in the affirmative by 70.8 percent of people polled. Most dramatically, this measure stood at 64.8 percent as late as 2014, and 58.8 percent in 1992.

Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day

Clearly, these figures do not correspond to reality. “I am a sociologist, so I know that no society can exist when most of its members are amoral. Still, a society has major issues when people believe it to be so. Such a society disintegrates,” Holovakha analyzes.

Another consequence of the “phenomenon of amoral majority” was formulated by the sociologist as “amoral majority elects amoral government.” Indeed, if we believe that everyone is dishonest, it makes no difference whom to elect. One can discuss at length shortcomings of Ukrainian politicians, but many of them certainly are honest people who want changes. Meanwhile, the “phenomenon of amoral majority” puts them into a doubly difficult situation.

Firstly, they feel pressure of the “system,” and secondly, they do not feel the support of the people, the majority of which ascribes to the stereotype “every politician is dishonest.”

Here, we have another issue, that of being under the spell of the words “all, everyone.” Holovakha notes that educated people find others less amoral. The reason for it is that they are less likely to make hasty generalizations about the whole community’s dishonesty from encountering several cases of dishonesty. “Educated people better understand the complexity of the world,” asserted the sociologist.

So, we deal with inclination of a part of the Ukrainian society to simplify the situation. Instead of figuring out who is really honest and who is not, there is a tendency to believe that everyone is dishonest.

Holovakha sees “elitist asceticism” on the part of politicians as the way out. That is, the society has to put pressure on national leaders to force them into a more modest lifestyle. Europe can be an example of it.

However, one should take into account the fact that the West is in a somewhat different situation. According to political analysts, the Europeans actually do not control every step of their legislators, because unceasing monitoring and getting all possible approvals for every decision would slow down the system. Another thing is actually essential: politicians recognize that citizens have enough leverage in case they need it, and therefore they act knowing it.

Ukrainians are just starting to realize that they really determine something in their own country. So we perhaps need, first of all, such things as improving legal knowledge of our citizens so that they can use all the mechanisms that exist in the legislation. When knowledge of one’s rights and responsibilities and ways of their exercise becomes common knowledge, politicians will indeed grow aware of limits on their power.

Holovakha gives the following results of a poll: of all Europeans, Ukrainians are second most likely to condemn political corruption, but least likely to condemn small-scale corruption. This data reflects “double morality.”

The basis for the emergence of this phenomenon includes the difference between Protestant and Oriental morality. According to the sociologist, the former asserts that the person is responsible to the higher principle, to God. Meanwhile, in the Oriental culture, the person is responsible to other people. Hence the relativity of morality.

In addition, it can be partly due to influences of the postmodern era when, as aptly put by the scientist, the prevailing morality is that of the tourist, and not of the knight. That is, instead of sticking to one’s principles in any situation, people adapt their own moral paradigm to prevailing external conditions. The sociologist agrees that Europe experienced it as well in the shape of “post-truth politics,” but believes it to be no longer relevant there.

As a proof of how different Ukrainian and European values are, Holovakha offered the following example. European school students were asked whether they would tell the teacher of their desk mate cheating. It seems an unethical and treacherous thing to do in our system of values. Meanwhile, many Europeans said they would. Moreover, a pattern was discovered: the more positive answers a country had, the more prosperous it was and the better its standard of living was.

So, 70.8 percent believe in the amorality of others. Why are Ukrainians distrusting each other so much? According to Holovakha, it is caused by a sense of impunity that prevails in society. In addition, if we dig even deeper, the answer can be found in the state of anomie. It is characterized by the fact that a person cannot find a place in society, does not know what to believe.

And it is more than abstract expressions. The sociologist notes that 72.4 percent of people polled in 2016 agreed that they found it difficult to determine what to believe. This data encourages re-examination of our past.

Ukraine spent a long time in a totalitarian system, and one of the latter’s features was its influence on all spheres of life. Under the USSR, everything was preordained, including how people were to work, how to think, and how to live. On the one hand, this was really a rigid framework that trampled individuality, creativity, freedom. Still, it provided a kind of coordinate system, a foundation that gave people a sense of stability and integrity. There was one ideology then and one path ahead.

Independent Ukraine faced a choice. Freed from the pre-determined “life program,” it had to choose a new one. In that context, Holovakha mentioned the basic principle of functionalism: before eliminating something in the social structure, you need to prepare something new to replace it.

The Ukrainians’ chief problem is that this “new element” was long absent. As a result, we have what the scientist calls a macro governance vacuum. The sociologist stresses that abandoning “manual control,” which only reacts to events, is of fundamental importance. We need a long-term development strategy.

So the cause of anomie is the absence of a well-defined coordinate system. Ukraine constantly fluctuated between several directions, while moving requires settling on one.

For that reason, Holovakha stresses that one of the essential features of the Baltic countries which led to their successful development was a consensus between the elites and the masses on how to develop. The path was chosen, and most people supported it.

Ukraine, meanwhile, needed over 20 years to achieve this. Of course, the Baltic countries found making a choice easier, since the “virus of totalitarianism” had not yet infected all areas of their society. However, it is a historical fact that Ukraine truly realized that it needed to move in the European direction only in 2013-14.

Amorality is gradually retreating on most measures, but Holovakha points out that it is even worsening on some of them. The scientist stresses that the success of the Revolution of Dignity has not been consolidated. This has been so in particular due to a lack of critical mass of active population. Holovakha notes that the current activist numbers are “enough to break an old system, but not enough to build a new one.” According to him, at least a third of citizens have to participate in the process of changing the country.

“Active people are trying to establish a norm,” asserts the sociologist. In his speech, he repeatedly emphasized that only such people were able to make a difference. Holovakha’s forecast is that “historical optimism remains, but I have a growing concern for our society.”

However, the key thesis of Holovakha’s presentation is this: “When the majority believes that most people are amoral, it is actually self-evaluation.” This statement actually gets to the source of the “phenomenon of amoral majority” problem. It is because this statistic data reflects, and this is again necessary to emphasize, only what the majority thinks, and not how things really stand.

Therefore, borrowing a term from psychology, self-evaluation of the Ukrainian society is low. Perhaps here we are dealing with a post-colonial syndrome, an image of the Ukrainian which was created over the years and now appears in the statement: “Well, what did you expect? It is Ukraine, after all!”

This data demonstrates that the majority of society do not trust their own nation, do not believe in Ukraine’s potential. Therefore, the loss of faith has also become a reason for low self-evaluation of the Ukrainian society.

For that reason, it is precisely active people who, according to Holovakha, can improve the situation, and their actions are manifestations of hope for Ukraine’s success and trust for other Ukrainians. So sometimes, to change the country, one should just believe in it, and act.