(Thank you to The Gentle Soul's Revolution for mentioning Greg Jemsek's blog Quiet Horizon from which I have reprinted this article. I highly recommend the rest of his blog as well but this strikes very close to home because I am a whistle blower.)
Remember the first time you did something you weren’t supposed to do as a kid, knew it was wrong, and were scared about the consequences? If you remember that, you probably also remember that your first thought immediately afterwards was probably something like “How can I make sure nobody finds out about this?”
It’s a fact of life that we all make mistakes. It’s also a fact of life that our fear of facing up to our mistakes frequently leads us to making another, more serious mistake: that of covering up our actions, even though doing so may bring considerable harm to others. If, in spite of our mistakes, we instead make the effort to make things right, we drop into a universal narrative of reparation: one that transcends culture, nation, race, or gender. A narrative that doesn't hide mistakes, but faces them. Staying on the winning side of this narrative is the inspiration behind the vast majority of music, literature, and film we take refuge in to remind ourselves of how high we can soar, how low we can sink, and what we need to consider if we're to sustain our courage during what could be a long journey. Whistle blowers are one way people are forced to face the mistakes they have made whether they want to or not: and, at the same time, are given the opportunity to participate in the narrative of reparation.
That's why most people who heard about Scott Proudy's decision to release his videofile of Mitt Romney's "47%" comments during the recent electoral cycle immediately knew it was important. Their assessment would have been confirmed once they learned about
Scott Prouty’s conversation with himself in the middle of the night....the one in which he looked in the mirror and recognized he’d see himself as a coward if he didn’t release and later acknowledge this videofile. Similarly, people old enough to have lived through the VietNam war knew instantly how critical
Daniel Ellsberg’s publication of the Pentagon Papers was in unpacking the hypocrisy of the American government in that war. We all recognize the importance of such events because we know that if our society is to remain accountable,
how it operates when noboby is looking matters. We also know that the nastier side of our nature usually requires
intervention from outside if destructive behavior is to be stopped.
So it's unsurprising that the majority of people recognize the importance of a whistle blowing event - regardless of whether they agree with the whistle blower or not. The problem that emerges then is that despite this recognition, people also know that our societal institutions are more
threatened by the act of whistle blowing than they are
welcoming towards it. In addition, they suspect - rightly, usually - that government, corporations, religions, and even the
media are also asking themselves
How can I make sure nobody finds out about this? (whatever their "this" is)
The herculean efforts institutions and individuals make to hide wrong doing reflects three aspects of fear that are important to understand if we are to collectively reverse our pendulum swing towards hyper-individualism back towards a more communitarian perspective. The first understanding is that fear grows stronger in the dark. The second is that hidden fear eventually strangles conscience. The third is that both of these factors sabotage community.
This becomes clearer when considering the fear of a whistle blower next to the fear of a wrong-doer. The fear a whistle blower faces - having his own life and those of loved ones
ruined or ended by standing up to an injustice - is a “moment of truth” fear. It is nerve-wracking, sleepless-night-inducing, riven-with-anxiety fear. What will I do with what I now know? How will the larger community I'm a part of respond? It’s a fear perfectly capable of swallowing a person up in one big gulp.
As de-stabilizing as whistle blower fear is, it’s a
vision of health compared to the fear of those in power. Why? Because if a person desperately seeks to
remain invisible (the CEOs of tobacco companies before being outed by
Jeffrey Wigand) or
fervently defends himself with psychopathic bluster (Dick Cheney on the virtues of going to war in Iraq), he is either
losing or has already lost his battle with fear. He may not think so because outwardly it may look as though he has successfuly pummelled his fear into submission. So much so that he may not even feel much fear anymore: he may have heart attacks instead, or just be numb to all his emotions. But this pyrrhic victory points to that fact that
access to his own conscience, and
access to a wider community, has been terribly eroded: sometimes to a point of no return. Despite this - as
Hannah Arendt brilliantly pointed out in her groundbreaking studies on the "banality of evil" - a person whose conscience and connection to a wider community has been eroded this way still looks “normal” to folks on the outside. He is often quite "successful" in terms of traditional definitions of that word. But behind all of this, he likely lives in dread of the kind of fear a whistle blower experiences. He has no real confidence in his capacity to still be standing at the end of facing such fear, and insufficient courage to find out.
All of which means that society’s collective concern about the ability of our institutions to make decisions that reflect the common good - including decisions that protect and encourage whistle blowing when something is wrong - is well-placed. In fact, we’ve structured many of our institutions in such a way that “getting to the top” is usually easier for isolated people without a functioning conscience (studies of the increasing number of
pscyhopaths heading up corporations seem to confirm this).
But changing the course of a
meta-narrative always takes time and persistence. We swing from agony to ecstasy as we do so in part because we
can feel fear, and because we impel ourselves to find ways to deal with it. At our best we keep pinching ourselves out of the trances we fall into despite our best intentions, picking ourselves up off the floor and turning back to our conscience again and again for guidance.
The way Scott Prouty, Daniel Ellsberg and a whole historical string of whistle blowers would want us to do.
