I have written more than a few blog posts on topics such as "impulse control" and "ego depletion" - remember, for example, Roy Baumeister's radish experiments ("What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes."), the Stanford marshmallow experiments ("Life is a marshmallow - easy to chew, but hard to swallow."), or the study showing that married couples are more likely to fight when they are hungry ("You're not you when you're hungry")? How about the one about me, one of my personal favorites ("Dad is hangry again!")? There's a consistent theme here - perhaps a review of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is in order (or just look at my previous posts, "What can we learn about leadership from a movie?" or "What do you really want?"). The bottom line, "take home" message of all of these posts, especially with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in mind, is that we, as individuals, need to make sure that we are meeting the basic physiological needs (food, water, shelter) and security needs (safety) before trying to fulfill the higher level needs of a sense of belonging or self-fulfillment. More importantly, these studies tell us that if we fail to meet our basic physiological needs, then we are much more likely to do things that we wouldn't normally do (e.g., eat that marshmallow, argue with our spouse, get angry with our kids, or take shortcuts at work). In some cases, as I most recently discussed in "Be honest, are we honest?", failing to adequately satisfy our basic physiological needs at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy leads us to be dishonest or even unethical in some cases.
Which brings us to the case of Richard Parker. Here is a case that is so coincidental that it's almost hard to believe. It really is kind of freaky. The American writer, Edgar Allan Poe once wrote a story in his novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket about a fictional crew of sailors on a ship called the Grampus. The sailors find themselves lost at sea with limited supplies of food and water (due to a shipwreck). They eventually catch a tortoise and eat it, but eventually the meat from the tortoise runs out too. They soon draw lots to determine which one of them will be sacrificed to provide meat for everyone else (there are several well-known examples of cannibalism over the course of history, so this is certainly an unusual story but not at all the freaky part I am referring to). The sailor, Richard Parker, draws the short straw and is promptly stabbed to death, and the crew survives long enough to be saved.
Here's the freaky part. Poe wrote his novel in 1838. Less than 50 years later, in 1884, a British yacht named the Mignonette sinks in a storm far off the coast of England. The four-man crew barely escaped to a lifeboat, but found out that they didn't have any supplies of food or fresh water. Guess what happens next? They catch a turtle and survive for a few days on turtle meat. But after several more days, they find themselves starving to death. The youngest, a cabin boy named - you guessed it - Richard Parker (WOW!) became ill after drinking sea water. The other three sailors propose to draw lots to see who will be sacrificed to save the others, but then figure out that if Parker is going to die anyway, why not just kill him? The Captain of the ship stabs Parker in the neck with a pen knife, killing him for food. One of the sailors, Tom Dudley, later said, "I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal. We all was like mad wolks who should get the most, and for men - fathers of children - to commit such a deed, we could not have our right reason."
In other words, desperate times lead to desperate measures. Deep in the throes of starvation, the three men considered something that they would never had imagined before, ultimately committing an act of murder to satisfy their hunger. Once they were rescued, they were all open and candid about the events that followed the Mignonette's shipwreck. Two of the sailors end up going to court to be tried for murder (see the case, R v Dudley and Stephens). By the time of their trial, public opinion was strongly in their favor - it was almost as if the general public asked the question, "Can we truly say that we would have done differently in the same situation?"
We see similar issues today in a leadership context. Failure to satisfy our basic needs leads many of us to lie or cheat - these facts have been demonstrated over and over in both laboratory and real-world settings. I just came across a research article the other day ("Association of Racial Bias with Burnout Among Resident Physicians") that suggested that residents experiencing signs and symptoms of professional burnout (as determined by the Maslach Burnout Inventory) were more likely to show signs of implicit racial bias. The study included over 3,300 second-year residents - burnout didn't lead to racist behavior, but there was a strong association with something known as implicit bias, attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and behavior in an unconscious manner (think: "All people who wear glasses are intelligent."). In other words, implicit bias leads us to act in ways that we wouldn't ordinarily act. Burnout, in this case, represents a failure to address some of our most basic needs on Maslow's Hierarchy.
I am not saying that we should excuse implicit racial bias just because someone is "burned out." I am also not suggesting that we should allow individuals to eat their friends just because they were starving. What I am saying is that in order for us to be our best selves, we absolutely have to address our basic needs.
If you've read the novel or seen the movie, "Life of Pi" you will no doubt recognize the name, Richard Parker. The main character gave that name to the tiger who was on the lifeboat with him. Or was he really a tiger?
Pi: "So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"
Mr. Chiba: "The story with animals."
Pi: "Thank you. And so it goes with God."
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