Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

by Robert M. Sapolsky

Stage 5: It depends. What circumstances placed the cookie there? Who decided that I shouldn’t take it? Would I save a life by taking the cookie? It’s nice when clear rules are applied flexibly. Now the judge would think: “Yes, the bank’s actions were legal, but ultimately laws exist to protect the weak from the mighty, so signed contract or otherwise, that bank must be stopped.” Stage 6: It depends. Is my moral stance regarding this more vital than some law, a stance for which I’d pay the ultimate price if need be? It’s nice to know there are things for which I’d repeatedly sing, “We Will Not Be Moved.” This level is egoistic in that rules and their application come from within and reflect conscience, where a transgression exacts the ultimate cost—having to live with yourself afterward. It recognizes that being good and being law-abiding aren’t synonymous. As Woody Guthrie wrote in “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “I love a good man outside the law, just as much as I hate a bad man inside the law.”* Stage 6 is also egotistical, implicitly built on self-righteousness that trumps conventional petty bourgeois rule makers and bean counters, The Man, those sheep who just follow, etc. To quote Emerson, as is often done when considering the postconventional stage, “Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good.” Stage 6 reasoning can inspire. But it can also be insufferable, premised on “being good” and “being law abiding” as opposites.