What would you do?

I got very excited recently when I came across a report entitled, “Hiscox American Courage Index:  Taking the Pulse of the Land of the Brave.”  The study itself was very disappointing as it was totally self-serving (for Hiscox) and, thus, provided few statistical points of value for my purposes.  Nevertheless, it does allow me a starting point for talking about courage, which is where I wanted to go in the first place.

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Hiscox has created the “American Courage Index” (ACI) to “quantify the courage of Americans and keep the pulse on its resonance and strength over time.” The report offers up the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of courage, which, as an OED fan, is a good place to put your mind:  “that quality of mind which shows itself in facing danger without fear or shrinking.”

Sadly, based on this study, the suggestion is that Americans are not particularly courageous:  the general population scored 25.81 on a 100 point scale; business owners scored slightly higher at 29.47; the youngest (18-24), and the oldest (over 65), are more courageous than those in between, scoring 26.54 and 27.49, respectively.  It can only go up from here, you might think.  You would be wrong.

Looking just at moral courage—how someone would deal with an injustice or illegal activity in an organization—we are, you might say, morally corrupt.  The general population scored only 6.46, while business owners scored 8.64, with the largest group of respondents (15% in the general population, 14% of business owners), either turned a blind eye and minded their own business or switched jobs/schools/groups, etc.

I so badly want to believe that if this sample had been skewed towards employees of nonprofits, as opposed to business owners, these results would have been different, but I’m not finding myself running in that direction.  Even in the sector that works on behalf of the underdog, pushes the unpopular causes, works to save the world, people aren’t as willing as we might hope to put their own personal necks—and the necks of those they are care for — on the line.

We’ve seen too many whistle blowers dragged through the streets bloodied and battered; we know the contempt hurled at the dime dropper.  It is one thing to be part of an organization that hides and protects us; it is another to be out there on our own.  We can even rationalize our failure to act, to be courageous, by pointing to behavior that has come to be labeled the diffusion of responsibility:  others know/saw/heard; someone else will do something.  (Growing up, that was just referred to as Kitty Genovese syndrome, or the Bystander Effect).   In the hypothetical world of “what would you do the next time?,” folks did no better:  47% of the general population said they would make an anonymous complaint!  Seriously!  Hypothetically speaking we can’t even get a majority of folks to step up and do the right thing?

The ACI also measured “business and intellectual courage” [it also looked at social courage—how you fare in uncomfortable (for you), social settings, like public speaking, attending a party—and emotional courage—how you handle “significant and painful emotional loss”], which is defined as the willingness to “speak up and present ideas even in the face of disagreement.”

Once again, we are morally bankrupt, with the general population scoring a measly 7.47 and business owners doing slightly better at 9.26.  To be truthful, it is hard for me, someone raised in the era of Profiles in Courage, to put intellectual, social and emotional in the same phrase with courage; intellectual, social and emotional integrity, absolutely.  But courage, sorry, I can’t go there.

When did we become so afraid that others might disagree with us that our idea might not be welcomed in whole or in part, that it was better to go along to get along?  When did it become more important what others thought than what was right? Just? Best?  And, once again, while I would love to believe that had the sample tilted toward the nonprofit side, the results would have shown a more “courageous” or integrious outcome, but I think not.

Has the nonprofit sector gone the way of the rest of society?  We have already watered down what is a truly great accomplishment—to whit the participation trophy—that requires true courage—to whit the Freedom Riders of the 1960s, our emergency responders.  Have we watered down the soul of the sector?

*This may be a mislabeling, as there is a confusing sentence in the report that says either that 80% of the pool of respondents (there were 6,400) are business owners or 80% of Hiscox’s clients in that pool (of which there were 545) were business owners.  If the former, the sample is not at all representative of America.