Good Work, Compromised Work, Bad Work… And Ego

by Howard Gardner

In late July, I received a message from the USIA. For a brief moment, I thought it might be from the United States Information  Agency or Intelligence Agency, but it was actually from an organization that I had not heard of—The United Sigma Intelligence Association.  USIA informed me that , along with linguist Noam Chomsky and mathematician-physicist Edward  Witten, I was the winner of their annual prize. I don’t consider myself to be modest but I was astounded—and humbled—to be grouped with two of the outstanding scholars of our time.

I googled the USIA. I learned little about the organization online but noted that it had many outstanding figures as advisers—including several whom I knew personally. I wrote back to the agency and asked whether there were any requirements in connection with the award. I immediately heard from the director, saying that there were no ‘asks’—the organization hoped that my work would “inspire other talented people and help them further their love for humanity.” I notified a few organizations to which I belong that I had received this recognition and considered that the end of the matter.

In a few days I had occasion to write on several matters to my colleague and friend Steven Pinker (I entitled the e-mail “Sundry on Sunday.”)  I noted that, along with entrepreneur Jeff Bezos and historian Yuval Harari, Steve had received the USIA award the previous year.  He made light of this recognition and his role as an adviser, saying that he often agreed to lend his name to support organizations.

This past week—an unexpected twist. I had  inferred that the USIA award went only to three persons each year. But two individuals whom I also knew were informed that they had also received the USIA award for this year.  And undertaking more due diligence than I had, they had begun to wonder what was the USIA, where was it housed, how and by whom was it funded, and did it in fact issue the books, podcasts, and other forms of publicity that are mentioned on their website.  And not quickly receiving satisfactory answers, my colleagues so far have not accepted this recognition.

As someone who has studied and written about work—and particularly ‘good work’—for many years, I am left with a conundrum:

Could this be good work—in which case, the organization indeed has undertaken legitimate activities, actually makes appropriate use of its advisers, and reaches young people whom they seek to inspire?

Could this be compromised work—in which case the organization may have good intentions, and hopes to achieve its goals, but has gotten off to a slow start and exaggerated its achievements thus far?

Or is this basically a scam (aka ‘bad work’)—an effort to bring attention to an organization which is not legitimate and which may exploit well-known names in ways that are not sanctioned, not legitimate? 

From my grandson, I have subsequently learned the ‘sigma’ is often used online in a frivolous way—which did not give me confidence in this particular brand of sigma!  Perhaps we are being stigmatized!

And I have to ask myself: Did my own ego prevent me from doing the due diligence that I should have done?

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Updated October 2021

Writing in mid October 2021, after consulting with several individuals, I know a lot more about USIA. It is clear that this is not a genuine organization in the sense that American professionals assume. The leadership is new and is not aware of how USIA has operated in the past. There is no recognized process for adding advisers or choosing award winners. What astonishes me is that new award winners are regularly added as are new advisers—I suspect that, like me, these individuals were flattered to be informed of this award and did not bother to ask probing questions. At this point, USIA is best described as a reputational Ponzi scheme.

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Reference

https://www.amacad.org/publication/compromised-work

An Interview with Howard Gardner

Introduction

In this interview with Elena Molinari, correspondent for the Italian national newspaper Avvenire, Howard Gardner discusses The Good Project’s history and resources. Read the interview in English below, and find the Italian version by clicking here.

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Over the years, have you had regular feedback about how the Good Project resources and toolkits are used and by whom? In what context (work, school, community) are they mostly applied? 

ANSWER:  Our materials are used primarily in schools, especially mioddle school and  high school.  Individual teachers or groups of teachers use them with their students=--sometimes as parrt of a regular class, sometimes as an extra activity, sometimes when a crisis of some sort arises. (As you have seen on thegoodproject.org, we now have a value sort, sample dilemmas, and a fully worked out curriculum which is being tested in various schools.

But the materials have also been used in other settings, ranging from law school to news to government service. and they have drawn on all sorts of data, including surveys of several thousand individuals from seven countries.

What are the results of the applications of the toolkits? Are you aware of any meaningful impact they have had in workplaces or schools? Could you please mention some cases?

ANSWER:  It is very difficult to document that people have changed as  a result of our interventions per se. We cannot carry out controlled studies comparing classes with and without curriculum, nor can we follow individuals for years to see if they become 'good workers'

But the fact that we have more interest now than ever before; that individuals keep using the materials (and sometimes modifying them); and that we have  suggestive observations (e.g.  that individuals in one of our studies seem more likely to read the newspapers and to think about the issues of the day) encourage us to keep  working. and  keep improving our materials.    

The Good Project toolkits don’t seem to privilege any values, or even ethical theories, over others. Yet, the Project promotes “excellence, engagement and ethics.” Why were those values chosen?

ANSWER:  The Three "E' came out of our ten years study of workers in nine different professions in the United States,  and they have proved useful in other countries.   

As for ethics, you are right-- we have our own ethical preferences but we dont emphasize one ethical perspective over others.   Instead, we pose dilemmas for individuals and help them to define the dilemmas,  discuss and debate the dillemas, make  a decision, and then reflect on the decision.   This approach can span a range of ethical perspectives.

What makes a “Good Worker” in today’s Western societies? 

ANSWER:  The challenges in todays' societies are multiple.  Many jobs are being replaced by automation;  many workers depend on a 'gig economy; people cant expect to change jobs or even careers  multiple times, old professions are being disrupted, new ones are emerging.   Yet the three Es-- doing a good job,  caring about what you do, and trying to do the right thing  are constants-- they dont' change.  And so the premium on carrying out good work is as great as it has ever been.  You mention Western societies but we are actually working on these ideas with workers in Singapore, so they may have gloibal value. 

On American Presidents: Rings of Responsibility and Irresponsibility

by Howard Gardner

Caption: Image of Rings of Responsibility: Inner to Outer rings are: Self, Others, Workplace, Domain, Society

In the first months of life, we are necessarily in the midst of a small circle of relatives and friends.  Throughout history (and presumably pre-history) most of us have remained within those confines. But it is possible to broaden one’s circle—and to be involved, for better or worse, with a much larger world.

In the original Good Work Project, we developed the concept and image of Rings of Responsibility. The basic idea: As we grow and venture forth from home, we can begin to relate to larger entities and groups—to our neighborhood, our school, our community, our workplace. Ultimately, we may relate to the nation, the region, the wider world—indeed to the whole earth. As researchers seeking to understand good work, our focus was on positive relations to this ever wider set of concentric circles. But, of course, there can be less positive relations as well—one can carry out compromised or patently bad work in these several widening circles of responsibility.

Of late, I’ve been contemplating the lives of individuals who have chosen to exert responsibility with respect to the outer circles: individual who have attained powerful leadership roles in government (or other sectors), as well as individuals who have chosen to address issues of global significance—climate change, nuclear arms control, a pandemic.

For the most part, we should probably assume a default sequence of events unfolding over the course of a lifetime. That is, we should assume that even powerful leaders began with relatively small spheres of responsibility and gradually expanded to regional, national, or even global spheres of influence. Perhaps the most familiar example comes from the life of Abraham Lincoln: born with modest means in the legendary log cabin, and gradually working his way westward to Illinois and to local politics, and then eastward to the White House and national (and to some extent) international relations.

Whatever the validity of this default assumption—which accords with common sense—it is instructive to consider cases which apparently violate the canonical sequence of rings. Recently, I’ve considered the unusual sequence of events surrounding the rise of John F. Kennedy to become the youngest elected president in American History.  Kennedy was the offspring of parents who were worldly: his maternal grandfather was the mayor of Boston and a major political figure in the Democratic party. His father, also from an influential family in the Boston area, became a major business, financial, and government figure, with international as well as national credentials.  While still a youth, John Kennedy had the rare opportunity to meet with American presidents, British royalty, and the Pope—and so it was natural for him (and his siblings) at an early age to feel a relationship to, and perhaps a responsibility for, individuals who lived well beyond the neighborhood.  A similar story could be told about British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (much admired by the young Kennedy), whose family was part of an international “jet set” before that phrase had been coined. Here, we behold a textbook contrast to the Lincoln saga.

Enter President Barack Obama, who has recently authored a fascinating account of his early life and the first years of his presidency in his A Promised Land. On one imaginable account, Obama would seem to have been a textbook case of someone who had to work his way over the decades through the rings of responsibility—culminating at the height of his career in nomination and election for the Presidency. And yet, as I connect the dots, Obama’s case is as similar to Kennedy’s as it is to Lincoln’s. Moreover, it may exhibit some of the same deficiencies as well as the same assets.

Of course, it’s only one case, but it can stimulate hypotheses that could be tested.

Several aspects of Obama’s background are rare in U.S. presidential biographies:

• Absence of a father: While his father was alive during the first years of the future president’s life, young Barack essentially never knew his father. Accordingly, he was free of any constraints that the father might have imposed on him while also being able to imagine him as he wished him to be. Other figures in history without father figures have described both the freedom and the burden of this familial constellation.

• A mother with a career of her own: Most American’s presidents have had powerful and influential mothers, perhaps more often than they have had potent father figures.  But Stanley Ann Dunham was unusual in that she was a working anthropologist, who traveled, taught, advised, wrote and juggled. Much of Barack’s childrearing was presided over by his maternal grandparents, two attractive figures.

• International travel: Though of modest means, young Barack had the opportunity to travel—notably to Indonesia, where he lived for awhile as a child. He also travelled around the US and lived for years in Hawaii, to which his grandparents had retired.

• Bi-racial parentage: Obama was able to move within and across groups but perhaps never felt like he belonged to either group—the delineation and scope of the ring was unclear.

Clearly very gifted and with an attractive personality, Obama had the usual uncertainties about career and life choices. As he reflects in the memoir:

I understood the absurdity of my vision, how wide the gap was between my grand ambitions and anything that I was actually doing in my life. I was like a young Walter Mitty, a Don Quixote with no Sancho Panza…my preference for navel gazing over action.

But once he had decided to go into electoral politics, his rise was meteoric—at least as swift as John Kennedy’s—and perhaps swifter. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946 and to the presidency in 1960. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1997, the United States Senate in 2004, and the Presidency in 2008.

I am content to leave it to historians to judge the success of the Obama presidency. But his recent memoir reveals what was long suspected: that he gladly grasped for the wider rings of responsibility, but (like future President John Kennedy), he was not particularly interested in or adept at the intermediate rings.

Evidence:  

• While pleased to have been elected easily to the Illinois Senate, Obama did not find the work of much interest. He was glad that the sessions were short and pleased whenever he could leave Springfield and return to his family in Chicago.  As he reflects

A state senator wasn’t a glamorous post…on the other hand I had start somewhere and pay my dues…Also the Illinois state legislature was in session only a few weeks out of the year.

His election to the US Senate was triumphal and tremendously important. But in the Senate, which proceeds so much by seniority, it would ordinarily have taken decades for Obama to reach a position of power and influence.

Instead, almost from the time of his election—even more than John Kennedy, who had been interested in the Vice presidency in 1956—Obama was talked about as a future presidential candidate. He was an immediate media sensation at a time when media was extraordinarily powerful and influential. And when Senate majority leader Harry Reid told Obama that he was a strong  potential candidate, and that powerful Senator Charles Schumer concurred, Obama ceased active involvement in senatorial affairs and began to run the presidency. We might contend that he catapulted from being an Illinois representative directly to being a presidential candidate.

Once elected president, Obama moved easily and readily into being a global figure. In his first year in office he gave a historic speech in Egypt to the Muslim world; he won the Nobel Prize for Peace; he travelled around the globe and had reasonably effective relations with the gamut of world’s leaders.

But at home there was much essential work to do—to repair the economy after the fiscal crisis of 2007-2008; to make health care available and affordable; and to attempt other national initiatives, ranging from higher wages to better highways.

Obama had good ideas, capable advisers, and the ability to speak knowledgeably in many forums.

But like his predecessor, John Kennedy, Obama did not like the wheeling and dealing that is required if one is pass legislation in a government composed of three equal branches. Put sharply: he did not fully understand that making law was, in Bismarck’s immortal analogy, like “making sausage.” One had to be willing to speak to everyone tirelessly, and to make compromises widely and predictably, if one wants to get legislation passed.

Consider Obama’s own reflections. To get TARP relief, he had, to his own distaste, bargain with four senators—Collins and Snowe from Maine, Nelson from Nebraska, and Specter from Pennsylvania. 

None of these senators were shy about charging a hefty toll… even as their priorities added billions, the group insisted that the overall bill had to come in under $600 billions, because any figure higher than that just seemed too much …some went so far as to suggest that I barnstorm against Snowe, Collins, Specter, and Nelson in their home states…I told them this wouldn’t happen.

To be sure: it is not essential that the President always get involved in the making of political sausage. If you have a supermajority, it’s not necessary.  If you have Lyndon Johnson as your vice president (which JFK did), you have someone who can not only bargain with the opposite party, but who actually enjoys the give-and-take. Or, if you do not like the bargaining with individual legislators yourself, you can form a relationship to the leader of the opposition—which is what Republican Ronald Reagan did with “Tip” O’Neill, a fellow Irishmen and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

And whatever you do, don’t make fun of the leader of the Opposition—which is what President Obama did at the 2013 White House Correspondents meeting, where he quipped,  “Would YOU like to have a drink with Mitch McConnell?”

On reflection, Obama came to realize what he may have lacked:

FDR would never have made such mistakes…He’d known that in a crisis people need a story that makes sense to their hardships and spoke to their reactions… a morality tale with clear good guys and bad guys and  a plot they could easily follow… governance could not be so antiseptic that it set aside the basic stuff of politics: you had to sell your program, reward supporters, punch back against opponents, and amplify the facts that helped your cause while fudging the details that didn’t… whether trapped in my own high-mindedness, I’d failed to tell the American people a story they could believe in, and whether, having ceded the political narrative to my critics, I was going to be able to wrest it back.

So much for Barack Obama—and the costs for not having navigated mid-level rings of responsibility.

What about his successor?

Donald Trump was elected as essentially a political novice. It’s difficult to think of any president who arrived in the White House with so little experience in the give-and-take of electoral politics—the closest examples would be those Presidents who had previously been generals—Eisenhower, Grant, Taylor, Jackson come to mind. And so, Trump had to improvise his mode of dealing with legislation.

Essentially he didn’t. Instead, he dealt directly with his fans and public—those to whom he tweeted, or spoke directly through Fox News and Talk Radio. 

If he felt responsible to anyone beside himself, it would have been to these constituents.

And so it is worth asking about his own family background. Unlike that of most other presidents, Trump’s relationship with his mother is clouded in mystery. Our only clues come from the memoir of niece Mary Trump. On the memoirist’s account, Trump’s mother was distant and ill—her relation to her five children is unknown. Donald Trump was essentially raised by—or at least imprinted on—a self-made millionaire who was extremely tough-minded and who skirted the law for most of his life.  One might say that Fred Trump went through the rings of irresponsibility and that his son followed his examples. But this is not the occasion for further speculation.

© Howard Gardner 2021

On “Bad Work” in the Academy: Recognizing It, Thwarting it

by Howard Gardner

For many years, my colleagues and I have sought to identify the factors that increase the likelihood that good work will be carried out. We have considered a variety of factors, including the early formative influences, the contributions of models and mentors, one’s colleagues on the job, the norms and examples celebrated at the workplace, and most recently, the ways in which good workers identify and then deal with dilemmas at work.

Occasionally, we have questioned informants about “compromised work” or “bad work”—but that kind of work has not been an explicit part of our research agenda. While lamenting situations and circumstances that interfere with the achievement and maintenance of good work, we have mostly “accentuated the positive.”           

To be clear, this stance does not reflect any personal aversion to recognizing obstacles. In other strands of research, I have carefully considered factors that impede desirable outcomes. As one example: in studying leadership, I have underscored the point that many leaders focus excessively on convincing others to pursue a certain path, without devoting sufficient time to understanding the resistances to following that path. As another example: in analyzing what it takes to master a scholarly discipline, I have detailed the misconceptions of the “unschooled mind” that impede the understanding of important concepts and procedures.

In conjunction with my memoir that I recently published (asynthesizingmind.com), I’ve been reflecting on situations in my own life where I have become entangled with individuals who were clearly not good workers. And, as a result of these entanglements, I carried out work that, in retrospect, I might have been better off spurning.

It’s important to describe the kind of collaborative research that I undertake when I am not simply proceeding as a solitary scholar. Working at Project Zero, a part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I need to secure funding for research, pay “overhead” to Project Zero and to the University, assemble teams to carry out the research, and upon completing the research, report results to the scholarly community as well as to the funders. Over five decades, I have applied for funds from hundreds of organizations and individuals, received scores of grants, and worked with over one hundred research associates and assistants. I feel positive about the overall accomplishment, but I focus here on things that went wrong.

I will not identify the person or the situation, but I trust that the “lessons” will nonetheless come through.

Here are four warning signs that I wish I had noted and heeded:

1. Funders who want to “buy” or “use” your name
   
   When your work has achieved a certain amount of attention, people often come to you for advice. If you are a reasonable citizen, you give your best thoughts and then move on; or if you can’t be helpful, you try to suggest alternative sources.
   
   But I regret that I did not routinely also ask myself “Why has this person come to me, for what reasons, and what use will the person make of the aid that I provide?” And on occasion, I wish that I had actually posed those questions deliberately to myself and to the potential funder. Failure to do this can result in use of one’s name and/or one’s affiliation as an endorsement of an activity. This peril has been especially vivid when I have politely answered questions about whether one can diagnose intelligences by looking at fingerprints—so-called dermatoglyphics. Even when my answer is a decisive “No!”, the fact that I have responded has been used as an endorsement. And so, I now routinely say “Please do not state or imply any endorsement on my part”—and if the practice persists, I follow up with a message that the University does not look kindly on such deception.
   

2. Dirty money
   
   Over the years, I have sought funds for many projects; much of the time these approaches are rejected, sometimes with reason, often with no response at all. Needless to say, I have been gratified when such support has been forthcoming—and even more, on those rare occasions when it has been volunteered. It’s a necessary part of my job but not an uplifting experience to walk around perennially with a teacup in hand and to see your folder of rejections grow ever thicker.
   
   It’s important to stress that many generous people and philanthropies support research without a hidden agenda—or are at least open to various findings. Hallelujah! But it’s still prudent to step back and interrogate the reasons for offered support. How will the funder react to different outcomes? And—though it may be hard to ferret out—What are the sources of funds? Would we (or the institution where we work) be embarrassed, were the sources to be identified? The novelist Balzac famously quipped “Behind every great fortune, there is a crime.” Why is it less problematic nowadays to secure funds from the Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, or Mellon Foundations? It’s because the original philanthropist has long since passed from the scene and in the meantime the fund-raising process has been professionalized.
   

3. Corrupt or immoral funders/colleagues
   
   I don’t think it’s my job to hire an investigator to scrutinize the daily and nightly activities of individuals with whom I am in contact. (Being famously oblivious, I used to quip “individuals can be making love in my office, and I would not notice it.”) But this “separation of work and play” can go too far. If it’s evident to others that the person-in-question is behaving improperly, immorally, or even illegally, my personal obliviousness or naivete is not a sufficient excuse.
   
   I wish that I had listened more carefully when family or friends said to me “Re X, have you noticed… What do you think of…?) And, if you cannot come up with satisfactory answers, that is a warning sign.
   

4. Liars
   
   By nature and rearing, I am a trusting person and I like to give others the benefit of the doubt. And if encounters with strangers occur at a party or around the coffee machine, such trust seems to be the proper stance.
   
   But if a person regularly makes claims that make you or others lift their eyebrows in disbelief, that’s clearly a warning sign. I’ve hired or collaborated with individuals who are habitual liars and I wish that I had called them on this trait immediately. In more than a few cases, I wish that I had gone back to the recommenders—though, admittedly, in a litigious society, such re-checking can be a risky process. But it makes a lot of sense to speak “off the record” to others who have previously had contact with the person-in-question and to let informants tell you—by what they say, what they don’t say, and how they say it— “what’s the story” with respect to the person-in-question.
   
   As my wife and I have often said to one another, when we ask a knowledgeable individual about a person’s reliability, we pay scant attention to the substantive answer—we instead pay attention to the “latency”—how long does it take the informant to respond, and is the response marked by hesitations or “hedges”?

Lessons learned

I’ve reached the point in life where I will rarely be called on to practice such scrutinizing behaviors or to make such judgments of character. But I’m also at the point of life where I can and should provide advice to individuals a generation or two younger who may be dealing with comparable situations. I need to bear in mind that such “due diligence” may be even more difficult to do in an era of social media and innumerable digitally available sources—where it is not easy to figure out what or whom to trust. But there is no alternative to trying hard!

It’s been said that “love is blind”—and perhaps, in affairs of the heart, that’s a good thing. But when it comes to work situations, it’s important to keep your eyes wide open and your ears attentive as well.

Concluding Note:

Alas, there are many other kinds of bad work in the academy (plagiarism, authoritarian treatment of doctoral students, fudging of data etc. blatant sexism,) but I have focused here only on the bad work that I have encountered in my own work life.

© Howard Gardner

A Religion for Our Time

by Howard Gardner

Recently, I read two books by scholars whom I respect.  And they prompted me to ponder and collate my own views about religion and good work.

Jonathan Sacks was a noted religious leader and author. (He died in November 2020, shortly after this essay was drafted). Over the years, I’ve learned much from his writings. When he recently published a book—Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times—I eagerly turned to it. As I read through the book, I found myself nodding in agreement. Sacks documents the increasing selfishness of citizenry on both sides of the Atlantic—the much noted drift from “We to I.” Like political scientist Robert Putnam, Sacks laments the decline of communal activities, such as bowling, as well as the lesser visibility and potency of institutions focused on civic issues. Sacks also critiques assumptions of traditional liberal and neo-liberal thought which treat the marketplace as the privileged route to a good life; the excesses of multiculturalism, which all too often pits groups against one another; and the emergence of “data-ism”, where algorithms are entrusted with the resolution of the full spectrum of human problems.

Sacks was a rabbi—from 1991-2013, he served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the British Commonwealth. By no means was he a chauvinist for Judaism —favoring specific services, customs, or personages. He led interfaith gatherings and he often held public conversations with individuals of different faiths or with no religious beliefs at all. Yet, not surprisingly, he concluded that individuals with religious background and beliefs are more likely to have a communal feeling and, in his view, more likely to lead lives in accordance with a clearly specified moral code.

Tanya Luhrmann is a widely acclaimed anthropologist as well as a cherished personal friend. She has studied fascinating sects in several cultures and has written evocatively about them. A through-line of her work has been the centrality of religion in human life across cultures, times, and circumstances  Of late, she has paid special attention to individuals and groups describing themselves as having a personal relation to God—persons who believe that God talks to them regularly, listens to their prayers, and provides support and consolation, even when their specific desires are not granted. I recently read her ethnographically based analytic masterpiece, How God Becomes Real.

The combination of reading Sacks and Luhrmann,  two wise persons, side by side, has prompted me to step back.

Any social scientist worth his or her salt must take religion seriously—no other institution has held sway over so many people, cultures, minds throughout history, and, no doubt, during pre-history as well. (Agnostics and atheists seem to be recent phenomena.)  For the founders of modern sociology—Emile Durkheim and Max Weber—religion was absolutely central. Of course, religions differ enormously in their belief structures, stipulations, and rewards—from Buddhists, who do not have an Abrahamic view of God; to Unitarians or Ethical Culturalists, whose conception of God is distinctly low key; and to preliterate societies, that typically feature a whole gallery—indeed galaxy—of gods as well as other totemic figures.

Scholars can and should study religion. But what should you do personally, if religion does not move you—if you don’t believe in any kind of God, if the notion of conversing with God does not make sense to you (while acknowledging that it is—and has been—meaningful to millions of others).  And if, further, you are struck by the down-side of religion and of religious rivalries: the vicious clashes, wars, even genocides throughout history and continuing into our embattled time. Or you are struck—indeed, impressed—that it is frequently the least overtly religious societies—I have in mind  the countries that make up Scandinavia—that are generally deemed most successful on a variety of moral and ethical criteria. And, finally, how should you think about religious issues when you put on the hat of a policy maker—for example,  when you and your colleagues design curricula for schools or propose rules for the workplace or for a profession.

Here are some options, with succinct labels:

Opposition: Some analysts devote a lot of attention to critiquing religion, demonstrating its flaws and falsehoods, and hoping that one can convince others to shed their religious activities and beliefs;

Substitution:  One can look for entities and enterprises that resemble religion, but without its conventional components. In my own experience in the 1950s, the scouting movement functioned as a secular equivalent of religion—providing a set of rules for personal and group behavior as well as ceremonies that celebrate these rules. (More recently, the downside of the scouting movement has been amply documented—sexual misconduct akin to that discovered in the Catholic Church around the globe.)  Other activities, ranging from martial arts to civic service to the Harry Potter Alliance or Youth Venture, now play a communal role and often bind together individuals of different backgrounds and beliefs in support of good causes.

Study:  Just as one often probes countries or regions in social studies classes, one can survey the religions of the world. Alternatively, one can not only study organized religions, but also examine enterprises that seek to substitute for, or replace traditional religion—for example, contemporary secular humanism, the philosophical school of existentialism, or the civic organizations  and enterprises cited above.

Overlooking: One can simply ignore the prevalence and power of religion. I have often done this.  Indeed, when (in 2008) I gave a series of lectures on the virtues of truth, beauty, and goodness, my colleague Marcelo Suarez-Orozco commented to me that I had “left out the 800 pound gorilla—religion.”

For the most part, in our own work on the development of a sense of morality and ethics, we—and particularly I—have sought to bracket religion. Instead, donning an educational lens, we have examined the development in children of a moral sense—what I’ve termed “neighborly morality”—the kinds of quasi-universal sentiments captured in the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. Working in school settings, we have envisioned students as workers—”employed” in their school community—who should be inspired to behave in ways that are constructive for their peers and their elders. (See the pioneering work of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg and his colleagues on the construction of “Just Communities.”)

Along with neighborly morality, our research team has also examined the development and expression in adults of an ethical sense—what we’ve termed ‘the ethics of roles.” Through an examination of how specific roles are defined and carried out in professions—ranging from teaching to journalism to medicine—we have delineated the extent to which, and the ways in which, workers live up to the codes and ethos of their respective professions. We have also considered how members of a community live up to their obligations, their responsibilities as citizens—the other principal role assumed by adults.

Until now, I have sought not to intertwine our work on morality and ethics with religion, let alone with a specific faith tradition—Reform Jewish morality, Baptist ethics, etc. Recently, I have come to the conclusion—perhaps reluctantly but quite firmly—that a purely secular approach to morality and ethical issues does not suffice. No doubt this conclusion has been spurred by the realization that in the United States—but in Sweden as well—a purely secular approach to the controlling the spread of COVID 19 has been too thin a reed on which to base moral behavior and ethical decisions. But a welter of religions does no better: in the US, religious populations ranging from Christian evangelicals to orthodox Jews have flouted the elementary health advice of professionals. Put bluntly, conventional religions per se have proved of little help in controlling a pandemic.

But if neither standard religions nor modern secularism seem adequate for our times, is there a course that seems more promising?

In even raising this question, I must begin by acknowledging that it’s been pondered over the millennia by scores of eminent thinkers—ranging from  Baruch Spinoza to Hans Kung—and, no doubt, by thousands, perhaps millions of ordinary persons like me. It’s the tenor, the urgency, of our time that propels me to raise it now and to begin to sketch an answer.

To cut to the chase, I think—no, I believe—that our planet needs a new religion—but not one in which God plays a substantive role.

Here’s why: We now live in a global world. Whether it’s trade, technology, or transportation, the world is totally interconnected, a situation that is not going to change. To be sure, nationalism has recently been on the rise. And while patriotism (which differs from nationalism) has its virtues, the biggest challenges to the world are all international, global, planetary—and if we don’t band together, we will surely sink separately.

What do we—populations around the world—have in common?

At least these things:

l. We are all members of the same species. We have essentially the same DNA.

2. We share the history of that species, going back 50,000 years or more.

3. We share and are dependent on the flora and fauna of the world—for survival, for comfort, for beautiful experiences.

4. In the past of our species—individually and collectively—we have done terrible things—and we cannot and should not hide them. But we have also done wonderful things—sometimes individually (see Leonardo, hear Mozart), sometimes collectively (the pyramids of Egypt, the cathedrals of Western Europe, the temples of Angkor Wat, the caves of Dunhuang, the citadel of Machu Picchu). If I knew more about different individuals in different cultures in different periods of time, or indeed the wonders of the ancient world, I could extend the list indefinitely.

5. We are facing the same threats—chief among them, climate change and nuclear weapons—with pandemics, military conflict, biological warfare, and cyberconflict not far behind.

Our common humanity should be—indeed, must be—the throughline of a religion for our time and our planet. And given our recent research in higher education, it’s worth noting that the liberal arts beautifully encompass these various lenses on that humanity. See https://howardgardner.com/higher-education-in-the-21st-century/

But in itself the human story—no matter how dramatic, no matter how well presented—is not enough. Secular humanism does not suffice! Religions have symbols, processes, sermons—over time, these human creations bind people together, remind them of the meaning of their fellowship, inspire them to commit their energies to worthy courses of action. (Here, I agree with Rabbi Sacks.) 

In pursuing this line of thought, three quite different individuals—each of whom I much admire—come to mind.

The American civic activist Eric Liu understands the “religious quandary” better than anyone else I know personally.  He has created Citizen University—an institution that identifies, celebrates, and seeks to activate civic virtues; he has launched the Civic Collaboratory, a collection of leaders of social institutions (of different political persuasions) who gather together several times a year to help one another achieve their goals; and he has devised Civic Saturdays, where individuals around the country gather to share stories and experiences, and to ponder together what to do to improve our communities. In spirit, these features unmistakably bear the marks of a religion—but neither God or gods play explicit roles.

If Eric Liu and I have a difference, it’s one of emphasis. Eric thinks very much in American terms—what is needed to rejuvenate the health of our country’s democracy. (A timely consideration, to be sure!) Similar undertakings in other parts of the world could be mounted. But time is short. I prefer to think in global terms—what are the ideas, the symbols, the ceremonies, the songs, the sermons that would speak to and generate commitment not just nationally but around the globe, to individuals of different ages and allegiances,  in societies of varying sizes and different mores.

Perhaps the time has arrived for a post-post-Westphalian world.

I’ve often asserted that Gandhi was the most important human being of the last 1000 years. Gandhi was a Hindu, but he did not emphasize the tenets of his religion—in fact, he was assassinated by a fellow member of the Hindu faith who felt that Gandhi was insufficiently pious. Rather, Gandhi understood that all humans needed to be treated with respect and dignity. And here was his powerful insight: if persons are not appropriately treated, they should not wield physical weapons; rather they should mindfully embrace the powerful psychological weapon of civil disobedience. 

Gandhi was instrumental in securing Indian independence from the British empire. But of far greater importance, he set a model for what it can—what it should—be like to bring about needed change peacefully. For that noble effort, he has been emulated by courageous individuals around the world, ranging from Nelson Mandela in South Africa to Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States to the solitary Chinese citizen who in June 1989 faced armed tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Let me add a third name to this list of inspirational figures—that of Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg. She has seen, understood, and acted upon the greatest threat to the health of the planet—climate change—and she is fearless in calling attention to this global challenge and in “walking the talk’’—avoiding airplanes and other gobblers of fossil fuels. She also thinks and acts in global terms—essential if one is to tackle a planetary problem.

Establishing the essentials of a global religion requires at least three components: a set of powerful ideas; paragon—human beings (like the three I have just cited) who exemplify these ideas; and a set of practices and commitments that involve “congregants” from around the world. In one sense, it is a religion without God, without an explicit deity; it is also a religion for our time and our place. To paraphrase the philosopher Nelson Goodman, the components I’ve cited exhibit the “symptoms of a religion.” And if it helps to credit God or a set of gods for these ideas, that’s fine with me.

In his play J.B. Archibald MacLeish has a character say “If God is great, he is not good. If God is good, he is not God.Take the even, take the odd .”

I’m fine with a “god for Good Work”—and perhaps the ideas in this essay can be a modest contribution to the creation of such a lower-case deity.

© Howard Gardner 2020

I thank Courtney Bither, Lynn Barendsen, Shelby Clark, Anne Colby, Bill Damon, Shinri Furuzawa, Kirsten McHugh, Danny Mucinskas, Sally Myers, and Ellen Winner for their very thoughtful comments on earlier drafts.  I regret that I could not adequately address their many cogent comments and critiques.