Chapter 7 - The Better Builder Refuses to Ethically Compromise
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich
“The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”
Socrates in The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato
In our previous post, we outlined how the Philosophy of Building Better could be a means of providing a scaffolding to support people’s best impulses instead of taking advantage of their worst. We introduced the idea of how every design choice encourages users to behave in a certain way and how shadow patterns are created whenever patterns lead users to act counter to their best interests.
Today, we expand this line of inquiry to explore the larger question of building ethics. In some ways, this chapter is the fulcrum of the entire Philosophy of Building Better. This exploration was initially inspired by questions about how the things we build can make the world a better place and why there is no sort of ethical standard for modern builders. I believe this project is the most important thing I have ever done in my professional life and it wouldn’t be necessary if people made more of an effort to build properly.
Ultimately, if we are going to attempt to build better, we will find ourselves going against the grain. The world has been created by the well worn path of taking the easy way. The shortcut. Of doing what is expedient.
Once you have committed yourself to striving towards the ideal of building better, things won’t become easier. In fact, I can guarantee you that they will instead become harder. You will find yourself butting heads with folks who wonder why you can’t just get in line. You will likely encounter arguments about how “no one is actually getting hurt by this” or how “it’s not our money.” Statements like this are indications that you are creating friction. Friction that would otherwise not occur had you been following the crowd.
Building better means that sometimes you have to be a rock in the river instead of going with the flow.
Building better means you need to be willing to stand up for your belief in a better way.
Some who see you adhering to a higher standard of conduct will feel threatened. They will call you naïve and encourage you to do things “the way they have always been done.” They will say that your competitors are cutting corners and that you won’t be able to keep up if you don’t follow suit.
If you choose to follow the path of the Better Builder, you will face pressure to compromise your principles. You will be on a phone call or sitting in an office and someone, perhaps even someone you respect, will ask you to take just a half step across a line you know you shouldn’t cross.
I don’t know when it will happen or what the stakes will be. In all likelihood the particular facts of the case will be banal and mundane. The slightest step away towards the grey. A minor compromise that seems easily justified.
All I know is that this crossroads moment will occur and that when it does you will be asked to compromise your ethical principles.
In order to truly build better, this must be our battle line.
This is the inch we must not give.
The hilltop that must hold the line.
If you surrender and take a step back towards the inertia of building poorly, it will be harder and harder to recover. As you continue to take the easy way, in every subsequent ethical quandary, doing the right thing only becomes more difficult.
If on the other hand, you stand your ground, this will be the turning point in your odyssey to build better. Every time you hold your ground and stand up for your principles, the next time you do so will be easier. Every time you give in and compromise, the next step off the path becomes more enticing.
As better builders, we must be willing to stand up for our ethical principles, even if it comes at a cost. Doing things the right way may mean lost sales or missing out on an opportunity. In extreme circumstances, it may even necessitate you leaving a job if you can no longer build in good conscience on your current path. I genuinely believe, that in many cases, doing the right thing will pay off in the long run with more loyal, satisfied, fulfilled customers, but the choice to build better is not done because it is the most profitable choice. It is done because it is the right one.
Now you won’t always get it right.
Sometimes you will take a stand that you believed to be right in the moment, only to discover later that you were working off incomplete information. Sometimes you will simply let your guard down and slip up. This is a war that lasts a lifetime and each challenge is simply a battle in a never ending campaign.
The commitment to stand your ground is, more than anything else you do, what will ultimately decide whether you build well or build poorly. This will decide whether the things you build are life giving or life destroying. Whether what you build makes the world more integrated and whole, or further accelerates society towards decay.
I don’t exaggerate when I say that every decision matters. In our first chapter, we quoted Aristotle and focused on his emphasis that builders become builders by building. But that quote goes on to emphasize the importance of every day actions and habits:
The little things we do make all the difference in the world.
Your actions become your habits and your habits make you who you are. You will spend your life trapped in a virtuous cycle or a vicious one, but you get to decide which.
And you choose by deciding to do the right thing.
Every.
Single.
Time.
This is the way to build better.
This is the way that we make the world more whole.
Let’s build better,
Erik