Following a discussion of what morality is, an important practical question arises: how can we bring about more morality and less immorality on all three tiers? To act morally or immorally is ultimately an individual choice, and no number of external factors, however powerful, can completely determine that choice. Even a Nazi concentration camp guard – raised solely on anti-Semitic ideology – had the choice to disobey his orders to torture and kill innocent human beings; hence, he is rightly held morally responsible if he acted on those orders. However, a number of external factors can increase or decrease an individual's incentives to choose a moral life over an immoral one. Ceteris paribus, an individual will purchase more of a good at a lower price than at a higher price. Similarly, ceteris paribus, an individual will tend to act more morally in the face of greater incentives to do so than he would in the face of lesser ones. Except for protecting individual rights against the initiation of force, it is not the direct function of government to bring about increased morality. Where, then, does one start putting such incentives in place?

          Every reader of this article is an individual who, in his personal conduct, can choose to be moral or immoral. The best place to start in advancing moral conduct is with oneself. As such, it is essential to analyze the variety of personal incentives in place for moral behavior on all three tiers.

          Irrespective of the legal structure of any given society, there are in that society people who would not murder, rape, steal, defraud, or otherwise violate the rights of their fellow men. In the face of rampant chaos, with thugs running amok on the streets, these people would still not resort to crime and would use violence only against criminals. Such individuals do not even think about violating the first tier of morality, and their default mode of operation in all legal climates is the full respect of all men's natural rights. A just system of laws and a firm code of criminal punishments deter many from aggressing against others, but these individuals require no such deterrence. They abstain of their own free will from what the law seeks to forbid. What incentives influence them to so unconditionally observe the first tier of morality?

Incentive 1.1. Personal Reverence for Life. No man would dare aggress against what he deems sacred. Any deep-seated, sincerely held conviction of the sanctity of every individual's life – and, correspondingly, his liberty, health, and possessions – will serve as the firmest deterrent against aggression for any given individual. For the conviction to be efficacious, it does not matter how it is arrived at – whether it be through a reliance on God, reason, natural law, utilitarianism, and/or a profound emotional pleasure in observing human life flourish and develop. All that matters is that the individual perceives the reasons for the conviction to be unshakeable or that, if he should abandon one set of reasons justifying non-aggression, he will replace it with another set of reasons arriving at the same conclusion.

          What are ways to cultivate such a reverence for life? Approaches to reach this end can be abstract or concrete. A person can attain a conviction of the sanctity of human life through reading didactic literature or philosophy. The kinds of literature and philosophy that will accomplish this vary in their basic premises; their effectiveness depends primarily on the strength of the connection they establish between their premises and the conclusion that innocent human life must be respected. The more explicitly and convincingly this conclusion is established in the literature, the more likely the readers are to be inspired by it to act morally.

          A concrete way to cultivate reverence for life is to extensively observe or interact with living things. People who enjoy spending time around children and domestic animals will find this concrete cultivation of reverence to be easier. They will be able to observe closely how these creatures behave and the immense beauty and complexity of their approaches to the world. From loving and appreciating children and animals to developing an unshakeable respect for the innocent adult humans into which most children develop is a small and fairly easy step – both intellectually and emotionally. While animals do not, strictly speaking, have rights, and children do not have some of the lesser rights of adults (though a child's right to life is as firm as that of any adult), both animals and children let an individual thoroughly appreciate the beauty of life and therefore render him less likely to commit acts of aggression.

Incentive 1.2. Personal Productivity. Another concrete means of arriving at unconditional respect for innocent human life is pursuing occupations that cultivate and improve one's own life and the lives of others. A person who enjoys building, developing ideas, educating, raising children, or practicing medicine – among numerous other activities – knows how much colossal effort is needed to engage in life-sustaining activities. The mere thought of an aggressor nullifying the effects of this effort through several seconds of destructive activity will horrify the productive person. Certainly, he will not want to personally engage in actions that will undo the creative efforts of people like himself. Since the pursuit and possession of property is integral to maintaining and improving human lives, the productive person will tend to respect the hard-earned property of others by seeing it as serving a vital role similar to the functions of his own property.

          Furthermore, every second spent in productive activity is a second that cannot be spent in destructive activity. The more productive an individual is in his life, the fewer opportunities he has to inflict harm upon himself or others. As he continues to engage in productive activities, he develops the skills suited to performing those activities better – while he does not develop the skills necessary for aggression and destruction. Hence, not only will there be a time constraint on his ability to aggress, but there will also be a skill constraint. Since individuals tend to gravitate toward activities where they are more skilled, a consistently productive individual will tend to want to pursue productive activities rather than destructive ones in direct correlation with his productivity.

Incentive 1.3. Personal Education. For most people, developing productive hobbies, interests, and job skills is the best way to become and/or stay moral. Mathematical faculties and morality of conduct are distinct aspects of an individual, and a more mathematically adept person is not necessarily more moral. However, I am virtually certain that, if every individual in a society were somewhat well-versed in the higher branches of mathematics, there would be far less immoral conduct in that society than otherwise. The reason for this is simple: most people in such a society would be far more interested in finding the integral of x2e-x than in engaging in street brawls or ingesting mind-altering drugs. They will be more interested in pursuing the harmless activity they know – mathematics – rather than the harmful activities in which they are largely ignorant. An education in other intricate disciplines – whether they be productive or merely non-destructive – will tend to diminish a person's impulses toward immorality, unless the education itself contains incentives for immoral behavior. It is primarily by giving people extensive skills in non-vicious activities that a quality education tends to foster virtue.

Incentive 1.4. Harmless Entertainment. Activities that are neither moral nor productive in themselves but are also neither immoral nor destructive will tend to influence the individual pursuing them to abstain from immoral activities. Let us presume that the board game or computer game X is such an activity. The individual who plays X does so not because he wishes to accomplish something or to live morally, but simply because he finds X to be entertaining. Playing X not only takes away time that could have been spent in immoral activity, but also further cultivates the individual's skill at and interest in X – while not increasing his skill and interest in harmful and destructive activities. While, from the viewpoint of accomplishment, X is not as good a way to spend one's time as a productive activity, it, too, can ward off desires to act immorally. It can also offer an individual an opportunity to rest and rejuvenate his energies after exerting himself in productive activity while not at all endangering his morality.

          Harmless pleasures of this sort include many board games, most computer games, and some movies, radio shows, and television programs. Many of these even carry peripheral benefits, though these benefits are not the primary reasons that the activities are engaged in. The general rule with regard to entertainment is: so long as it does not advocate or insinuate immoral courses of action, entertainment tends to be conducive to the moral conduct of individuals consuming it. This can be seen by considering alternate uses of individuals' leisure time had such harmless entertainment not been available. Some people – the ones already exceptionally productive and motivated – might have chosen to accomplish something else instead, but these people are always and everywhere a minority. Most would have pursued dissipative and destructive "pleasures" if the harmless ones were not available. Furthermore, the violent emotions of many would have found no outlet except in aggression against other human beings. Today, an individual can choose to take out his anger on fictitious monsters in computer games instead of engaging in bar brawls or taking to the streets in riotous protest. As the variety of harmless entertainment continues to increase, we can expect to see a decrease in violent crime, all other things equal.

Incentive 1.5. Personal Material Well-Being. Just as the presence of harmless entertainment disinclines individuals from committing immoral acts due to boredom or anger, so does the possession of a sufficiently high material standard of living virtually eliminate a person's motivation to violate the rights of others due to his wish to satisfy his material desires. Rich men do not engage in theft in order to survive, unless they earned their fortunes as thieves and unless theft is their sole available means of earning further income. Ceteris paribus, the more property an individual owns and the higher an income he commands, the less inclined he will be to expropriate others with the aim of materially enriching himself. Wealth alone does not eliminate other motivations for crime, though it can certainly help when combined with productivity, quality entertainment, and a profound intellectual and emotional commitment to morality. What is indisputably true, though, is that virtually nobody in the Western world today will follow the example of Jean Valjean from Les Misérables and steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving family – for even those considered poor in the West today have substantial access to food, clothing, and even cars and televisions.

          Reverence for life, productivity, education, harmless entertainment, and material well-being all contribute to a person's great reluctance to harm himself – just as well as they deter him from aggressing against others. Let us briefly consider how these incentives manifest themselves in inspiring an individual to adhere to the second tier of morality. The mention of each incentive is accompanied by what a hypothetical moral individual might think regarding it.

Incentive 2.1. Personal Reverence for Life. "I view innocent human life as sacred, including my own. Therefore, my harming or needlessly endangering my own life is out of the question."

Incentive 2.2. Personal Productivity. "If I harm my own life, I will be unable to engage in the productive activities I enjoy. I will be neither as accomplished nor as happy as I could have been."

Incentive 2.3. Personal Education. "If I harm my own life, I will not be able to learn more about or practice the disciplines in which I am well-educated. I will have wasted great knowledge and amazing potential."

Incentive 2.4. Harmless Entertainment. "If I harm my own life, my death, pain, or discomfort will prevent me from truly enjoying the things I find pleasurable and entertaining.'

Incentive 2.5. Personal Material Well-Being. "If I harm my own life, I will be unable to enjoy the plenty of material things in my life – which would otherwise give me great comfort and convenience."

Other incentives assist in self-preservation as well.

Incentive 2.6. Pride in Oneself. Much vilified throughout history, pride in oneself is no vice; in fact, it can be the source of great personal virtue. Pride is here defined as a conviction of one's own worth as a human being. A proud person considers himself to be largely good, decently knowledgeable, adequately skilled, and unapologetically important as a sovereign individual whose life is worthy of living. This does not mean that a proud person views himself as omniscient, infallible, or incapable of improvement. Quite the contrary, his conviction in his own worth impels him to constantly seek ways in which he might improve himself in every area of his life. Furthermore, he always seeks a realistic estimate of his own knowledge and abilities – for such an estimate helps him make the best use of his potential. With the help of a realistic perception of himself, he will pursue tasks which he is genuinely able to accomplish, thereby reinforcing his self-image and the good reputation he seeks to have. He will avoid undertakings truly beyond his ability – for the inevitable failure in those will shame him before himself and others, and the proud man will go out of his way to avoid being shamed. Hence, the proud man never makes empty boasts; if he says he will do something, it is because he knows he can.

          The proud man – using his meticulous capacity for self-evaluation – will constantly be on the lookout for ways in which he might be harming himself and will systematically eliminate those tendencies once he spots them. His pride leads him to seek his own advancement through productive achievement; the more he accomplishes, the more he can esteem himself. His high opinion of himself is also a powerful stimulus to moral conduct, because one cannot consistently behave like a brute or a criminal and yet still consider oneself good, noble, or worthy. The proud man's reasoning is, "A man of my caliber will not sink to the level of base or immoral conduct." The proud man will seek to act so as to be worthy of his self-esteem. Since he perceives himself as fundamentally good and his life as worth living, he will have no reason to harm himself and every reason to avoid such harm.

Incentive 2.7. Devotion to a Person, Thing, or Institution. Many people are greatly disinclined to harm themselves because they are strongly devoted to the well-being of some other individual, possession, or organization. Beneficiaries of this kind of commitment can be family members, friends, pets, treasured property, or organizations. A person will be far less inclined to damage himself if he understands that such actions will also harm his wife and children, would cause his carefully cultivated estate to fall into disrepair, or would bring about the ruin of his business. If a person has worked immensely hard to achieve the well-being of his family or of an organization he works for, he will be extremely reluctant to endanger by wanton self-destruction what he has hitherto strived to preserve and augment. Similarly, a man who sees it as his purpose in life to promote a given idea will not wish to hasten his own death – for that would likely imply the peril of the idea as well.

Incentive 2.8. Rejection of the Alternative. The alternative to life and flourishing is death and suffering. Striving to avoid the latter is as powerful a motivation for self-preservation as striving to positively pursue the former. The thought of one's own non-existence – when seriously entertained – is frightening, as well it should be. Atheist-materialists have a powerful reason to preserve their health and longevity in this world, because they believe that there is no other world – indeed, that their very individuality is obliterated upon death. Believers in an afterlife will often still feel extreme discomfort at the prospect of leaving a life of which they are certain and with which they are familiar to possibly journey to another world – whose existence is not firmly established, and whose aspects are unclear and disputed. Entertaining these discomforts will in fact lead them to hold onto this life ever more firmly and thus adhere to the second tier of morality. The fear of death is a potent incentive to keep on living. It also helps the religious if their God prohibits suicide and other desecrations of his "temple" – the human body. Those who adhere to such prohibitions might even look forward to an afterlife, but they will not seek to hasten its arrival, because they believe that doing so will deny them the afterlife altogether.

          We have hitherto explored powerful personal reasons to be moral in not aggressing against others and in not wantonly damaging oneself. For most people, at least one of these reasons is strongly operational on each of the two tiers of morality. This is why, in virtually every environment, the vast majority of individuals are neither aggressors nor suicidal. Civility and integrity – the virtues of the third tier – are much rarer, however. They require a special set of incentives to augment those of non-aggression and self-preservation.

Incentive 3.1. Desire for a Good Reputation. A man with a good reputation is well-thought-of by those with whom he comes into contact. Those who seek a good reputation are most often moral, but they also seek to be perceived as moral, because such a perception on the part of others gives numerous advantages to oneself. People who are considered moral are more often trusted in work and in commerce, and are more frequently the beneficiaries of others' generosity. Furthermore, they tend to find interactions with others to be far more pleasant than those who are generally thought to be morally questionable. Provided that a person genuinely practices the virtues he espouses, there is no fault with seeking a good reputation. In fact, a person who has a sound reputation will be more reluctant to commit a moral infraction, because he fears the accompanying loss of his good name. Moreover, if a person wishes to be seen as moral without actually being moral, his hypocrisy will be difficult to conceal – and will require tremendous effort to keep secret for any length of time. Once exposed, the hypocrite will be despised to far greater extent than an honestly immoral individual – hence, the incentives against seeking a false good reputation are strong.
 

"The personal incentives for moral conduct all stem from motivations centered on one's own values and desires and are mostly independent of the social and economic environment in which one lives."

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