When to choose sacredness

I.
I heard Sherman Alexie give a lecture one time. He finished it by telling a story about a cab driver who broke down in tears and asked him to read a letter from an estranged friend since the driver did not have the emotional strength to do so himself. (There was a lot more detail to the story that makes this moment in the story very tense, but since Alexie gets paid to speak I don't want to give this away for free.)

Alexie said he opened the envelope and pulled out the letter. Then he says to the audience, "I'm not going to tell you what was in the letter. Because there are some things in life you should always keep sacred."

I still think about that story. I wrote a post wondering about why some people behave in ways that don't seem to ultimately serve their best interest. I wondered if it was foolish to think that they were always viewing things in a consequentialist/utilitarian lens. "Do the ends justify the means in this situation?"

I contrasted this view with Kant's categorical imperative, but I think a better way to think about this is sacredness. If I could talk to Alexie, I would tell him that I think we all keep things sacred. We just aren't always actively aware of what we choose.

Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of research into moral psychology. One of his tests was to ask people whether it was morally okay for a family to eat their dog after it had died. Often times, people say it is not okay. When asked why, they usually can't come up with a good answer. Haidt would say it violates that sanctity/degradation principle. Kant would say not eating one's dead dog is a categorical imperative. I might just say it's a sacred value.

II.
Whenever I see behavior that seems hypocritical, I try to see if I behave the same way. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that I do.

I'm more of a Martin Luther King, Jr. antiracist than an Ibram Kendi antiracist. King believed in ending discrimination based on race. Kendi believes in intentionally discriminating based on race in order to ensure equal outcomes. King believed in equality, Kendi believes in equity to ensure equality.

I thought about why I made this choice and it turns out that the idea of discrimination just feels icky to me. It feels like eating my dead dog. It's a sacred value that I didn't bother to think about and decide if the ends justify the means.

So how do I go through life knowing that this concept of sacredness rests in me, in all of us. I think there are several options.

1. I can choose to be self reflective and always strive to be a consequentialist, to always examine whether the outcome is worth it it even if I don't like the means.
2. I can just not think about it and continue living my life as normal, take sort of a status quo approach. This means that when things feel intuitively right or wrong, I'll just never think about them unless someone challenges me, in which case I'll have to spend a lot of time justifying that my initial instinct is, in fact, the correct and logical one.
3. Or I can take Alexi's advice and choose what things I want to keep sacred.

Option one sounds exhausting. Option two sounds like what most people do. Option three is like option two, only with more agency.

If I don't choose the things I'm going to keep sacred, my subconscious mind is just going to choose for me.