MORALITY AND CULTURE
Morality does not depend on culture. What is right and what culture designates as what one may say or think or do, or how to judge, may be different.
Culture changes individuals thru socialization, legal requirements and institutional forces; individuals change culture thru discussion, critique, insights and innovations, and rebellion.
Culture defines what is right in the legal sense, culture is at its base, the law. The law does change also.
The moral - legal difference is where cultural right or law and moral judgment conflict. If there is an ethical totality, then the legal and moral viewpoints have to equilibrate.
Another way of looking it this is to speculate on the degree of plurality in a culture. I don’t mean that the law or justice is different for different groups, but that difference in viewpoint, worldview, perspective, understanding, feelings and attitudes is accepted without too much violence. The opposite is despotism which is too common in work organizations, family arrangements and relationships.
Individual autonomy should be recognized as the goal of development in our life.
Generally speaking, most people are only concerned with rules, laws and regulations, not with right or wrong and why.
Moral development also demonstrates a gap between moral judgment and moral action. Persons who can state what is right or wrong do not necessarily act morally. This is most obvious in racism and sexism which Gordon Allport discusses in “Prejudice.” Specifically, he investigated cases where people act prejudicially but admit in interview that prejudice is immoral. I don’t think Allport got at the reasons for the covert prejudice, eg mating practices and legal marriage laws, cultural pride and family pride, but he does point to this problem.
Hegel critiqued Kant over Kant’s natural law theory of rights which established the antimony between duty and inclination. Hegel and Kant however both point to the problem of the lack of control over thinking - psychological havoc and the wish to harm being so common!
Without going into the bush, the problem is that the inclination to conform overrides the duty to be fair, in many cases.
Usually people are not giving reasons or justifying themselves. They are giving orders and taking advantage of any legal loopholes they can find; the only venue or context of justification - explanation and reasoning - is in a court of law, and even then perjury occurs.
For example, parents make up superficial reasons for children during their why-phase otherwise it’s discipline and psychological control. Organizations and kinship structures are bastions of coercion completely eclipsing any concept of autonomy, by any definition of the term.
If freedom means anything, we only experience its loss.
People see themselves as out for number one, themselves. The only way they accept being a subordinate is by contract - the rules and regulation way - this is not morally acceptable to them but merely a condition of the “natural social reality.” Incentives are used for their cooperation but strict disciplining also lurks begins their backs and over their heads.
“Good” is not a clear standard and rather immature at that - responsibility and honesty as well as practicality are the missing factors.
To believe that people think of themselves as good yet cannot explain conflict means that good is just an appearance!
Some conflicts are misunderstandings, most are mistreatments by one against another: superfluous domination.
The issue is whether an inequality is required for practical and technical reasons or whether the behavior and or psychological interaction is superfluous, unnecessary and/or based on false beliefs, habits or alienation, eg prejudice, status, pride, etc.
This bit about being good, a good boy or good man or good wife or whatever conceals the effects a person has, and the degrees of affect that a person has to others and experiences from others are needs, drives or feelings. The problem is their compulsiveness and rigidity. Some people never change, they want others to kow tow to them and they mistreat others, induce emotional blackmail, and of course never show any respect.
Respect was the basis of the moral law; that cannot be said today bc even if another shows behavioral candor and expresses apparent honesty, their psychological attitude of resentment is often just as transparent as their speech!
So, I don’t buy anyone's “good” self attributions - one must be lacking in certain experiences of learning what is right and wrong, or forgetting, to think they are good in a moral sense which is really nothing but an impression that you conform and without awareness of the laws and rules you unconsciously follow which you might question and even resist. It’s a long way to the boundary of conventions which can just as quickly bite you whether you follow them or not!
Without being naive about introspection, reflection, self-knowledge and moral awareness, there are multiple meanings of good, and none are very significant - people think of themselves as mediocre, blasé and stereotyped.
People in conflict think they are right but these are not moral judgments, reasons are not given, descriptions are not reflected upon, the desired outcomes and consequences are not moral outcomes. Each believes they represent the common good and thus are justified in exploiting and dominating the other. The feelings and affects are not moral feelings, often they are clearly immoral: sadistic and contemptuous! Force and the desire to harm lie behind any claims to care, or love. There is no self-sacrifice, no patience, and no real discussion. The rights of the other are trammeled by one’s own sense of “being right.” The degree of disrespect, of blatant immoral responses if any real responses are even proffered, is even considered normal and justified in their self-righteousness.
When we consider our impressions or what stimulates us, consider epidemiology and sociological statistics, then the perception of human motives and feelings will turn.
When people in certain groups characterize their self-understanding, as good and yet engage in terrorism, or sadism, or despisement and contempt, certain terms like macho, chivalry and patriarchal authoritarianism come to mind. For example, ISIS is a cult that practices sharia law - stoning, chopping off of limbs and heads, sadistic murder, and has been fighting a war against its own people and several nations! So, it looks like they think they are very very "badass." But, whatever vocabulary characterizes their self-understanding, and it is not "good!"
If they reflect and they hold any moral standards, they would immediately recognize their self as bad!
So either they are deceiving or they have a false conscience.
Morality does not depend on culture. What is right and what culture designates as what one may say or think or do, or how to judge, may be different.
Culture changes individuals thru socialization, legal requirements and institutional forces; individuals change culture thru discussion, critique, insights and innovations, and rebellion.
Culture defines what is right in the legal sense, culture is at its base, the law. The law does change also.
The moral - legal difference is where cultural right or law and moral judgment conflict. If there is an ethical totality, then the legal and moral viewpoints have to equilibrate.
Another way of looking it this is to speculate on the degree of plurality in a culture. I don’t mean that the law or justice is different for different groups, but that difference in viewpoint, worldview, perspective, understanding, feelings and attitudes is accepted without too much violence. The opposite is despotism which is too common in work organizations, family arrangements and relationships.
Individual autonomy should be recognized as the goal of development in our life.
Generally speaking, most people are only concerned with rules, laws and regulations, not with right or wrong and why.
Moral development also demonstrates a gap between moral judgment and moral action. Persons who can state what is right or wrong do not necessarily act morally. This is most obvious in racism and sexism which Gordon Allport discusses in “Prejudice.” Specifically, he investigated cases where people act prejudicially but admit in interview that prejudice is immoral. I don’t think Allport got at the reasons for the covert prejudice, eg mating practices and legal marriage laws, cultural pride and family pride, but he does point to this problem.
Hegel critiqued Kant over Kant’s natural law theory of rights which established the antimony between duty and inclination. Hegel and Kant however both point to the problem of the lack of control over thinking - psychological havoc and the wish to harm being so common!
Without going into the bush, the problem is that the inclination to conform overrides the duty to be fair, in many cases.
Usually people are not giving reasons or justifying themselves. They are giving orders and taking advantage of any legal loopholes they can find; the only venue or context of justification - explanation and reasoning - is in a court of law, and even then perjury occurs.
For example, parents make up superficial reasons for children during their why-phase otherwise it’s discipline and psychological control. Organizations and kinship structures are bastions of coercion completely eclipsing any concept of autonomy, by any definition of the term.
If freedom means anything, we only experience its loss.
People see themselves as out for number one, themselves. The only way they accept being a subordinate is by contract - the rules and regulation way - this is not morally acceptable to them but merely a condition of the “natural social reality.” Incentives are used for their cooperation but strict disciplining also lurks begins their backs and over their heads.
“Good” is not a clear standard and rather immature at that - responsibility and honesty as well as practicality are the missing factors.
To believe that people think of themselves as good yet cannot explain conflict means that good is just an appearance!
Some conflicts are misunderstandings, most are mistreatments by one against another: superfluous domination.
The issue is whether an inequality is required for practical and technical reasons or whether the behavior and or psychological interaction is superfluous, unnecessary and/or based on false beliefs, habits or alienation, eg prejudice, status, pride, etc.
This bit about being good, a good boy or good man or good wife or whatever conceals the effects a person has, and the degrees of affect that a person has to others and experiences from others are needs, drives or feelings. The problem is their compulsiveness and rigidity. Some people never change, they want others to kow tow to them and they mistreat others, induce emotional blackmail, and of course never show any respect.
Respect was the basis of the moral law; that cannot be said today bc even if another shows behavioral candor and expresses apparent honesty, their psychological attitude of resentment is often just as transparent as their speech!
So, I don’t buy anyone's “good” self attributions - one must be lacking in certain experiences of learning what is right and wrong, or forgetting, to think they are good in a moral sense which is really nothing but an impression that you conform and without awareness of the laws and rules you unconsciously follow which you might question and even resist. It’s a long way to the boundary of conventions which can just as quickly bite you whether you follow them or not!
Without being naive about introspection, reflection, self-knowledge and moral awareness, there are multiple meanings of good, and none are very significant - people think of themselves as mediocre, blasé and stereotyped.
People in conflict think they are right but these are not moral judgments, reasons are not given, descriptions are not reflected upon, the desired outcomes and consequences are not moral outcomes. Each believes they represent the common good and thus are justified in exploiting and dominating the other. The feelings and affects are not moral feelings, often they are clearly immoral: sadistic and contemptuous! Force and the desire to harm lie behind any claims to care, or love. There is no self-sacrifice, no patience, and no real discussion. The rights of the other are trammeled by one’s own sense of “being right.” The degree of disrespect, of blatant immoral responses if any real responses are even proffered, is even considered normal and justified in their self-righteousness.
When we consider our impressions or what stimulates us, consider epidemiology and sociological statistics, then the perception of human motives and feelings will turn.
When people in certain groups characterize their self-understanding, as good and yet engage in terrorism, or sadism, or despisement and contempt, certain terms like macho, chivalry and patriarchal authoritarianism come to mind. For example, ISIS is a cult that practices sharia law - stoning, chopping off of limbs and heads, sadistic murder, and has been fighting a war against its own people and several nations! So, it looks like they think they are very very "badass." But, whatever vocabulary characterizes their self-understanding, and it is not "good!"
If they reflect and they hold any moral standards, they would immediately recognize their self as bad!
So either they are deceiving or they have a false conscience.
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