[Recycled from 10:40PM, 15 Febryary 2005]
In class, the concept of developing a moral sense came up. According to one Kohlberg, people start out operating at a "pre-conventional" level of punishments and authority, then move the a "conventional" level of law and tradition, and some people (though this is supposed to be reserved for the truly thoughtful) move on to a "post-conventional" morality of the social contract, or perhaps even to the saintly level of the universally ethical.
My impression, though, is that people always perceive themselves as looking upon the world from atop the One True Universal Ethic, and meddle in punishments, authority and law only when they need to explain themselves to someone else. That's how it feels to me, anyway.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
//The Magic 8-Ball says, "You know what's right".\\
2 comments:
My experience is that we act first and justify later. None of us knows what we would do till we do it, and none of us knows what we believe till after we act.
The exception is situations in which you have plenty of time to think before acting, which allows us to impose standards we want to have, for whatever reason, on our actions. Usually we spend the time justifying our inaction instead, but it is possible to steel yourself do something you really, really don't want to do, and instinctively recoil from, because it is the right thing.
Because we value consciousness over unconsciousness, we don't want to believe this is true, and because our egos are tightly bound up with our perception of our own morality, it is very hard to get people to see this, much less acknowledge it in their own behavior. But this is not only what I see around me and in what I do, but is clearly evident in that experiment with the shocks - you remember the one I'm talking about.
All too creepily well . . . .
Post a Comment