Haidt & Mooney, Moral Foundations & Spiral Dynamics

This post is the third in my series about Haidt’s newest book, The Righteous Mind (here is the previous post, second in the series). I was watching a video of Jonathan Haidt speaking about compassion in respect to the moral values of liberals and conservatives. I’ve already criticized Haidt elsewhere in the first post in the series (basically, Haidt [...]

Jonathan Haidt’s Liberal-Minded Anti-Liberalism

Jonathan Haidt wrote a new book, The Righteous Mind. I haven’t seen the book, but I listened to an interview by Bill Moyers. I recommend checking it out. Haidt does have an insightful view, although I think his view would be even more insightful if he synthesized his own research with other psychological research about [...]

A Lesson I’m Trying To Unlearn: Punishment vs Forgiveness

I was thinking about forgiveness lately. Maybe it’s that end-of-the-year mentality causing me to consider the failures of the past. I came across a very personal article from the Guardian which shows how difficult it can be to either seek or offer forgiveness. In my life, I’ve come to realize I’m in certain ways not a [...]

Jimmy Carter & Clean Air Act

I came across a research paper: http://www3.amherst.edu/~jwreyes/papers/LeadCrimeNBERWP13097.pdf The conclusion of the researchers was: “This paper argues that the removal of lead from gasoline in the late 1970s under the Clean Air Act is an additional important factor in explaining the decline in crime in the 1990s. The main result of the paper is that changes [...]

Responsibility: Choice vs Obligation

I was thinking about my own sense of morality. There is one particular aspect that probably fits into liberalism in general but for certain it fits into my own version of liberalism. The aspect is about responsibility which, of course, relates to some of my past writing: http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/social-indebtedness-strict-father-morality-hierarchical-authority/ http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/conservative-liberal-families-observations-comparison/ http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/sense-of-place-of-home-of-community-or-lack-thereof/ However, I wasn’t specifically thinking [...]

The Bystander Effect, Herd Mentality And The Indifference Of Good Men

Atomic Bombs & Terrorism, Rationalizations & Immorality

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima day. I’d actually been thinking about that event off and on recently. It’s representative of what is wrong with Americans specifically and humanity in general. A lot of people were killed in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sad part was that the bombs were designed to kill [...]

Moral Righteousness: Intent vs Results

I had the issue of righteousness on my mind while writing a previous post (Conservative & Liberal Families: Observations & Comparison). In that post, I made two points in relation to righteousness. First, there is a difference between the morality of intentions and the morality of results. To use the example of that post, there is a difference between having family values and valuing [...]

Conservative Moral Order & the Lazy Unemployed

I was just having a discussion about the conservative worldview. Many conservatives believe in meritocracy and that our society is a meritocracy. They assume that rich people deserve their wealth because they’ve somehow earned it or are somehow morally superior. The poor are therefore lazy and morally inferior. This is what George Lakoff calls the Moral Order [...]

Conservative & Liberal Families: Observations & Comparison

This post is a continuation of my thoughts from my previous post. Social Indebtedness: Strict Father Morality & Hierarchical Authority I didn’t intend to have a second part, but I wanted to add more context for the ideas in question… which led to further thoughts. Some of the context of my thoughts is personal and I originally decided to leave out the personal for [...]