Dark Morals Lurk Inside You

Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director

Some morals are simple. Dark morals, not so.

The morals we all tend to agree on are the easier ones to

identify, things like not harming people or caring for the

needy, the thinking goes [though already this column

seems to be on shaky ground]. In space, these morals are

akin to stars, planets and other visible matter -- the

obvious stuff -- according to a theory by University of

Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

The darker morals (think exotic concepts like dark matter

and dark energy which are everywhere but nowhere) get

into more slippery things like group loyalty, respect for

authority, purity and sanctity, reports MSNBC's Alan

Boyle, who was in Phoenix over the weekend attending

the Origins conference where this was discussed. These

are the more obscure morals that account for things like

patriotism, conformism and taboos about sex and food.

Dark morals are the ones that different people have their

own views on. And, twisting a perfectly good George

Thorogood line, evubody's different.

Okay. Let's stop right there and go over some basics.

First, we are all moral hypocrites. Studies show this. We

judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves.

Second, morality leads to unethical acts. Again, science.

Okay, back to Haidt's ideas ...

Sex and food

According to Haidt, Boyle reports, conservatives tend to

focus on sex, while "liberals are getting increasingly

concerned with food." [I see a poll in the making.]

Haidt's ideas have been floating around a while, and they

get a lot deeper. In 2007, he published his thoughts in the

journal Science. Here's some of the questions he asks as

a way to -- let's use a cosmologist's jargon -- probe dark

morality:

"How much money would it take to get you to stick a pin

into your palm?

How much to stick a pin into the palm of a child you don't

know?

How much to slap a friend in the face (with his or her

permission) as part of a comedy skit?"

[Total aside: Researchers will do this for free. Check out

the video proving it.]

I can offer zero help on the above questions, but

personally I'm leaning toward keeping my mouth shut,

because they sound to me a lot the "when did you stop

beating your wife?" question. Moving along, Haidt thinks

we've evolved to a moral situation that involves three 

principles:

1. Intuitive primacy, which says that human emotions and 

gut feelings generally drive our moral judgments.

[Translation: Stealing that loaf of bread was justified for

Jean Valjean, but probably not for you.]

2. Moral thinking if for social doing, which says that we

engage in moral reasoning not to figure out the truth, but

to persuade other people of our virtue or to influence them

to support us.

[Translation: I can't believe you're a democan! Only

Republocrats have it right!]

3. Morality binds and builds, meaning morality and gossip 

[Apparently we are evolutionarily designed to gossip] were

crucial for the evolution of human ultrasociality, which

allows humans -- but no other primates -- to live in large

and highly cooperative groups.

[Dear reader, please offer up your translation to this one

in the Comments section below.--RRB]

"Putting these three principles together forces us to re-

evaluate many of our most cherished notions about

ourselves," Haidt explained in that 2007 article. "Since the

time of the Enlightenment ... many philosophers have

celebrated the power and virtue of cool, dispassionate

reasoning. Unfortunately, few people other than

philosophers can engage in such cool, honest reasoning

 when moral issues are at stake. The rest of us [I like that

Haidt sees himself as one of us, or at least gives us that

impression.] behave more like lawyers, using any

arguments we can find to make our case, rather than like

judges or scientists searching for the truth. This doesn't

mean we are doomed to be immoral; it just means that we

should look for the roots of our considerable virtue

elsewhere -- in the emotions and intuitions that make us

so generally decent and cooperative, yet also sometimes

willing to hurt or kill in defense of a principle, a person or a

place."

The meaning of everything above

As I understand it, there is a practical upshot of Haidt's

reasoning, and this jibes with something I've noticed a lot

in people I love and some I care a little less about:

Conservatives think liberals are idiots, and liberals think

conservatives are idiots. Or perhaps it's the other way

around, depending on your point of view.

"We all start off with the same evolved moral capacities,"

Haidt writes [in an apparent compliment to us all for rising

above the chimps], "but then we each learn only a subset

of the available human virtues and values. We often end

up demonizing people with different political ideologies

because of our inability to appreciate the moral motives

operating on the other side of a conflict. We are

surrounded by moral conflicts, on the personal level, the

national level and the international level.

Perplexed? Itching to learn more? Ready Boyle's blog and

follow his links.

Humans: The Strangest Species 

轉貼自︰

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090408-dark-morals.html

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編註︰dark一詞在此不是「黑暗」的意思，而是「不知道」或「不了解」的意思。