The first essay I wrote for Building Just Institutions.
One of the central tensions that has emerged in this first part of the course has been the apparent contradiction between the idea that human beings always view the world through a moral lens (or put another way, that social life necessarily involves morality) and the idea that our current culture (or modernity/postmodernity more generally) is defined by its explicit “demoralization” of social life—that is, shared public moral vocabularies are disappearing, and people (such as elite college students) are often incapable of articulating moral concerns and taking strong moral stances. Is there a way to resolve this apparent contradiction? Or are these ideas coming from completely different perspectives on the problem?
Drawing on the readings from the class, explore this apparent contradiction. Take a stance on the matter and construct a convincing argument for how we should think about this problem.
We attempt to resolve the apparent contradiction between criticisms of the morally removed mindsets of emerging adults and the framework of the inherent morality of human actions. Using Haidt and Smith, we resolve arguments from Brooks and Smith regarding moral relativism as well as other concerns. We find that historical changes in tolerance help account for the disconnect between moral vocabularies and moral actions. Without considering the potential harms or benefits of this shift, we use principles established by Haidt to analyze the competing ideologies that help drive this change in the public moral lexicon.
Critics have long expressed disappointment with the moral illiteracy of the young adults of their times. The current generation of emerging adults has been critiqued as a generation that lacks the moral education to make coherent moral appraisals and decisions. Some even contend that young adults can no longer recognize morality. These detractors yearn for the days when the population was morally articulate and embodied principles like courage. But despite emerging adults’ inability to make moral considerations, some authors espouse the view that every facet of human existence is governed by a level of moral consideration. Moral thinking defines personhood. This contradiction between the absence of moral judgment and the existence of panoptic moral judgment arises only when both concepts are abridged. American sociologist Christian Smith even contends for both stances. By understanding the critical reproaches of emerging moral relativism with regard to this universal moral framework these two seemingly paradoxical views can be resolved. Furthermore, appreciating the current generation as a product of historical events and irrational brain activity will give insight into the thought processes of young adults.
Both Jonathan Haidt and Christian Smith claim that all human action is the product of moral scrutiny and consideration. Jonathan Haidt (2012:xiii) describes his book by saying, “I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.” Resonating Haidt’s sentiment, Christian Smith (2003:7) argues, “Human culture is always moral order. Human cultures are everywhere moral orders. Human persons are nearly inescapably moral agents. Human actions are necessarily morally constituted and propelled practices. And human institutions are inevitably morally infused configurations of rules and resources.” With such encompassing statements about the presence of morality, it is counterintuitive that some, including Smith, have decried the moral deafness witnessed in emerging adults. Indeed, if every human action is propelled by morality, the idea that the generation of emerging adults could be morally unaware is certainly paradoxical.
To begin to mollify the dissonance between both claims, the generic sentiment against emergent youth must first be resolved as a similar but distinct concern from more specific critiques. New York Times writer David Brooks (2001) helps articulate this prevailing attitude by writing in his analysis of Ivy League students that, “Today’s students do not inherit a concrete and articulated moral system—a set of ideals to instruct privileged men and women on how to live, how to see their duties, and how to call upon their highest efforts”. Brooks bemoans a culture that has lost its vocabulary and, as a result, the culture that went with it. He finds that the replacement of courage and character with achievement and success has come at the price of explicit moral judgment and a sense of ultimate satisfaction. Brooks implies the individuals that he converses with are morally mute or morally avoidant.
This viewpoint should first be viewed in context with Jonathan Haidt’s view of the moral vocabulary of Ivy League students. Haidt (2012:110) claims that the vocabulary of the Ivy League students Brooks interviewed is narrowed due to their perception of separate objects and their belief of individual autonomy. Further developing this idea, Smith (2011:24) writes, “In this world of moral individualism, then, anyone can hold their own convictions about morality, but they also must keep those views private. Giving voice to one’s own moral views is itself nearly immoral”. Thus, Smith has begun resolving the qualms that David Brooks has. Brooks encounters a group of students that do have a concrete moral system; it is one of moral autonomy and individual freedom. With such a system comes a moral unwillingness to engage the topics that Brooks wants to, at least in the group setting. This individualism helps to explain why Haidt got students to engage and explain their feelings of disgust when discussing topics in an individual setting. Smith accounts for the reason for the shift that Brooks identifies. Smith (2011:26) points to September 11th, the Crusades, Jim Crow, the Holocaust, Communism, and the Rwandan genocide as examples of absolute moral impositions with horrid consequences that call for moral and religious tolerance. Though Smith has problems with the end result, emergent adults see tolerance as a method for conflict prevention; the absolute moral guidelines of old Princeton gave way to the new moral guidelines that value autonomy. Instead of upholding the moral virtue of courage, students now uphold the moral virtue of freedom of thought. One moral system replaced another—one moral culture replaced by another.
The world may be going to hell, may indeed have arrived, but the human world is a moral world; it could hardly be otherwise. A different morality has emerged: not everything is permitted; in it many old things are still forbidden, and some strangely new, as well as newly strange (Licht 1999).
This model reconciles itself with the idea presented by Haidt and Smith that every decision is morally charged. Each decision made by these Princeton individuals to allow others their beliefs is in fact a moral decision. Brooks (2001) even acknowledges the benefits of this shift, writing, “And in most ways it reflects the best of America… …They are responsible. They are generous. They are bright. They are good-natured.” But just resolving Brooks’s claim with the idea that every action is steeped in moral consideration does not resolve the whole conflict.
Smith elaborates on Brooks’s statements and contends that emerging adults have lost, not hidden as Brooks witnesses, their capacity of moral judgment. With this loss of judgment, Smith argues, comes a loss of moral action that does not bode well for society.
These cases make it clear that many emerging adults do not have a good handle on what makes something a moral issue or what the specifically moral dimensions of such situations are. The idea of distinctly moral goods and bads, rights and wrongs, is not engaged. What comes to the fore instead are straightforwardly practical, utilitarian, financial, and psychological dilemmas (Smith 2011:59).
Smith asserts that emerging adults can no longer recognize what morality is. Smith continues, “The rest either think they do not face any moral conflicts or uncertainties, think that they do when in fact they really do not, or do not understand what ‘moral’ means”. The difference between Smith’s claim and Brooks’s argument is that Smith finds emerging adults as a group that is unable to knowingly make decisions by referencing morality. Brooks found students who could, but were >span data-balloon=”Joshua: Is this actually the case?”>only to do so individualistically</span>. It would ultimately be self-defeating if Smith himself could not resolve these statements with his claim that everything is inherently moral. But before Smith offers a theoretical approach to understanding how the contradiction should be approached, Haidt offers the observation that the moral literacy that Smith seeks is often unfound in moral relativism. This contributes to the cycle of moral illiteracy that Smith addresses. When asked obviously morally charged questions, participants in Haidt’s (2012:25) experiments “seemed to be morally dumbfounded—rendered speechless by their inability to explain verbally what they knew intuitively”. This same behavior can be witnessed in interviewees that Smith questions. Haidt argues that the participants understand that the morally charged situations are wrong, at some basic fundamentally moral level, yet they are unable to enunciate lucid statements. Haidt explains that rationale lags behind and often fails to justify emotional impulses. This innate theory principle can be summarized as, “Just as we intuitively know what we can and cannot say, so too might we have an intuitive appreciation of what is morally permissible and what is forbidden” (Jones 2008). Haidt’s theory helps to reason why Smith’s two statements are not mutually exclusive. All actions and human behaviors are morally charged and have moral consequences and people can recognize them intuitively. Yet in the modern world, where emotions cannot simply be justified against simple morals presumed by religion or any other command because historical atrocities have led to negative views of moral absolutism, rational thinking is often stonewalled or lost in the several layers of rational thinking.
This differentiates between Smith’s arguments. Emerging adults have lost the vocabulary and propensity for moral thinking, but their modern replacements: utilitarianism, the harm principle, financial rationality, etc. are all moral because these ideas assume that utility, freedom, or financial logic is good—that there is a moral impetus to achieve these ideas. These schools of thought are layered onto morality, complicating the idea and also obscuring morality from those who abide by their principles. Thus, people can be both blind to the fundamental aspects of the arguments they make or unable to enunciate the rationale behind them, but the considerations that people make in their decisions can still be fundamentally moral. A comparison lies in the modern era of technology. Relatively few people understand how to write the actual ones and zeroes computers use but they are still able to utilize computers and their ones and zeroes to watch videos of cats playing in cardboard boxes. Similarly, people may not be able to understand the moral absolutism at their arguments rely on but people still use moral absolutism in their financial rationale in the decision making process. The levels that people must traverse through logically to reach the instantaneous moral judgments they make are far too dense. Ultimately, Smith (2003:88) is not claiming that people are able to make decisions without making moral judgments or being completely morally relative. “Nobody is really a relativist, no matter what they say. Scratch hard enough—usually it doesn’t take much—and one discovers that hard-core “relativists” are in fact believers and actors in some story or other”. Smith recognizes that individuals who were true relativists would be unable to function in reality. In reality, Smith’s claim is that not recognizing the moral judgments one makes when determining a course of action is dangerous.
Both concerns raised by Brooks and Smith are resolved within Smith’s framework of universal moral deliberation. The dissatisfaction with moral relativism expressed by Brooks is best understood in historical context, as moral individualism is, nevertheless, a value driven by moral considerations. Smith is frustrated with moral relativism’s effect of disconnecting vocabulary with the underlying moral reasoning. As people grow further and further apart from the root of their thinking, Smith argues, people are unable to reason at the fundamental level of morality. However, the general reasoning that people use to make decisions in life are still, though a few levels removed, moral arguments. This nuanced distinction resolves the contradiction between people not using moral consideration to make inherently moral considerations. Finally, by using Haidt’s research, both arguments are understood as a product of society and of basic brain behavior. As society tries to be more tolerant and as groups of individuals become more individualized, so too does their thinking. And because society ultimately fuels the moral considerations that people make, the further removed ideas are from ultimate moral guidelines, the more difficult it is for individuals to produce the vocabulary to express their primal moral judgments and emotions. Examining moral relativism in its historical context and from its neurological work gives insight into the apparent disconnect that both Brooks and Smith criticizes.
Ultimately, the argument suffers in its clarity and cogency. The various pieces do not hold together very well. Summarizing or trying to tie the readings together does not necessarily substantiate your argument. Try to use empirical examples. Favor the concrete and specific over the general and abstract. The paper is also bogged down by writing that comes across as unnecessaily verbose at times (with questionable word choices). This affects your argument’s clarity. There are some interesting ideas in this paper that could be developed.