Morals Authority
Miller-McCune
By: Tom Jacobs | April 14, 2009 | 09:20 AM (PDT)
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture_society/morals-authority-1099 (http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture_society/morals-authority-1099)
Liberals and conservatives conceive of morality in decidedly different ways. Jonathan Haidt has mapped out their competing ethical universes in hopes they can learn to peacefully coexist.
Jonathan Haidt is hardly a road-rage kind of guy, but he does get irritated by self-righteous bumper stickers. The soft-spoken psychologist is acutely annoyed by certain smug slogans that adorn the cars of fellow liberals: "Support our troops: Bring them home" and "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
"No conservative reads those bumper stickers and thinks, 'Hmm — so liberals are patriotic!'" he says, in a sarcastic tone of voice that jarringly contrasts with his usual subdued sincerity. "We liberals are universalists and humanists; it's not part of our morality to highly value nations. So to claim dissent is patriotic — or that we're supporting the troops, when in fact we're opposing the war — is disingenuous.
Like religion, morals and ethics are man made. Man is evolved from animals and has animal instinct. As long as there is the instinct to survive there is going to be differences in what humans want and how they go about it.