http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_060308_moral_endo_skeletons.htmMarch 8, 2006
Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America's Cultural Divide and Current Crisis
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
"In the months after the 2004 election, when the Red States were said to have voted on the basis of their "moral values," it was noted by many observers that the sleazy TV and movies the traditionalist and Christian right denounce so energetically also tend to get their highest ratings in the same parts of the country most populated by such people. (It was noted, as well, that some of the family pathologies that traditionalists decry are found at high rates among these most vocal proponents of "family values.") Some took this as a clear indication of the hypocrisy of the conservatives: what they denounce, they also secretly enjoy. They are not as concerned about morality, this critique declared, as they pretend to be. A posture of devotion to righteousness, all the while indulging forbidden impulses in hidden ways.
Different Structures of Morality
From my discussions of morality with religious traditionalists, I've gleaned that many of them assume that people who do not believe in their firm moral structures --who do not believe in God, or in the Ten Commandments, or in inviolable and absolute rules of moral conduct-- must be living lives of sin and debauchery. They cannot understand --and often seem unwilling even to believe-- that people like Unitarians might be living the well-ordered lives --as hard-working and law-abiding citizens, as responsible and dedicated family people-- that they themselves strive to do. Their failure to understand how non-believing "liberals" can live moral lives is actually the reverse side of the same coin from the liberals' imputation of hypocrisy to the red staters who watch "Desperate Housewives" and may also have disordered family lives. And these misunderstandings derive from the two groups' having different moral structures.
Differences in the Locus of Control
It was a student of mine (in an adult education class about "America's Moral Crisis") who came up with the apt image. It didn't matter much to her, she said, whether her society has a lot of enforced rules. She's got her moral beliefs firmly inside her-- a kind of endo-skeleton, she said.
We had been talking about the distress American traditionalists have felt at the erosion of a social consensus about the straight-and-narrow path. Morality for them, she said, seemed to be a kind of exo-skeleton. This was her image to capture their reliance on external moral structures --laws, punishments, etc.-- to keep them within the moral confines in which they believe.
In that perspective, some of what might seem anomalies --or hypocrisies-- of some traditionalists makes greater sense.
It becomes clear why such people --with intense moral concerns combined with a reliance on external moral structures to keep one's own forbidden impulses in check-- would support a state that enforces moral rules and a social culture that stigmatizes those who violate those rules. It really is a threat to them --a threat to their own inner moral order--when the society around them fails to be clear in its rules and strict in its enforcement."
http://nonesoblind.org/Andrew Bard Schmookler's website –www.nonesoblind.org —is devoted to understanding the roots of America’s present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America’s Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. Schmookler can be reached at andythebard@comcast.net
A LONG AND THOUGHT-FILLED ANALYSIS WELL WORTH THE READ! EXPLAINS MORE THAN I THOUGHT POSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT RED STATES AND BLUE STATES AND THE PEOPLE IN THEM.