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Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America's Culture

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Demeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 02:24 PM
Original message
Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America's Culture
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_060308_moral_endo_skeletons.htm

March 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.
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ThoughtCriminal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 02:48 PM
Response to Original message
1. "Moralists" have problems with temptation
They seem to lack the strength to resist it themselves and project that weakness on everybody else. Thrashy TV just confirms for them that everybody must be as immoral as they are (or would like to be).
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undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 02:51 PM
Response to Original message
2. This is why I am dualist and KICK
Evil exists people. It is real and devouring the left and the right..and I have an "endoskeleton" ! Take off the blinders!
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undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 02:57 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Bullies must be contained
Sociopaths need to be reigned in and thier antics not tolerated.Some people cannot be trusted with freedom because they are morally depraved they exist on the right AND the left.
Put the"wolf" back in the cage..to do this we MUST JUDGE evil and we must be INTOLERANT,of evil people and we must be ethical in our own lives and DISCERN good and evil..
Evil exists.And it never stopss trying to rule.
We need our myths as false as they are..It helps develop morality in the onbes without an inner locus of self control on the left and the right.
We need our innder cop to lock up the inner wolf and keep us away from wrong desire. Yes some desires are WRONG.

Really.

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SnowGoose Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 03:11 PM
Response to Original message
4. And Bush is a snail.
No endoskeleton, no exoskeleton. Just a big, showy shell that he carries around to disguise his spineless, immoral self.
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Lisa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-10-06 01:46 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. are there snails which can swap shells?
What I have in mind is kind of like a hermit crab, but (as you say) lacking an exoskeleton, and slimy, to boot! Bush is always swiping other people's ideas -- McCain's populism, Gore's environmental activism -- and disguising them as his own.

Maybe a caddisfly larva (which builds up a shell by taking bits and pieces and sticking them together) ... only less resourceful and creative.
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Demeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 04:33 PM
Response to Original message
5. Republicans Thought the Democrats Were Corrupt, So They Gave
themselves license to steal as much as possible. The fact that the Democrats weren't (and couldn't) be even 105 as corrupt has never penetrated their paranoia. They don't need exoskeletons, they need shackles and bars and baggy orange jumpsuits.
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yurbud Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-10-06 01:17 AM
Response to Original message
6. this got a vote from me for the title alone
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Lisa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-10-06 01:49 PM
Response to Original message
8. thanks for posting!
Recommended -- and forwarded to a Unitarian minister I know.
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roseBudd Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-10-06 07:37 PM
Response to Original message
9. I'm an atheist and I don't need a reason to do right, I just do...
And because I don't get my idea of right from the bible my idea of right includes not driving unnecessarily (pollution) not littering, the 3 Rs, reduce, reuse, recycle.
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Demeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-11-06 09:54 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. Ah! But You Can Deal With Reality!
Do you have any idea what a novelty you are in this country? (Are you male, single, hetero and over the age of consent? Just wondering....)
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