Folks strutting with an air of morality should be a warning to us that something bad is on the way.
Deric Bownds reports at MindBlog of new experiments evaluating human behavior. Two points emerge.
- We suggest that affirming a moral identity leads people to feel licensed to act immorally.
- However, when moral identity is threatened, moral behavior is a means to regain some lost self-worth.
So many dead and maimed. Children struck down. All of the noise of economy and politics cannot compare to the wasteland of morality.
A further article here:
A team of researchers, funded by the National Science Foundation, USA, has been investigating the role of ethical and religious beliefs, or ‘sacred values’, in motivating human behavior.
“Sacred values must be studied as they form a core part of individual identity and is the root of cultural conflicts. People want to protect what they hold sacred and it leads to irrational behavior,” says Sonya Sachdeva of Northwestern University
Our ‘moral ecology’ may be the most damaged and requiring our greatest effort.