Personal Development

» pink101 - On Moral Failure

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Your presentation of the facts surrounding our failure as a society with the deterioration of morality puts the blame on some sort of societally misguided altruism. That almost sounds as though it is a correct summation.

But, we are going through a post modern time in which the hallmark is in our propensity to take things apart--to decontextualize. It's as though we are unable to let things be. We must take them apart to learn what causes them to be the way they are--to correct our mistakes and to improve our lot. It is what seems best described as a cultural super characteristic, ie., a characteristic of the overall culture.

If we are seeing such a characteristic in the making, it seems it wouldn't come down on us as a fully developed societal skill. Instead, it may take us some time to master it as a culture. Generally, skill development requires a time of trial and error when mistakes are made. So, we learn from our mistakes.

As a culture, we don't much practice the behavior of getting up above our selves and looking down at our actions as though we were particles in a river flowing through time. For some reason we are not very self observant. We don't reflect on how we got to be where we are as a matter of fact.

I wonder if you have any thing to say about these thoughts as they apply to your paper.

-- posted by pink101

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» pradocg - On Moral Failure

In response to On Moral Failure posted by pink101:

Your idea of a "super" characteristic, a kind of cross-cultural development, is interesting. Given that television and the internet have and do, in fact, constitute a kind of super-culture, it may be that what we've always thought of as cultures and their characteristics have become secondary to a global culture. That would explain a lot, especially how the new tolerance seems to make important cultural characteristics more individual or peculiar to groups.

Your remark about postmodernism prompts a lot; too much for this medium. I'll just say I see postmodernism as mainly an irrecoverable loss of innocence. We found out that there's always more to be said about even the most authoritative pronouncement or claim or doctrine; that they can always be "deconstructed," and that was the end of certainty.

-- posted by pradocg

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» pink101 - On Moral Failure

In response to On Moral Failure posted by pradocg:

You might have some familiarity with Talcott Parsons who was quite a famous sociologist.

He brought up the idea of the Super Group. There had been an idea that the largest of sociological groups was the nation. But, Parsons noted that some groups cut across national borders. He showed that cultures and super groups seem to be almost concomitant with each other and that they supersede national societies. Maybe this presages the death of the nation state. Could this be related to our problem with Illegal Immigrants and what's going on in the Middle East?

I brought up postmodernism as a independent variable of what you're calling Moral Failure in our society. I think it has to be considered. We're taking everything apart by way of deconstruction. The recent Dan Brown book, The DaVinci Code, is an example of postmodernism at work. We seem to be getting pretty good at it. I'm sure, in your field, you have spent some time deconstructing various philosophies.

-- posted by pink101

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