1A Lesson for “Do the Right Thing” (46)

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Part One. Lexicon

 

 

1. Tabula rasa, blank slate; we’re born with no morals but learn them through social conditioning.
2. The Kantian; from the philosopher Kant; we’re born with the Moral Law inscribed in our chest so we have an innate understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong.
3. Miscreant; a person with no morals
4. Nihilist; a person who does not believe in right or wrong or meaning. We are born into a world of meaningless nothingness and there is nothing for us to do but “get over the Man” and extract as much pleasure as we can before we die.
5. The Self-Preservationist: I got mine. Get yours. In other words, the Self-Preservationist believes he has no moral responsibility to others.
6. Hobbesian; based on the philosopher Thomas Hobbes who saw human beings as barbarians who needed to be controlled by religious fear, the belief in Hell as a punishment for bad conduct and an Almighty Being to chastise and punish them when they were out of control. Society’s rulers need to inculcate the masses with various religious fears until these fears are internalized and have a controlling, taming effect on our Inner Barbarian.
7. Inculcate: to teach through tireless repetition
8. Moral absolutism: There are timeless, absolute moral laws that can’t be bent, compromised or mitigated no matter what the circumstances.
9. Moral relativism: The idea that special circumstances should allow us to bend the rules.
10. Social Darwinist: I must strengthen myself and let everyone else worry about themselves. If the weak need my help, the hell with them. Let them die off so that the human race can be strengthened as the strong get stronger and the weak die off.
11. BS Artist: There are no rules. I just make “rules” up as I go along.
12. The Moral Sycophant: You are a powerful manipulator who uses your cunning and cleverness to fool and trick people to your advantage. It does not matter that what you do is wrong. What matters is that you do your craft well and as a result you are worthy of my respect and admiration. Someday I would even like to be like you.
13. The Moral Purist: You are a powerful manipulator who uses your cunning and cleverness to fool and trick people to your advantage. What you do is morally abhorrent and reprehensible and I will use every fiber of my being to hunt you down and expose you for the fraud that you are.
14.  The Bleeding Heart: People are not responsible for their wrong actions. They are victims to the greater crimes and injustices of society. We should therefore not spend our energy correcting individual behavior or morality. Rather, we should focus on creating a socially just world that will encourage benevolent behavior.
15. The Moral Skeptic: People are responsible for their individual actions and the fools who embrace the Bleeding Heart view commit the grave mistake of enabling lazy, immoral people, not making them accountable for their bad actions and in turn encouraging their most virulent narcissism to raise its ugly head. Bleeding Hearts are complicit in the crimes of the miscreants they defend.
16. The Moral Determinist: You never change. You’re born a certain way and that’s it. What you see is what you get. Your genes, your biology, your parents, your social conditioning, your schooling, your economic class—all these things determine your fate and you can’t do a damn thing about it, so shut up, stop your whining and accept your fate like a man. 

 

Part Two. Study Questions.

 

One. What is cultural relativism? See pages 46 and 47 in which we see that different cultures have different moral standards.

 

Four responses to the ticket crisis:

 

1. moral absolutism says it’s forbidden to steal, period.
2. Contractual agreement takes priority over stealing prohibition.
3. An uncaring society deserves to be victims of theft and, by implication, other crimes.
4. Nihilism; screw it; anything goes because there is no such thing as right and wrong

 

Two. What is the essay’s main question? Do we universally share a moral sense or are morals an artificial construction designed to inhibit the Hobbesian throng?

 

Hobbesian refers to the worldview, from the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, that human beings are animals or barbarians unless the force of fear keeps their barbaric impulses in check.

 

Some criticize the Hobbesian worldview, which I share for better or worse, as being paranoid, unduly pessimistic, and misanthropic. Of course, a Hobbesian would call himself a “realist.”

 

Three. What is Kant’s Moral Imperative? See page 49, top.

 

Four. How do the two genders moralize differently? 49, top.

 

Five. What are moral instincts? An unspoken revulsion to several categories of human behavior.

 

1. betrayal
2. cowardice
3. cruelty
4. sloth (laziness)
5. greed
6. selfishness
7. willful ignorance
8. using and manipulating others
9. leeching or being a parasite of others
10. dishonesty, especially with intent to deceive (as opposed to sparing someone’s feelings or protecting someone)

 

 

Six. How does the term tsika confuse the assertion that morality is universal? Because tskika emphasizes manner, and we can infer appearances, more than it does morals. See page 54.

 

Seven. What is the moral emphasis with toddlers? Mean and nice vs. right and wrong. See page 55.

 

Part Three: Writing Option for Essay #4 (based on #5 “Writing” on page 59)

 

Write a contrast essay that highlights the differences between morality as an innate sense and morality as an artificial convention taught by culture. Is the distinction between “innate morality” and “conventional morality” legitimate? Explain with 4 mapping statements. For your essay to be successful, I recommend that you narrow the focus of your discussion to one controversial topic. For example, take the topic of polygamy and the religious cults in the United States in which 40-year-old husbands have 20 wives, all in their early teens. Should we "tolerate" polygamy in the name of moral relativism? Or should we condemn polygamy under the doctrine of moral absolutism?

 

Another Essay Option: 

Argue that the film A Simple Plan bolsters the view of moral absolutism by showing us good characters (we have a model of moral goodness), by showing us the perversion of those good characters (through greed and temptation), by showing us the characters’ refusal to reverse the moral perversion process, and by showing us the characters entering a Point of No Return from which there morals are forever damaged. 

Your structure should be as thus: In a page, summarize “Do the Right Thing.” In another page summarize the film A Simple Plan. Then write your thesis in which you argue that the film asserts a position of moral absolutism. Your mapping statements should correspond to the 4 points in the essay option’s first paragraph.

Research Link

Salon

1C Quiz:

In a paragraph, explain the single most terrifying conclusion we learn from the Milgram Experiment.