12

Moral Outrage: A Theory on Why We’re Seeing So Much of It

Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 9 months ago to Culture
65 comments | Share | Flag

I've been saying this for quite a while now...so I'm not crazy or morally outraged. What we've been seeing with the left, the academics, the protesters, is an attempt to draw attention to others when they themselves are guilty. The difference is, these groups are not aware of their own behavior but somewhere deep deep inside, (you've got to go really really deep), they act out instinctively.

What's really disturbing about these groups is we're paying them to do so, money right out of your back pocket through taxes, donations and investments.

There is something to be said about Conscious Self inspection; but for the acts of government, politics, and destruction of your property, at our expense, we are justified to be outraged because we expected better of them.

So much for the separation of morality, ethics, accountability and state.


All Comments


Previous comments...   You are currently on page 3.
  • Posted by $ 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Good stuff...however, I need not, nor most of us here, Re-establish our moral standing, because we are willing and able to self inspect and adjust and admit. The observations in these studies show us that those morally outraged do not have that self introspection other wise we could have a conversation with them without all the destruction and violence.
    That's my take anyway.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Again, as I referenced earlier, one of the salient studies was "Techniques of Neutralization" by Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1964). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techniq...

    Denial of responsibility. (They made me do it. This was retaliation, not aggression.)
    Denial of injury. (Nothing much was harmed, no one was much hurt.)
    Denial of the victim. (They deserved it.)
    Condemnation of the condemners. (You are worse than us.)
    Appeal to higher loyalties. (Greater good, higher purpose, higher moral law, deeper commitments.)

    As you can see, it applies to the Civil Rights movement as well as to Galt's Strike. The techniques are morally neutral. It is just how people think (maybe just WEIRD people - see above https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... ).
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You are morally outraged at the weak-minded. You join us here in your moral outrage to re-establish your moral standing in your own view.

    What you said above is true, but it denies the importance of the study. Barbara Branden taught a class called "Efficient Thinking." I only know out-takes from it; I attended one lecture as a guest many decades ago. But identifying errors is part of the process of establishing good habits.

    Another example in the same vein is "Cognitive Dissonance." Conservative bloggers have correctly identified it as a modality of left-wing thinking (or ahem "thinking"). It explains why protests against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did not continue into the Obama administration. But the theory was developed, in part, on the basis of how people live with buying the wrong car.

    For an example of applied good thinking, read "The WEIRDest People in the World" "

    It is about a truly unusual group: people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
    (WEIRD)1 societies. In particular, it is about the Western, and more specifically American, undergraduates who form the bulk of the database in the experimental branches of psychology, cognitive science, and economics, as well as allied fields (hereafter collectively labeled the “behavioral sciences”).

    http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/Wei...

    The authors of that study did not intend it, but in toto it does outline why we are materially successful relative to the great population of "everyone else." We have a peculiar way of looking at the world. Even our "natural" optical illusions are not common to other peoples.

    One example from that relevant to Objectivism is that some other peoples, such as Russians and Saudi Arabians are willing to engage in "altruistic punishment" giving up a reward in order to make someone else suffer. That's not us... Is it?
    Reply | Permalink  
  • -4
    Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Dinesh d'Souza probably experiences moral outrage the same as everyone else. (Fear of spiders... love of friends... a good night's sleep... watching for pedestrians... People are people.) As a point of fact, d'Souza is a convicted criminal who willfully broke political campaign contribution laws. He knew the law. He knew that his actions were wrong - if not under law, then factually; we can argue that - and his moral outrage at "Hillary's America" allows him to re-establish his view of himself.... yourself... myself...

    This is not special to one group or to any individual. It is how people work internally. The authors were only attracted by a recent mass mediated expression of it. So, as psychologists, they studied it.

    And it is not new with them. They began this work at least five years ago with other colleagues.
    Zachary Rothschild here:
    https://www.bowdoin.edu/faculty/z/zro...
    Lucas Keefer here:
    https://www.usm.edu/psychology/facult...

    (I am morally outraged because you do not do your homework.)
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It applies to all political persuasions, to all religious or philosophical systems, and it applies to individuals with no special self-identifications, who condemn their neighbors for not mowing the lawn.

    You are engaging in right now when you condemn Democrats and Hillary Clinton. You re-establish your own moral superiority.

    Also, see their fifth test; " Study 5 showed that guilt-driven outrage was attenuated by an affirmation of moral identity in an unrelated context." When you socialize here with friends over music, for instance, you diminish your moral outrage against the Democrats and the former First Lady. You do socialize here about music, don't you?
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I did, and even though I had been studying the subject for a while...I still learned a few new things.

    Case in point, Dinesh came to America to be an American and he learned not just our constitution but our history as well...There is no better American that the ones that Want to be and can appreciate and live the dream.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago
    Deflect, lie, deflect. Straight out the Democrat playbook. See Dinesh D'Souza's movie "Hillary's America".
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, even though Jaynes credits metaphors and rightfully so, writing was a key factor also...maybe even more once your realize the movements you make and the connections created in the brain.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Well, I agree broadly, just as the Bolsheviks were much worse than the Amana Cooperative. But not being worse than someone else is not a standard for virtue. Personally, I believe that there are more differences within groups than across groups. Get a big enough group and you find all kinds of people. Nonetheless some differences are salient, otherwise groups would not exist.

    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is important to understand. The mind was an invention, an outgrowth of writing which was developed to facilitate counting. We think that base-10 is "natural" but that and the alphabet are at once the children and parents of the mind.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Actually weak brained, they have no mind inwhich to control their brain....laughing but it's really sad...we as a species have only had 3000 years to work on conscious behavior.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Christians/hebrews were never as brutal, heartless or stupid like islam is...understanding of course, that the most heads or leaders of anything in the past and even in the present have always lacked conscience and perpetuated their own prospects and kept the masses in the dark.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by Lucky 8 years, 9 months ago
    Moral outrage. Moral posturing. Virtue signalling. etc.

    This explanation is unconvincing.
    Rather, it is simply a wish (instinct?) to belong to a group.

    Those who are loud in public will not join the calm reasoners, or the indifferent.
    They are joining a bandwagon.
    There is no need to investigate their past for moral failings, they are just weak minded.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 9 months ago
    The guilty often accuse the innocent of the acts the guilty have committed.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 9 months ago
    The article appeared in Motivation and Emotion February 2017 (Springer Verlag here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.... ). It is $40 from the publisher. You can try JSTOR for access. While I trust the Reason summary, it is best to have the original paper, if you care. Also, as is common, we might find it posted on the author's own pages later (just not yet, however).

    As for the theory... This can also explain why anti-government conservatives, especially Christians, are morally outraged over Islamic terrorism.

    Similarly, I find that Sykes and Matza's theory of "Techniques of Neutralization," which was developed from work with juvenile delinquents applies, to the civil rights movement, in particular, but to just about all anti-social behavior, including conservative extremism, "ethnic cleansing," and warfare between nations.

    Pot... kettle... black...
    Reply | Permalink  

  • Comment hidden. Undo