Today I came across research that prompted me to consider a rather nasty question: Has our culture become so stressed and dysfunctional that we are swiftly becoming incapable of acting morally?
The first warning note was sounded by Notre Dame Psychologist Darcia Narvaez who posted a paper on The Decline of Children and the Moral Sense on her Psychology Today blog. Narvaez writes: Read More.
As I continue to wade through the discussions from the Edge Foundation’s conference on The New Science of Morality, I keep bumping into ideas that set off fireworks in my brain. These, by the way, are delicious, sweet fireworks. Today I’m struck by Harvard Assistant Professor Joshua Greene’s assertion that we have to understand how human beings think/feel/act morally, or face the consequences of a divided, dysfunctional, drowning world. My first reaction to Greene’s argument is that he is right, and it’s rather frightening to realize how much of human society is refusing the face the problem/issue of morality.
I’ve spent most of my working life either as a journalist or in politics. Ideally both of those fields would share the same mission of making the world a better place. However, when I look back at my career, I realize that we seldom talked in such terms. Read More.
