Morality

What are your morals?

Currently I am reading a book entitled, The Righteous Mind which at times is dry and at other times fantastic! I hope to write more about this in the future but in the meantime, I will share with you a site that is set up that asks you questions about your morality. Your responses are then compared to others who have taken the tests and you will begin to see what areas drive your morality.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

"Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral Foundations Theory. Like Democrats, they can talk about innocent victims (of harmful Democratic policies) and about fairness (particularly the unfairness of taking tax money from hardworking and prudent people to support cheaters, slackers, and irresponsible fools). But Republicans since Nixon have had a near-monopoly on appeals to loyalty (particularly patriotism and military virtues) and authority (including respect for parents, teachers, elders, and the police, as well as for traditions). And after they embraced Christian conservatives during Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign and became the party of “family values,” Republicans inherited a powerful network of Christian ideas about sanctity and sexuality that allowed them to portray Democrats as the party of Sodom and Gomorrah."


His point in this is that conservatives generally have a larger pallet for making moral claims than liberals do. (Mind you the author is very liberal on all accounts). His point is that if liberals want to become proactive in helping others move toward a more liberal society, then liberals must tap into more than just concern for victims and fairness.


Taxes and Morality

I was listening to KERA's "Think" today for about 30 seconds and the guest spoke to an issue which Estee and I have have spoken about many a times (especially around election times): Taxes.

Estee in the past has argued for a simple "flat tax" for all people, regardless of income. It is standard and easy to understand so most people can comprehend the idea we all are paying the same percentage. Whereas I have been a fan of "graduated tax rates" in which the more you make the more you pay in taxes.

The guest on "Think" stated why I think there needs to be graduated tax rates, "There is no wealth without society." He stated there is a moral obligation which the ancient western civilizations understood. (As a side note, he said the debate on taxes is older than the "one man, one woman for marriage" argument according to Scripture in which Jesus is asked what a woman is to do when her husband dies.)

The moral obligation is this: if you gain wealth you gained it as a result of society. You did not earn that money on your own, society gave it to you. Thus you have a moral obligation to give back to the society which gave you so much so that others might have the same opportunities you were given AND for the future viability of the society.

This is a reminder to me that, in the words of Malcolm Galdwell, "No one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires and not even geniuses- ever makes it alone."

Freakanomic tidbits from a tearaway calendar

Just some things from the 2007 Freakonomics tear away calendar which I thought are interesting.

July 24-
In Palto's Republic, when Socrates express a belief in the essential goodness of man, a student named Glaucon counters with the tale of the shepherd Gyges, who discovered a ring that made him invisible. With no one able to monitor his behavior, Gyges proceeded to do wonderful things - seduce the queen, murder the king, and so on. The story poses a moral question: can a person resist the temptation of evil if he knows his acts cannot not be witnessed?

August 1-
On a per capita basis, Switzerland, has more firearms than just about any country, and yet it is one of the safest places in the world.

August 12-
Among the many forms of customer sabotage, one of the most prevalent occurs in bookstores, where customers hide books by certain authors (Ann Coulter and Michael Moore, for instance) out of political protest. Some stores have even eliminated garbage cans, since too many partisan books were ending up in the trash.

August 23-
People often say one thing and do another. This gap represents the difference between what economists call a "declared preference" (what you say you'll do) and an "expressed preference" (what you actually do).

August 29-
Research has shown that when people are given a small stipend for donating blood, they actually tend to give less blood. The money transforms a noble act of charity into a discomfiting way to make a few dollars.

September 1-
Here are four factors strongly correlated with childhood test scores:
  1. The child has highly educated parents
  2. The child's parents have high socioeconomic status
  3. The child's mother was over thirty or older at the time of her first child's birth
  4. The child has many books in his home

September 1-
Here are four factors that are not strongly correlated with childhood test scores:

  1. The child's parents recently moved into a better neighborhood
  2. The child's mother didn't work between birth and kindergarten
  3. The child's parents regularly take him to museums
  4. The child frequently watches television