Morality and human psychology

Each person has his own morality, his own ideas about what is possible or not, what is good and what is bad. When they talk about “morality in general”, they mean public morality: the most general rules of human society, which are considered correct by most people of a certain culture or subculture.

“Decent people behave like this. And so — it is not accepted. «Who is not accepted?» «Everyone».

Instilling views and habits of behavior that correspond to morality is the main task of the moral education of children.

The majority opinion on moral issues is usually a reasonable compromise between high ideas and real life. By nature, men are polygamous, but Christian morality establishes that a man can have only one wife: the men were strained, but the family was the winner. However, this is not the only reasonable solution: for example, the Prophet Muhammad, in a situation where after numerous wars there were four times fewer Muslim men than women, established that there can be up to four wives in a Muslim family.

The volatility of morality

Morality in different societies at different times is different. Religious morality is different from public morality, Old Testament morality is different from New Testament morality, Christian morality is different from Jewish and Muslim morality, and so on.

Over time, changes occur within any religious morality. Four or five hundred years ago it was quite morally torture to force heretics and witches to repent, and then burn them alive at the stake, today this is impossible for Christianity.

Subject to changes in time and public morality. Domostroy, as the foundations of Russian morality, today is nothing more than a historical document, today it is no longer accepted that husbands teach their wives with a whip, and newlyweds hang sheets with blood for everyone to see in the morning after their wedding night.

Morality and religion

Morality and religion are historically very closely linked. However, reducing morality to religious dogmas is debatable. This is especially clear if you try to apply the religious dogmas of the distant past to the realities of today. See Letter to Laura

Male and female morality

The morality of women in some respects differs from the morality of men. The American psychologist and feminist Caroll Gilligan, in her book A Different Voice, argues that a man’s morality is based on his ideas about justice and the rights of other people. A man with strong moral attitudes strives to follow his ideas about what is due, regardless of the specific situation, and is ready to sacrifice his relationships with people to them (“Plato is my friend, but the truth is more precious”), and sometimes people themselves. For a woman, according to K. Gilligan (note — feminists), justice in itself, like other abstract principles, does not really matter — she performs certain actions based on a specific life situation, showing care and sympathy for everyone its participants.

For example, polls of American students conducted after the September 11 attacks showed that men are almost unanimous in their willingness to bomb the Taliban in Afghanistan, demanding retribution and protection of their rights. A different mood prevailed among women: they believed that a counterattack would lead to an increase in mutual hatred and an increase in senseless deaths.

General, public morality is always a compromise between male and female morality, and at different times the ratio of these two views was different. Until the beginning of the XNUMXth century, morality was dominated by male attitudes, however, with the development of feminism and the spread of modern humanism, women’s views and attitudes began to predominate in morality.

Related concepts

1. Morals are what the majority does, considering it normal. «You don’t listen to what they say, you watch what they do.» This is the worldly broth with which we are impregnated from childhood and with which, to our regret or happiness, our moral foundations are laid.
2. Public morality is what the majority considers normal and acceptable. “Decent people behave like this. And so — it is not accepted. «Who is not accepted?» «Everyone».
3. Official morality — officially proclaimed rules of human society, views and assessments. What is required to be taught in schools and what is officially formulated by government officials.
4. Individual morality: what I consider moral is moral. If I was brought up like this and therefore I consider it normal, acceptable, then this is normal and approved. And what I consider ugly and unacceptable is only worthy of condemnation and eradication. The individual morality of an Orthodox person and the morality of a gay man regarding sexual relations is radically different.

Morality: a person’s internal assessment of the norms of his behavior and his actions from the point of view of goodness. Moral is what a person sees in his actions not just as acceptable, but good and good. Immoral — bad, unacceptable, harmful, ethically ugly and unworthy of a person. The more developed a person is, the more he thinks about the good for others. The following can be accepted as a general formula: “It is moral that makes a person healthy and happy without causing significant harm to others. And that which deprives a person of happiness and harms his health is immoral.”

Useful links

Justice communist and Christian — article by Alexander Kruglov