How many posts at this site have been about the election? I haven't counted them, but there are so many that it almost seems like an obsessive pursuit. It's almost a little embarrassing, especially for a website that does not present itself as a current events or news commentary site.…
Jon Stewart's team does a great job of editing George W. Bush speeches from five years ago and from recent days. It does seem to be the same speech. Consider this earlier post, and the opening lines from the BBC's terrific documentary: “The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows In The…
I sleep with a lot of books near my bed so that I can learn by osmosis, I joke. Now, check out this surreal statement by Sarah Palin on why Alaska's proximity to Russian and Canada bolsters her foreign policy credentials. And notice another reference to the impending attack on…
Over the years, I’ve often thought of the following quote: “The child is father of the man.” These words often haunt me deeply. They capture the absurd but true notion that each of us is nurtured and tutored (and sometimes damaged or destroyed) by younger versions of ourselves.
At one time, I thought the meaning of this quote was obvious, but now I see that it isn’t obvious at all. By the way, my interpretation has nothing to do with the fact that the quote is written in a masculine version. The quote could and should be translated to cover both male and female. Something like, “The Child is the parent of the Adult.”
The quote appears as part of a poem by Wordsworth:
“MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD”
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
What, then, is the meaning of “”The child is father of the man”? Here is my interpretation. Think of the person you are today. Think of the life that you are currently living. Consider both the predicaments you are now in and the joys you are now experiencing. Much of that (or all of that) has been made …
For the past few years, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has successfully injected a huge does of psychology into the study of morality. Along the way, he has gone a long way toward bridging the “is” with the “ought,” a chasm that many philosophers have insisted to be unbridgeable. Haidt explores these moral-psychological issues in highly readable form in his 2006 book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Here’s a photo of my personal well-worn copy of Haidt’s book:
Based on his experiments, Haidt has been extraordinarily successful in describing the moral differences distinguishing conservatives and liberals. Which group is more moral? That isn’t the right question, according to Haidt. Both of these groups sincerely strive to be “moral.” Conservatives and liberals differ in the way they characterize morality because they base their differing moral senses on different measures. Based on Haidt’s research, there are the five separate measures (I think of them as tectonic plates) that underlie all moral systems. Conservative morality substantially draws on all five of these five measures:
– harm/care
– fairness/reciprocity
– ingroup/loyalty
– authority/respect, and
– purity/sanctity
For liberals, however, the moral domain consists primarily (or only) of the first two of these five measures (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity). For liberals, the other three measures (I’ll call them “conservative measures”) tend to fly under the liberal radar. In fact, many liberals scoff at claims that the conservative measures (ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity) have anything at all to do with morality. To avoid a …
