People are violent because their morality demands it
November 29, 2015 2:02 AM   Subscribe

How could they? There have been many cultures and historical periods where people did not particularly value happiness, or where they actively sought out suffering because they saw it as morally cleansing. (Tage Rai via Aeon)

During these interviews, the researchers presented their participants with a series of hypothetical peace deals; some deals included material incentives for giving up disputed land. A peculiar inconsistency emerged. A subset of the respondents saw the disputed land as just another resource: they were therefore willing to trade it for financial compensation and sign the peace deal, just as the rational model predicted. Other participants, however, saw the land as sacred, tied to their communal identity. For these participants, adding financial compensation reduced support for the deal. They showed elevated levels of anger and disgust, as well as increased enthusiasm for violence.

Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By ‘moral’, I mean that people are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should. Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations.
posted by Shouraku (0 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: I completely understand that you are posting this as an interesting article, but it's basically an open invitation to fight about pretty much All The Things, and with several very difficult threads about violence going on we just don't have the bandwidth for that kind of moderation-heavy discussion. Maybe another time? -- taz



 

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