In his article, “Going-against-the-grainers: If our ethical beliefs come from our social environment, how do some people find the moral courage to defy convention?” Dane Leigh Gogoshin makes the argument that the moral ecology perspective of moral development is not wrong, but incomplete and perhaps overly simplistic. He acknowledges that our communities greatly influence our values, belief, and subsequently our moral alignment with those communities. However, his conclusion is that lower sensitivity to the blame and praise of the community’s moral judgement, along with one familial moral education toward listening to one’s inner moral compass produces the right combination necessary for “against-the-grainers”.
Read the full article here: https://aeon.co/essays/how-do-some-people-manage-to-go-against-the-moral-grain
From a psychological perspective, which Gogoshin does briefly touch upon, he is quite accurate in his assessment. However, it is still missing some key elements. Western, but particularly American, society is founded a false belief that each of us a unique individual, making individually knowing choices for ourselves, and are individually responsible for the outcomes of those choices. I emphasize “individual”, because while it is true part of everyone’s identity, values, and actions are uniquely their own, there is another part which is created and owned the communities we were raised in and inhabit often without consciousness that thoughts in our mind did not originate with us. Noted scholar Maurice Halbwachs calls this societal milieu of historically embedded belief and values as “collective memory”, but has also been described as a community’s “collective consciousness”. It is a real, though intangible, object that we are not just immersed in, but comprises a part of who we are.
These two parts of the Self, are what Gogoshin is referring to in the conflict between one’s moral community and their own moral inclinations. There is an underlying assumption that is implied through the mentioning of “moral compass”, but never explicitly addressed. The suggestion is that one’s moral directionality is completely unique to themselves prior to community indoctrination, and that by being taught to listen to our intrinsic selves, it could lead to widely variable set of moral perspectives. Such an implication opens the door for some conclusions that are best to the sensationalism of Hollywood movies. In particular, the possibility that one’s intrinsic self could be morally ambivalent to acts of cruelty, exploitation, and abuse of others.
While Gogoshin does discuss some humanistic psychology from Deci & Ryan extrinsic value orientation, he neglects to state what is both a critical assumption and empirically validated outcome of all humanism: given the necessary social support and resources to achieve one’s potential, they will naturally become pro-social contributors to their communities with collaboration, empathy, and compassion for those around them. Barring some extreme neurological conditions of psychopathy, a functioning person will never intrinsically gravitate toward exploitation of harm of other once their needs are met to self-actualize. The depiction of such a person is purely the realm of fiction.
This natural tendency toward prosocial behavior, values, and belief I describe as part of the humanistic moral compass that is shared across our specific, irrespective of intrinsic diversity. The term “intrinsic” is sometimes used synonymously with “unique”, with an assumption that everything which originates from within is inherently unique that individual. However, such an assumption denies the shared humanity we are all connected by.
The inner moral compass that tells us there’s something wrong with the moral perspective of our community is generated by the same innately enlightened humanity we all possess. It is the distortions of our indoctrinated values that produce the depraved variations we so commonly through history and evermore present in our modern reality.