On Moral Order (shamelessly cut and pasted)
MORAL ORDER
The metaphor of Moral Order fits naturally with the metaphor of Moral Authority, as well as with the literal parental authority central to the Strict Father family. This metaphor is based on a folk theory of the natural order: The natural order is the order of dominance that occurs in the world. Examples of the natural order are as follows:
God is naturally more powerful than people.
People are naturally more powerful than animals and plants and natural objects.
Adults are naturally more powerful than children.
Men are naturally more powerful than women.
The metaphor of Moral Order sees this natural hierarchy of power as moral. The metaphor can be stated simply as: The Moral Order Is the Natural Order.
This metaphor transforms the folk hierarchy of "natural" power relations into a hierarchy of moral authority:
God has moral authority over people.
People have moral authority over nature (animals, plants, and natural objects).
Adults have moral authority over children.
Men have moral authority over women.
The Moral Order metaphor plays a crucial role in an important interpretation of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. It is an entailment of this metaphor that God cares about human beings in the same way as parents care about their children or shepherds care about their flocks or farmers care about their crops. Logically, after all, there is no reason that a supreme being should care about lesser beings. But if the order of dominance is a moral order, then God does care about mere mortals; setting the rules and enforcing them is how he shows he cares, and in return for his care, we owe him obedience. The consequences of the metaphor of Moral Order are enormous, even outside religion. It legitimates a certain class of existing power relations as being natural and therefore moral, and thus makes social movements like feminism appear unnatural and therefore counter to the moral order. It legitimates certain views of nature, e.g., nature as a resource for human use and, correspondingly, man as steward over nature. Accordingly, it delegitimizes other views of nature, e.g., those in which nature has inherent value.
George Lakoff Moral Politics 1996
The metaphor of Moral Order fits naturally with the metaphor of Moral Authority, as well as with the literal parental authority central to the Strict Father family. This metaphor is based on a folk theory of the natural order: The natural order is the order of dominance that occurs in the world. Examples of the natural order are as follows:
God is naturally more powerful than people.
People are naturally more powerful than animals and plants and natural objects.
Adults are naturally more powerful than children.
Men are naturally more powerful than women.
The metaphor of Moral Order sees this natural hierarchy of power as moral. The metaphor can be stated simply as: The Moral Order Is the Natural Order.
This metaphor transforms the folk hierarchy of "natural" power relations into a hierarchy of moral authority:
God has moral authority over people.
People have moral authority over nature (animals, plants, and natural objects).
Adults have moral authority over children.
Men have moral authority over women.
The Moral Order metaphor plays a crucial role in an important interpretation of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. It is an entailment of this metaphor that God cares about human beings in the same way as parents care about their children or shepherds care about their flocks or farmers care about their crops. Logically, after all, there is no reason that a supreme being should care about lesser beings. But if the order of dominance is a moral order, then God does care about mere mortals; setting the rules and enforcing them is how he shows he cares, and in return for his care, we owe him obedience. The consequences of the metaphor of Moral Order are enormous, even outside religion. It legitimates a certain class of existing power relations as being natural and therefore moral, and thus makes social movements like feminism appear unnatural and therefore counter to the moral order. It legitimates certain views of nature, e.g., nature as a resource for human use and, correspondingly, man as steward over nature. Accordingly, it delegitimizes other views of nature, e.g., those in which nature has inherent value.
George Lakoff Moral Politics 1996
posted by Joolya at
9:50 AM
1 Comments:
My cousin is a rancher and a devout Christian. If he sees a bobcat or porcupine or coyote, he stops what he is doing and shoots it. He has a great deal of distain for animal rights activists.
I don't think it's moral to kill animals indiscriminately or overzealously. I don't understand why religious people think their religion justifies this. God made them dominant over the other species? If humanity is truly a shepard, shouldn't we be looking out for God's "lesser" creatures, insuring they had habitat to live in and were not being harmed? How do we know we're not going to wish we hadn't wiped out all the coyotes some day? When all the racoons and possums and armadillos are running amok, is it going to then occur to these people that their good friend the coyote (or wolf or mountain lion) used to keep that problem under control? How many extinctions are going to occur before people start to realize we are playing a gigantic game of Jenga with the ecosystem?
It's called a web of life for a reason. It's all interconnected and it's stronger when it's full of strands, not when it's shot full of holes. If we are shepards of the creatures of the world, it's because we are smart enough that we should be able to see that and act accordingly. We are partners with the rest of the species and our survival will follow theirs.
You could say the same thing about men and women. To say that one sex should dominate another is insane. If you want to get the most and best out of humanity, you have to take whatever contributions you can from whoever it comes from, regardless of sex, religion, politics, orientation, race, or location. We're not there yet.
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