9/9/14
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Have you ever felt as though your age prohibited you from speaking your mind? I know I certainly have. In any given situation, even a "moral moment", it is much easier to stand up to or disagree with someone your own age or younger, and much more difficult to do so with someone older. But WHY is that?
When I interviewed my mom about a moral moment she'd experienced in her life, she told me about a time when she was my age. She and her friends were at the beach one summer day, when she overheard a mother begin to scream at her child, a boy who appeared to be about seven years old. The boy began to cry as his mother yelled louder and louder. The entire beach was in shock when she started to aggressively hit her son. This went on for about fifteen minutes before the woman yanked her screaming son by the arm and dragged him to the car.
When I asked my mom if she had said anything, she told me she hadn't. She said she was intimidated by the woman, who was significantly older than her, and she hadn't felt it was "her place", as she was just a teenager. However, when I asked her if she were to witness the same situation today, she told me she would have intervened. Why is this that age affects whether or not our moral instinct is valid enough?
After spending some time analyzing this question, I realized that there is a power dynamic that comes along with age. For example, the teacher in a classroom is almost always older than all their students, and the teacher is in the position of authority in that particular setting. Children are raised being taught to "respect their elders". By saying this, we are teaching kids that their elders are wiser and more knowledgable than they are. Authority is one of the five foundations of morality we learned about in Haidt's Ted Talk. We also learned that children grow up with these five foundations engraved in them. Children who attend religious school from a young age often have this value stressed to them to an even further extent. Below are the links to a Christian and Muslim site that share several quotes from the Bible and Quran about the importance of respecting your elders.
To sum up, the reason my mom and her friends didn't say anything to the woman harming her child (even though they all agreed hitting your child IS morally wrong) is simply because they felt as young people, they did not have the right to tell an older woman what to do with her child. Honestly, how many of you would actually have said something if you were in her position?
http://www.mosqueonline.com/saviour/allah/other_toppics/respecting_the_elderly.htm
http://www.openbible.info/topics/respecting_your_elders
This moral moment could not have come at a better time. In light of the Adrian Peterson scandal, it is interesting to see how this was tolerated back when your mother was a child. A lot of people of Peterson's side argue that it was how they were brought up, so that's just what they know. But, shouldn't morals evolve as society, itself, evolves? It's hard to say who's right and who's wrong, and it is certainly hard in a situation like that for your mother to step in, as fear can compromise one's morals very easy. I don't know if I would have said anything, but if I knew there were people to back me up I think that I likely would have.
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