Big Questions Week III.
Nov. 14th, 2009 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaThe church "big questions letter exchange" continues.
What is the source of your moral authority? What or who guides your moral choices?
It's hard to say, actually, because to a great extent it feels like intuition. I feel like I have a gut sense of right and wrong that drives my day to day moral decision-making. But what feels like "intuition" is probably a combination of cultural values, my religious upbringing, the moral principles my parents taught me, the capacity for empathy that normally-developed human brains have... I can't separate out what comes from where. It's all melded together.
My gut is not infallible. One thing it doesn't sort out very well is privilege issues. I can simply fail to notice all too many of the situations in which I have advantages as a white, cisgendered, reasonably well-off, highly-educated American. So I try not to trust my gut implicitly when it tells me that I am behaving morally. I try to make sure that I am reading widely and thinking carefully about other people's experiences and moral perspectives, to make sure - as best I can - that I am not hurting anyone else unintentionally because I am stuck in my own limited point of view.
If I had to identify one external precept that I use to measure my own moral actions, it would be the First Principle: affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person. That's a tall order. It seems so simple on the face of it, and yet when I really start to think about it I feel like it will probably take me the rest of my life to figure out all the subtleties of how I should be applying it - not to mention actually having the will and ability to do so.
What is the source of your moral authority? What or who guides your moral choices?
It's hard to say, actually, because to a great extent it feels like intuition. I feel like I have a gut sense of right and wrong that drives my day to day moral decision-making. But what feels like "intuition" is probably a combination of cultural values, my religious upbringing, the moral principles my parents taught me, the capacity for empathy that normally-developed human brains have... I can't separate out what comes from where. It's all melded together.
My gut is not infallible. One thing it doesn't sort out very well is privilege issues. I can simply fail to notice all too many of the situations in which I have advantages as a white, cisgendered, reasonably well-off, highly-educated American. So I try not to trust my gut implicitly when it tells me that I am behaving morally. I try to make sure that I am reading widely and thinking carefully about other people's experiences and moral perspectives, to make sure - as best I can - that I am not hurting anyone else unintentionally because I am stuck in my own limited point of view.
If I had to identify one external precept that I use to measure my own moral actions, it would be the First Principle: affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person. That's a tall order. It seems so simple on the face of it, and yet when I really start to think about it I feel like it will probably take me the rest of my life to figure out all the subtleties of how I should be applying it - not to mention actually having the will and ability to do so.
