Ladeer&Co.

People growing up in a morally sheltered background tend to have an incomplete moral development. I call these people legalistic. You can see them more often among conservative crowd such as evangelicals (Protestants). There probably were not enough stimuli to challenge their moral belief so they simply see things in black and white. You sometimes hear them defending themselves by misquoting “moral absolute” and mislabeling their opponents “cultural relativists.”

A person’s moral development has several stages determined by how a person reasons for justice. Roughly speaking a child starts off with a consequence-based moral standard—a wrong is worse when it inflicts/triggers grater amount of damage/punishment. Later children learn to look at motives behind their action—someone who breaks a jar from stealing cookies is more wrong than someone who breaks 15 jars from trying to help washing them. Then as we grow up we start reasoning beyond individual concern into social concern. According to Lawrence Kohlberg who perfected this theory, at the fourth stage a person starts to have social order in mind when judging moral issue.

For example, shall a husband steal the only drug that can save his wife from a pharmacist who is unwilling to lower the selling price that the husband cannot afford?

A stage one would reason, “no, he shouldn’t steal because it will be punished by law.” However someone at stage two would recognize the life dilemma and reason in these ways, “yes he shall steal otherwise his wife would die (the consequence),” or, “no, he shall not steal otherwise he might be put into jail for longer than he could afford (again, consequence).” A stage two child no longer considers the event strictly in its punishment, but also weighs in consequence. Their standards both remain individualistic.

Moving outside of the egocentric realm, someone at stage three (usually teens) would argue that people are expected to act in “good” manner such that a husband cannot let his wife die. They would recognize that it is the pharmacist’s fault for the husband’s transgression.

Then people at stage four think of the society as a whole. They would have greater concern with the maintaining of social order. They reason that the husband should not steal the drug because laws must be upheld in order to maximize the benefit of all stakeholders. Conversely if everyone acts what he sees right, chaos would transpire.

(to be continued)