Moral Conflict in Politics
- Submitted by: dodfries
- Views: 309
- Category: Politics: Moral Issues
- Date Submitted: 05/11/2014 06:19 AM
- Pages: 12
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What Is Moral Conflict?
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Protracted conflict sometimes results from a clash between differing world-views. One group's most fundamental and cherished assumptions about the best way to live may differ radically from the values held by another group.[1] Parties may have different standards of rightness and goodness and give fundamentally different answers to serious moral questions.[2] When groups have different ideas about the good life, they often stress the importance of different things, and may develop radically different or incompatible goals. This can lead to conflict.
Because values and morals tend to be quite stable, people are often unwilling to negotiate or compromise with respect to these topics. Indeed, if the basic substantive issues of the conflict are deeply embedded in the participants' moral orders, these issues are likely to be quite intractable.[3]
A group's moral order is related to its practices, its patterns of thinking, and its patterns of language. As they are socialized, group members learn to center their judgments on values and procedures fundamental to their own common culture.[4] Their moral order provides the set of meanings through which they understand their experience and make judgments about what is valuable and important.[5] These patterns of meaning shape the way that individuals understand facts and issues and help them to develop a sense of identity. Social reality also dictates what counts as appropriate action and sets boundaries on what people are able to do.[6] It even affects the way in which emotions are labeled, understood, and acted upon. Thus, an individual's beliefs, sayings, and actions must be understood within the context of a particular social world.
People from the same culture have more or less equivalent realities and mindsets. Their values, assumptions, and procedures become part of "common sense" for them. However, when two parties that do not share norms of communication [customary patterns and rules...
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Protracted conflict sometimes results from a clash between differing world-views. One group's most fundamental and cherished assumptions about the best way to live may differ radically from the values held by another group.[1] Parties may have different standards of rightness and goodness and give fundamentally different answers to serious moral questions.[2] When groups have different ideas about the good life, they often stress the importance of different things, and may develop radically different or incompatible goals. This can lead to conflict.
Because values and morals tend to be quite stable, people are often unwilling to negotiate or compromise with respect to these topics. Indeed, if the basic substantive issues of the conflict are deeply embedded in the participants' moral orders, these issues are likely to be quite intractable.[3]
A group's moral order is related to its practices, its patterns of thinking, and its patterns of language. As they are socialized, group members learn to center their judgments on values and procedures fundamental to their own common culture.[4] Their moral order provides the set of meanings through which they understand their experience and make judgments about what is valuable and important.[5] These patterns of meaning shape the way that individuals understand facts and issues and help them to develop a sense of identity. Social reality also dictates what counts as appropriate action and sets boundaries on what people are able to do.[6] It even affects the way in which emotions are labeled, understood, and acted upon. Thus, an individual's beliefs, sayings, and actions must be understood within the context of a particular social world.
People from the same culture have more or less equivalent realities and mindsets. Their values, assumptions, and procedures become part of "common sense" for them. However, when two parties that do not share norms of communication [customary patterns and rules...