Ambigamy

Hey Doctor Sherman,

I'm about to read your post in its entirety, but the subtitle pops so well, I had to pre-compliment you. It's been awhile since I've written, but I can already tell this post will have your usual delightful sarcasm. Kudos!

-Stephen-

Another gem, Doc. What are some ideas you have for how individuals can decrease the pressure valve on their 'ad hoc' moralizing? I myself usually openly declare that I may be going against principles I have stated in the past when I've done so, but I'm able to do this because of a self-awareness that most people haven't developed for themselves. Majority of the time I just keep my mouth shut, if for no other reason I don't feel like hearing any whining about double standards, etc. But again, what have you done in your life to keep your moralizing in check, and to cope with the moralizing of others. I'm talking specific techniques, if you have any.

-Stephen-

The real problem is that people with different moral standards have a rough time getting along and getting things done that have group benefits. i.e. when values become too chaotic or ego driven there are in fact social consequences.

I look at my parents marriage for instance and then I look at my sisters, my mother believes committing to a person for life, my sister doesn't.

Committing to someone for life has practical benefits - i.e. time you waste going from partner to partner, is time you waste not building a life financially together.

My parents are financially ahead of at least 70% of north american society and a lot of it has to do with them sticking together.

I think people are too quick to look at the source of morality rather then the pragmatic benefits this or that moral principle provides economically and otherwise.

I've come to see morals as something only really intelligent people can fully understand and that the vast majority of morals are guidelines and that like any tool one has to use different principles with great skill and care.

It's a great question. The standard question is how to keep others from doing it, but yours is the harder question. The best trick I've found is the ad-hoc moralist's equivalent to Mirroring. Mirroring is a non-fakable way of demonstrating that you heard someone. You don't just give it 'I hear you man" lip service, you have to say back what you heard.

I operate on an assumption that when I am annoyed at someone's behavior enough to moralize at them, my mind evacuates any recollection of me ever doing something similar to what they're doing. To keep the image gross, I think of it as akin to evacuating yourself in panic. It's like my anger puts me in a state of shock and to ready myself for moral combat, I erase from memory all self-incriminating equivalent behavior. That way my double-standard can go into unrestrained full swing.

So that's the behavior to counter, and not just with a "hey man I'm not perfect, but..." or an "I do it too." A non-fakable counter to the double-standard evacuation reflex is to remember a time when I did the same thing. If I'm angry at someone I trust, I aim to site chapter and verse on my equivalent. And I try to find the most comparably bad example I can. It's not OK to say "How dare you steal. Of course I too have stolen. I took a penny candy at age 5"

And I might still be mad at them, so I also have to remember that we may find ourselves debating severity of degree. It's not a double standard for me to say I do it too but you did it in excess of tolerable levels. I learned this from my Republican friends, many of which have learned the formulaic "you do it too" retort. So you can call them on the outrageous slanders they perpetrate and they'll say "yeah but Democrats aren't saints. You use rhetoric too." Which is fine and true and I'll still fight them over questions of degree, and to my sense of fairness that's not a double standard.

Now what I've described here as a technique is idealized. Do I really prevent evacuation every time? No. For that I have the five hour rule. I turn ouch into umbrage like anyone. But within five hours max, I better have calmed down enough to visit the possibility that my umbrage is unjustified. Ask my friends, but I think I do pretty well at that.

I think the techniques your asking for are among the most necessary to human survival and in the shortest supply for understandable reasons. I think you need to make it through all of these steps to where you would even want to develop such techniques:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/200810/five-steps-optimal-i...

And in combat with some people the techniques you requested are downright dangerous. A psychopath would have a field day with the self-reflective.

Best,

Jeremy