Whom do people typically admire for their moral behavior? Those driven by Bunker morality, like Osama bin Laden or Hitler? Although perverted people (e.g., Charles Manson) are sometimes admired, this is atypical (or a naïve adolescent fantasy). Most people don't want to put on the sweater of a murderer (Rozin, Markwith & McCauley, 1994). No way.
Rather, people typically admire those who are courageous and humanitarian, who treat others with deep respect, and who act beyond their own interests to help others, like Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine and gave it away, or Norman Borlaug, who brought about the green revolution, saving a billion lives (again with little recompense), or Florence Nightingale, who forsook her wealthy heritage to serve the poor and wounded as a nurse, professionalizing nursing.
The people we admire typically exhibit Harmony morality. It represents here-and-now relational responsiveness that is openhearted, sympathetic, and not embedded in rigid ideas of the self or personal interest. Harmony morality represents the heart of morality. It is rooted in the nearly unique features of mammalian nature, the emotion systems of social bonding, caring for others and play (see MacLean, 1990).
When you reach out to help others without thinking, you are likely operating from Harmony morality--like when you run and help your neighbor when there is serious storm or threat. It seems that natural disasters bring out this kind of morality (Soltin, 2009). People go out of their way to help others with no thought of self-advantage, as happened after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (although the news media misrepresented what was happening, painting rescuers and helpers as dangerous looters). It's not us-against-them, it's "we can survive together."
Harmony morality is extolled by religious traditions around the world as love or faith or "presence in the now". Physically, Harmony morality depends on multiple well-functioning limbic and subcortical structures, particularly right brain functions, which underlie the values and behaviors that comprise compassion, social harmony and togetherness (Narvaez, 2008). (More on this in 4b.)
Harmony Morality has been a primary force in documented moral exemplary action. The primary reason World War II rescuers gave for acting to save the persecuted was an "ethic of care and compassion", for example: "I sensed in front of me human beings who were hunted down like wild animals" which "aroused a feeling of brotherhood with the desire to help" (Oliner, 2002, p. 125). Notice that the exemplars did not refer to a set of rules or doctrine. Instead of being propelled by an outside force (moral rules), they had an internalized set of standards for how people should be treated. They seem to exhibit a "prosocial value orientation" in which the dignity and welfare of others is paramount along with a sense of responsibility for it (Staub, 2003).
How does Stephen Colbert's moral view and approach to moral decisions and actions stack up with real identified moral heroes? Once in a while, he shows some empathy, but only flashes. Like the Nazi, Joseph Goebels who showed moments of compassion towards Jews which he later balanced with greater cruelty (Arpaly, 2003), Colbert seems to flip between ethical stances, but largely favoring Bunker morality. Bunker morality is more "truthy" because it resides in self-interested emotion systems. Next we will look at how the cultural airspace necessary for Harmony morality.
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References
Arpaly, N. (2003). Unprincipled virtue: An inquiry into moral agency. New York: Oxford University Press.
MacLean, P.D., 1990: The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions. New York: Plenum.
Narvaez, D. (2008). Triune ethics: The neurobiological roots of our multiple moralities. New Ideas in Psychology, 26, 95-119.
Oliner, S. P. (2002). Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People: Faces of Heroism and Altruism. In S.G. Post, L. G. Underwood, J. P. Schloss, & W. B. Hurlbut (Eds.), Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue (pp. 123-139). New York: Oxford University Press.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rozin, P., Markwith, M., McCauley, C. (1994). Sensitivity to indirect contacts with other persons : AIDS aversion as a composite of aversion to strangers, infection, moral taint, and misfortune. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103(3), 495-504.
Schore, A. (2003b). Affect dysregulation and disorders of the self. New York: Norton.
Soltin, R. (2009). A paradise built in hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disaster. New York: Viking Press.
Staub, E. (2003). The Psychology of good and evil: Why children, adults, and groups help and harm others. New York: Cambridge University Press.
