Still haven’t read The Theory of Moral Sentiments *
The Covid theatric made (almost) all of us complicit to at least some extent. I never wore a mask, except for those three times, after which I felt deeply ashamed of myself, for instance. Thus there’s no clear demarcation between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ and we need this clarity for proper moral reasoning (call it target acquisition if you will).
I think that sense of shared guilt is part of it, but I think a small part compared to our comparative distaste for punishing leaders and high status people. I've been on a bit of a jag lately regarding the costs of punishment, and I think the additional costs of punishing those we think are great, and thus admitting we were wrong perhaps, is at play here. Usually in a situation like COVID where lots of people overreact and do bad things and then regret it I would expect people to want to find a scapegoat. Find someone who was giving orders and say "Hey, I was just doing what I was told. He's the one who led us astray!", other people to be glad for a reason to say it wasn't their fault for not acting more responsibly, too, and then for all the other leaders who might have been similarly stupid to jump in on it. In fact, I would normally be worried about people over doing that and looking for a head to put on a pike regardless of whether it was really that person's fault.
Yet here we have the opposite, a quiet assumption that everyone was kind of guilty and let's not really try to too hard to find out what happened, even if it is only to find someone to blame, by a large part of the population. That's strange to me, but I think Smith has a good point that we are very uncomfortable with seeing the great fall when they are our elites, and so we are making a lot of excuses for them.
And yea, read TMS! It's a good read, dense but very modern in style. (Although some of the meanings of words have changed a bit since the 1750's.) Then clean your room!
Still haven’t read The Theory of Moral Sentiments *
The Covid theatric made (almost) all of us complicit to at least some extent. I never wore a mask, except for those three times, after which I felt deeply ashamed of myself, for instance. Thus there’s no clear demarcation between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ and we need this clarity for proper moral reasoning (call it target acquisition if you will).
*it’s on the list, mom! Sheesh.
I think that sense of shared guilt is part of it, but I think a small part compared to our comparative distaste for punishing leaders and high status people. I've been on a bit of a jag lately regarding the costs of punishment, and I think the additional costs of punishing those we think are great, and thus admitting we were wrong perhaps, is at play here. Usually in a situation like COVID where lots of people overreact and do bad things and then regret it I would expect people to want to find a scapegoat. Find someone who was giving orders and say "Hey, I was just doing what I was told. He's the one who led us astray!", other people to be glad for a reason to say it wasn't their fault for not acting more responsibly, too, and then for all the other leaders who might have been similarly stupid to jump in on it. In fact, I would normally be worried about people over doing that and looking for a head to put on a pike regardless of whether it was really that person's fault.
Yet here we have the opposite, a quiet assumption that everyone was kind of guilty and let's not really try to too hard to find out what happened, even if it is only to find someone to blame, by a large part of the population. That's strange to me, but I think Smith has a good point that we are very uncomfortable with seeing the great fall when they are our elites, and so we are making a lot of excuses for them.
And yea, read TMS! It's a good read, dense but very modern in style. (Although some of the meanings of words have changed a bit since the 1750's.) Then clean your room!