The Moral Sense

[00:00:00]Good morning, and welcome back to Daily Dharma, a letter to our children.

[00:00:07]Today is July 21st, and our reading is The Moral Sense.

[00:00:16]Two errors arise in attempting to understand the human condition.

[00:00:22]One is to assume that culture is everything, the other to assume it is nothing.

[00:00:29]And that's James Q. Wilson from his book The Moral Sense.

[00:00:36]We believe children are shaped, not determined, by the culture in which they are raised.

[00:00:43]Wherever kids spend their first six years, that's their culture.

[00:00:48]They can expand as they mature, but their mother tongue and worldview start there.

[00:00:55]Wilson goes on to say that while cultures differ in terms of specific moral codes, they are similar in that they all have standards of personal behavior that are violated only at [clears throat] some peril.

[00:01:12]He says, "We organize ourselves philosophically and morally to deal with four aspects of individual behavior, each of which impinges on the group's welfare."

[00:01:26]Sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty.

[00:01:34]Every culture's distinct flavor comes from how these factors are blended by the choices of the members of the tribe.

[00:01:44]This works from the bottom up, not from the top down.

[00:01:50]Homogenized milk might be good, but not so with culture.

[00:01:55]Europeans have 159 kinds of stinky cheese.

[00:02:00]North Americans have Velveeta.

[00:02:07]>> [bell] >> Well, before we get into get back to Wilson, happy birthday, buddy. We're not going to embarrass you by putting your name on the inner web or any of that kind of stuff, but we want to tell you thank you so much for being in our lives.

[00:02:26]And thank you for the kind of person that you are and all of the things that you do. You are a thoughtful, wonderful person to have along, and we just cannot tell you how much we love and appreciate everything that you've done for us and for our family. So, have a very good day today.

[00:02:45]And now back to our regular broadcast.

[00:02:50]James Wilson is a big genius, and he's written extensively on crime and punishment and and and many other things that are very useful. And I think his most readable and and probably least controversial book is is this one, The Moral Sense. So, there's another homework assignment if you're of a mind.

[00:03:16]Our culture shapes us, but we always have a vote. And and this is one of those apparent contradictions.

[00:03:25]And we go back and forth on this a lot in not just in the month of July, but but throughout the book.

[00:03:34]There has to be some kind of a balance between our internal moral compass and the the conventions that surround us.

[00:03:45]How do we live with other people in a in a way that is useful and beneficial to us all? That's a really good question.

[00:03:54]And these four factors that that Wilson mentioned, sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty, are pretty good metric to use for for different ideas that we try to employ.

[00:04:12]And Japan is about as different from North America as as it's possible to be.

[00:04:19]And it doesn't mean that that one is better than the other. It means that they are definitely different. If you're going to live in a in a place, you're going to have to follow the conventions of that place. And if you don't, well, you're going to have to pay the freight.

[00:04:33]Anyway, thank you for being with us.

[00:04:37]And buddy, have a happy birthday.

[00:04:41]So, happy trails to you until we meet again.

[00:04:48]>> [music]