Tag: Golden Rule

There’s Blood on Their Hands—Lots of It

Posted on by kathiemm
Anti-colonialism demonstrators before the 1945 Sétif and Guelma massacre of Algerians by the French
Image by Vikoula5 and in the public domain.

The recent massacre of civilians in Paris was horrific, unconscionable, and despicable—as has been the response in Paris, the US, and elsewhere in the West. Revenge, revenge, revenge is the resonating cry. The innocent victims of the terrorist attacks did not deserve their fate; nor did the innocent victims of centuries of French—and other Western, including American–colonialism.

The ethic of reciprocity, that “do unto others” Golden Rule, is a life- and fairness-promoting mantra; too often, we hear instead an “eye for an eye” refrain. Here we go again, with violence begetting violence and  it is fool-hardy to think further violence will put an end to the discontent, the rage, the enmity associated in part with centuries of Western exploitation, repression, and violence in other parts of the world.

Let’s take the case of France. During the 1600s, France began establishing colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and India—although “establish” is a euphemism. What France did was aggressively seize control of areas far from its own borders, and rule them until control was seized by someone else, generally Great Britain (another model of ruthless imperialism).

In the mid-nineteenth century, France extended its strong arm into Africa, Indochina, and the South Pacific. When people whose skin is black, brown, or yellow—“people of color”—are ruled over by white people, history has shown us that the rulers do not grasp the hands of the indigenous people in brotherhood, whatever their national mottos might be. The bloody wars in Algeria and Vietnam were in my lifetime. Hard for me to believe that there are nations in these “modern” and “civilized” times whose leaders view it as okay to take over land long occupied by other people, or leaders who do not think of “colonization” as a dirty word.

Historical memory tends to be very long. For many decades after the last rebellious Native American Indian went to his reward, American children played “Cowboys and Indians,” and all those children, like you, knew who the “bad guys” were–at least according to the stories told to them.

Let’s start working on better ways of dealing with violence then engaging in yet more acts of revenge that can only perpetuate the cycle.

P.S. The attacks on Beirut and the Russian plane were just as unconscionable as the one in Paris and should not be brushed aside just because we are better able to see the French as like us.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Pseudo-moral justifications (Moral disengagement, part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

In our August 30 post, we introduced psychologist Albert Bandura‘s mechanisms of moral disengagement. Today we begin to explore the six strategies Bandura has identified.

Bandura indicates that often people “cognitively reconstruct” an inhumane  behavior to make it into something different from–that is, more moral than–what it actually is. One way to do that is to cloak the behavior “in moral wrappings.”

Bandura uses the term “moral justification” to describe this process.

When political/military leaders want their followers to go to war and kill “the enemy,” they argue that the killing is justified, even “moral.” They often claim that war has moral goals such as fighting oppression, making the world safe for democracy,  spreading peace, and so forth.

In this regard,  Bandura cites Voltaire, who said “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

In our view, Bandura has identified an important process manipulated by people in power. This process has been effective in getting ordinary people to kill and torture, while still viewing themselves as moral and even as followers of the Golden Rule.

On the other hand, we dislike the ambiguous use of  “moral” in front of “justifications.” It suggests that the justifications are “moral” rather than “pseudo-moral.” For this kind of moral disengagement, we suggest that a better term would be “spuriously moral justifications” or “pseudo-moral justifications.”

Over the next few weeks, we will continue to explore mechanisms of both moral disengagement and moral engagement. Alternating posts between the two types of mechanisms, we hope to illustrate the spectrum of moral behaviors as they apply to engaging peace.

The next post will address the reciprocal of  pseudo-moral justifications–specifically, principled moral arguments.

Dr. Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.