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| Monday May 10th, 2010 |
Do babies have an innate moral sense? According to psychologist Paul Bloom, they do. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Bloom says that "a growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life." Summing up a series of experiments over the last 20 years, he concludes that infants and toddlers prefers niceness to meanness, and the older they are, the more likely they will reward or punish those behaviors in others.
That finding, however, does not imply that babies are hard-wired for impartial altruism, a conclusion that might cause some to see a divine hand in human biology. Rather, Bloom argues that babies are predisposed to prefer their own kind—whether racially, linguistically or somewhat arbitrarily (such as dressed similarly). But our fundamental ability to make moral judgments can, thanks to nurture, education and culture, develop into a predisposition for the generalized justice—Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—that informs most religious traditions.
Accordingly, after reading, Mark Lilla's essay "Tea Party Jacobins," I can't help but wonder what's gone wrong with American families, education and culture. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Lilla analyzes the rise of the Tea Party movement. Unlike previous populist movements that sought political power for the common good of the people, today's protesters are radical individualists eager to get rid of government. As Lilla describes it:
"A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for a half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is as estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that." Much of the Tea Party's momentum is a reaction to recent governmental programs that promote social welfare. But whether the final straw was financial bailouts, health care reform, or Obama's alleged pro-African American agenda, protesters are angry that politicians are wasting their money, trampling their rights and assuming too much control over their lives. Ballyhooed by rightwing politicians as well as the echo chambers of talk radio and Fox News, their agenda has assumed a gravitas that is only enhanced by hand-wringing editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Maybe the best mainstream journalists can do is to report the who, what and why of the movement. Understanding Tea Partiers' passions is one way to muster a defense. But I'm not sure arm's-length, "balanced and objective" reporting is really what's needed. Prophets once used jeremiads to remind the people that God seeks justice, mercy and lovingkindness. Psychologists today may or may not see those characteristics as part of God's plan, but they do believe they represent an evolved state of human behavior. Perhaps journalists working outside the legacy media can write normatively of the need for altruism and a higher good—a story about babies' moral development in the context of American families, schools and society is a good example of what that kind of reporting would look like.
Diane Winston
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