Morality speaks of
oughtness – how things ought to be, how life ought to be lived, how self ought
to act, how others ought to act toward self, what is right behavior, what is
wrong behavior, how is one to behave differently in different contexts, etc. It
follows logically that one’s perception of morality affects how one determines
meaning. To understand how perception of morality affects meaning one can
examine the various dimensions of a particular culture and then proceed to
analyze how that dimension determines in what way a person from that culture
thinks, behaves in relationship with others, and views reality. For example,
consider just one of the cultural dimensions – the dimension of
guilt/righteousness versus shame/honor. Parenthetically, the point of this
dimension (as well as the others) is not to communicate a stark contrast in
which there is unequivocally no mixing of the two concepts, but rather to posit
the general orientation cultures have toward one or the other model. Given that
caveat, if one has grown up in a particular shame/honor oriented culture and
has absorbed the accompanying metanarrative and worldview assumptions, life (and
all meaning within that life) will be quite different for that individual than for
someone immersed in a guilt/righteousness oriented culture. Flanders has
written an entire book (actually a published copy of his dissertation) demonstrating
and discussing the power and influence of “face” (shame) on a culture. Flanders
notes how assumptions of meaning in the West (guilt/righteousness oriented)
differ from Thai culture (shame/honor oriented). “The distinguishing mark of a
shame culture is a dependence upon what others think. Conversely, it is not the
perception of others that drives guilt culture but rather a person’s own
internal moral compass, the individual conscience.”[1]
He further notes that
The
command associated with guilt would be something like, “Stop. What you have
done is wrong and violates the standard or rule.” In contrast the command
interpreted from the perspective of shame would be, “Stop. What you have done is
wrong. You are no good.” As such, the shame command is more severe because it
is more profoundly a statement about the self, not simply an action abstracted
and isolated from the self.[2]
This is only one example of how a
single cultural dimension (perhaps better termed, “value dimension”) demonstrates
that perception of morality (what is the proper code of conduct) affects
meaning for adherents of a culture.
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