On telling parents to f*** themselves
I have received many emails from readers which exemplify or reject one or more of the six moral foundations. I recently received the text below, which is the most forceful rejection of the Authority foundation that I have ever read. I post it here, with the author’s permission, and without comment, as an example of an anti-authority ethos. I have edited it only to preserve the author’s anonymity.
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Dear Mr. Haidt:
I am currently reading your book, The Righteous Mind, and this is my response to what I have read so far.
I am living proof that conservatives’ and liberals’ values are worlds apart.
In your anecdote [on p. 142] about the Jordanian taxi driver who planned to return to Jordan to rear his child because he never wanted to hear the child tell him to fuck himself, you said that few American kids would actually say something so “awful” to their parents, even though they might communicate the sentiment obliquely. I don’t think it would be “awful” for them to do so at all. I think that any adolescent who does not on occasion tell his parents to fuck themselves (whether explicitly or obliquely) is in need of assertiveness training. I have been chatting with a man who grew up in the Bible Belt. He said that his father had still whipped him when he was in his late teens. I said, “Why did you let him?” He said, “What else was I supposed to do?” I said, “Tell him to fuck off.” He said that he would never have thought of of doing that. I found his attitude incomprehensible. I don’t believe that the Ten Commandments were delivered to Moses on tablets of stone, and I never cease to wonder what made the ancient Jews believe that God wanted them to “honor” their fathers and mothers. If I were trying to make up a precept that made no sense, I would be hard pressed to think of a better one. Although I was good to my mother in her declining years, I would have hit the ceiling if anyone had ever suggested that I was obliged to do anything for her.
When I was a child, and someone said to me, “Respect your elders,” I always asked, “Why?” The question was not rhetorical. By what logic does youth owe deference to age? The reverse is true. Older people ought to be able to bear discomfort and inconvenience better than kids or teenagers. While I usually offer my seat on a train or subway to a child or teenager, I would not dream of offering it to an older person. I once offered my seat to a toddler. His mother took it, and I demanded that she give it back. I let her know what a pig I thought she was, too. In my view, a mother who would sit and let her child stand deserves to be spat upon. On one occasion, when I gave up my seat to a kid, I scolded a nun for not giving him hers. “What kind of miserable excuse for a religious are you,” I asked, “that you wouldn’t give your seat to this boy? Aren’t you supposed to be the servant of all?” (She said nothing. What could she have said?)
Authority in the classroom? Teachers are hired help. They are in no way entitled to deference. We give them authority to maintain order. Doing so is a service to students, because no one can learn if order is not maintained. Teachers, however, have no right to exercise authority for any other purpose. In the 1960s, when I was an undergraduate, a professor whose class I frequently cut said to me, “Mr. ____, I expect you to be in class.” I said, “Mr. Smith, you forget who’s working for whom.” I left his classroom and did not return until the final exam. He gave me a D for the course, but I valued my self-respect much more than my grade. (It was, of course, unethical for him to have graded me on the basis of anything other than my mastery of the course content; but I did not choose to do battle.)
For over a decade I have been teaching a class (part-time) to graduate students in library and information science. I am appalled by the deference that some of them accord me. A few refuse to call me by my first name, even though I call them by theirs. They say things like, “Do you mind if I miss class next week?” and “Do you mind if I turn this assignment in late?” I always say, “First, I don’t mind; and second, I don’t know why you would care whether I minded or didn’t. You pay me.” What is the origin of the idea that a teacher is an authority figure?
In 1960, when I was a teenager,, I was listening to JFK’s inaugural address and heard him say, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” I became so enraged that I ran out of the house into a snowstorm and walked around for an hour, trying to cool myself off. For years thereafter I felt a visceral hatred for Kennedy. “Why should I give a damn about what I can do for my country?” I thought to myself. “Governments exist for the benefit of their constituents.” I always snicker when I hear someone use the expression “Our country.” (I prefer to say, “This country”). I live in the United States for the same reasons that I live in [my state]– because I was born here, I’m used to living here, I have friends nearby, and–so far–I have not had any compelling reason to leave. (Rick Santorum’s election to the presidency might constitute such a reason.) I have no emotional attachment to the United States as a political entity. I think such an attachment would be irrational. By strictly rational criteria Canada would be a better country in which to live.
If I were to send copies of this message to some of my conservative relatives, however, our relationship would be damaged severely. So I won’t. We shall go on simply agreeing not to discuss politics. Therein lies the problem that you define, but a realistic solution eludes me. How can I give respectful attention to positions based on values that I find abhorrent?
Interesting that the author explicitly repudiates conservatism while repeating implicitly conservative themes such as the rejection of any social contract if social services workers are paid for their time.
Where did the writer imply that no social contract existed between those who are paid for their time and those who pay them? He said that students do not owe deference to their teachers. He did not say that students had the right to harass or otherwise abuse their teachers or to encroach upon their rights. Respecting the rights of others is not the same as deferring to them.
This letter is both illustrative and humourous.
To me it highlights a tendency that I often hear among friends and family; the idea that you are “lucky” to be born in a particular country. This implicitly means belief in the soul but it is my experience that this attitude is prevalent among secular atheists as well as the faithful.
It’s as if people unconciously believe that there’s a big bingo tumbler full of souls in the sky and god pulls them out one at a time and decides where to send them “U.S.A”, “SOMALIA”, “HUNGARY” etc.
You’re not ‘lucky’ to be born in any particular country, you were born in a particular country because your parents who lived and worked in that society had sex like their parents before them. Many of them fought, protested, toiled in fields and factories and died on French beaches to ensure that the country and its ideals would be preserved or improved. Though a person is born an individual they are in fact the expression of an ongoing lineage. There is an obvious and palpable tension between these two facts; we require autonomy but also meaningful relationships with other beings.
At some point hundreds of thousands of years ago, bands of humans fanned out from the savannahs of Africa and each of these groups and their component members were experiments on the part of nature. Some have encountered greater success than others.
Haha, I totally used to say this and I’m an atheist. Not until now had I realized the obvios incongruence.
The writer is not an atheist. He is a Christian. He believes that the dignity of every human geing is God-given. He believes that capitalism, unmodified by government regulation, creates economic injustice. He is not, however, a biblical fundamentalist, and he does not believe that the Ten Commandments were delivered to Moses on tablets of stone. He questions why the ancient Jews thought God wanted them to “honor” their parents.
Those weren’t your protests, or your toil, or your death in France. An illiterate Somali peasant has as much claim to those efforts as you do.
That’s discounting the unlikelihood of being born to someone who died on beach.
thanks
I used to feel this way as an adolescent. Then, in my late 20s I realized the problem was actually my attitude. I eventually faced the fact that my “conservative” relatives have something very special to teach me and I need to listen and empathize when I have the chance. That I’m lucky enough to have such thoughtful and passionate, caring, and moral people in my life is something to cherish and be thankful for, even if I don’t outright agree on the surface. Chances are finding such ideas “abhorrent” has more to do with the chip on one’s own shoulder. The author of this letter seems almost hateful. I wonder if that’s projected self hate.
thank you also
Kuze writes: “To me it highlights a tendency that I often hear among friends and family; the idea that you are “lucky” to be born in a particular country. This implicitly means belief in the soul but it is my experience that this attitude is prevalent among secular atheists as well as the faithful.
It’s as if people unconciously believe that there’s a big bingo tumbler full of souls in the sky and god pulls them out one at a time and decides where to send them “U.S.A”, “SOMALIA”, “HUNGARY” etc. ”
This is a good – an extremely important in fact – point concerning logical and conceptual consistency; and I am glad to see that it has independently occurred to many others than myself.
It is strikingly odd to think that people who habitually scoff at super-naturalism should talk and presume to make moral judgments as if souls a priori entitled to substantive equality were inadvertently broadcast willy-nilly into awaiting bodies of greater or lesser material advantage; or as if someone waiting in the yet-to-be-born line were issued an ill-fitting uniform by a negligent counterman. No wonder so many of them wind up jabbering like John Rawls.
Bruce also makes a good point.
As for the author of the unsolicited letter, I think that he he might have mistaken Professor Haidt for a different kind of psychologist.
Although tutors or bureaucrats can legitimately be viewed as hirelings of a sort, the logic of his expectation that because older people are supposedly inured to suffering they should do more of it for the sake of making the younger more comfortable, escapes me. It might be that on occasion they should. But his actual reasoning seems obtuse to say the least.
He certainly seems to lack a sense of irony: cite his remarks to the nun, or this ” In my view, a mother who would sit and let her child stand deserves to be spat upon. ”
What principle of evaluation is he using there that, would not also apply to elderly or infirm parents?
In fact, I’m not sure that I believe that this is a real letter. If it is, Haidt might recommend that the letter writer read Plutarch’s “Lives”; Aristotle’s Ethics, or Cicero’s De Officiis.
http://www.constitution.org/rom/de_officiis.htm
These readings might at least take the writer beyond the illusion that notions of filial obligation, or the idea of magnanimity as a virtue, originated with Moses.
Finally, the idea that Canada would represent some kind of bastion of liberty or relief from oppressive expectations – a country that subsumes free speech rights to political correctness and a polity that seems constitutionally predicated on something they call a “social compact” – is remarkable enough in itself.
“By strictly rational criteria Canada would be a better country in which to live”
Geez, Canada?. And he implies he’s carrying social equity baggage here?
I also notice that while expressing his indifference to this country, he says he continues to live where he does in the US because he is used to it, and has friends nearby. No mention of a business, no mention of land, no mention projects, no mention of having built anything, no mention of any investment in anything of any kind.
I guess you can graze one place as well as another, if others are willing to allow you a share.
Goodness. I’m obviously not educated enough for this exchange. However, I will say in regards to deference to your elders & a duty to one’s parents, of course they deserve it. I can’t imagine any parent or grandparent who hasn’t made significant sacrifices in order to promote the growth & well-being of a child that is far beyond the kudos of children as a reflection of the parent. Even the worst of parents, has made scarifices. Maybe even more difficult sacrifices. Secondly, who can doubt that after a particular age, the body has endured sufficient wear and tear that it is more difficult with age to bear physical burdens. This feels so elementary to me. It seems to me that the letter’s author is a narcistic, egotistical dweeb who actually believes in social Darwinism – and nothing more. (There’s way too much being read into this.)
I agree Carrie. Personally I doubt this guy has children, or has any clue how much parents sacrifice their time and money to improve their childs life. Sounds like this man went to school, I wonder if he worked his way through or if he paid for it with ‘free’ money from someone else. Just because someone is paid for a job does not that they don’t need to be treated with respect. So what if he was paying his tuition, which pays a teachers salary, that person still works hard to give you the best education he can (usually).
The author almost seems psychologically impaired from understanding the toil and sacrifice of others. Egotistical is correct.
Yes, and without any gratitude. It’s really just sad. He’s likely never expreienced the pleasure of showing respect & observing the response. Nor, has he likely been shown respect even when not deserved. I think the presumption of showing respect & empathy should be the rule until proven otherwise. Just sad.
If parents sacrifice their time for their kids, it’s because they had them.
To writer of this letter you’re fucking awesome.
John: Don’t you think hierarchal relationships (say with parents and children) are both irrational and damaging, like patriarchy is to women?
Don’t the stanford prison experiment and milgram experiment clearly point this out?
I’m surprised he managed the ‘Mr’ given his attitude.
“I never cease to wonder what made the ancient Jews believe that God wanted them to ‘honor’ their fathers and mothers.”
I think I can answer this one. One’s parents are the closest real-world external image of God that a person naturally possesses. God created the universe; your parents created you. God lays down the laws for humankind; your parents lay down the laws for you. Therefore, to dishonor your parents, who serve as an external image of God to you really and personally, is an attack by extension upon God, and likewise to honor your parents is to honor God by extension.
The writer comes from another planet. He could have participated in the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the early 1970s, where young people, prodded by Mao’s henchman Lin Piao, kicked and beat up their parents in the streets at government instruction, for which they were later ashamed.
Well with so many kids nowadays that are very disrespectful to their parents which makes it very sad how very rotten most of the kids are today, and very dangerous as well.
As a high school student, I’m in awe of how rude of a person has made it as far as that author did. I cannot even imagine calling my teachers by their first names most of the time and if I ever skipped a class, there would be a good reason, not just because I felt like it. Elders should be respected because they have worked hard and as children, most of us have done nothing. By giving those children a seat, you are just spoiling them. I think at some point, every kid wants their parents to get off their back but being extremely rude is not the way to tell them that.