Viewing Single Post From: Morality

Viewing Single Post From: Morality
Yzarc	Nov 22 2008, 11:37 AM
Coxian Posts: 3,432 Group: Veteran Member #308 Joined: July 8, 2005	Soja You are half right. But you continue to give society too much credit when most of the influence goes to the person's rearing. The kind of role model a parent or parents play is a bigger determination in someone's personality than a society, depending on whether or not the parent follows societal mores. Oftentimes they do not. It then goes back to a moral grounding, and it is from there that an individual's choice will be made. And how the parents raise their kids is very likely to relate directly to their socioeconomic class. I connect child rearing with class, even if the connection isn't 100%. I understand that some parents raise their children differently than others in the same class. Those differences may come from the socioeconomic class that they used to be in, or maybe their race or gender. Certainly a single father would raise his son differently than a single mother in the same class. But there is still a connection between a person's class and his personality - how he is raised. Soja I doubt the first part very much. The only thing my race has affected is my ability to speak and understand another language, and perhaps to feel some attachment to the land of my ancestry. Okay, so race hasn't affected you very much. That's kind of a lame point because we're not, first of all, discussing race. Second of all, race does affect people all the time. Just because it doesn't affect you doesn't mean you get to make overarching claims like "race doesn't matter" Soja Socioeconomic standing is the weakest of the variables you listed. Upbringing is the most important variable you omitted Again, I would say the two are very similar. Your personality is based on how your parents raise you. Their personality is based on how their parents raised them. And so on. And so on. How can that point to individualism if your personality is determined by your ancestry? Socioeconomic class is extremely important, particularly to lower class people, and I'll tell you why. Rich people may grow up with very very different parents, who got their wealth in different ways. But most poor kids grow up with parents (or just one parent) who is always working. Thus, the kids grow and experience life through their community. Soja someone with good parents, regardless of their socioeconomic standing, is far less likely to break the law than someone whose parents have been neglectful or apathetic. The fact is, though, that it's very unlikely if you grow up in a low socioeconomic class that your parents will be good parents. Soja Charming. Suppose I could have gone about that better...Think about the Tennessee v. Scopes. The judge banned any scientific evidence, so even though Scopes had the science to back up what he said, the judge would not hear it. Soja That wasn't my point at all, although I don't believe that what some sociologists preach is infallible. Besides, there are multiple camps in sociology as there are in any scientific field. I fall in with the ones that believe that close acquaintances have a larger influence on a person than the society as a whole. And even then, it's only somewhat uncommon that someone will deviate from what's expected of them for one reason or another. Rebellion occurs frequently, for better or for worse. Most sociologists are, to some degree, social constructivists. If society didnt' matter in how parents raised their kids, then the best parent in the United States would raise his or her child the same way the best parent from China would (assuming you can qualify parents as good or bad). But clearly there is a significant difference in how children are raised here and how children are raised there. And that difference has nothing to do with all Chinese people being immoral. It has everything to do with the fact that they grow up in a completely different society. Soja You seem to believe that it is impossible or at the very least highly unlikely that people can move up in the ranks simply because they were born into a state of poverty. The classes aren't static; they are constantly changing with people leaving them and falling into them, and what have you. I say you're still discounting the responsibility an individual has over him or herself. We aren't a perfect meritocracy in the United States, but the saying "you reap what you sow" still holds true in this country, perhaps more than any other. Someone born into wealth can very easily squander it away as well, you know. Well...Yeah. I do believe it is high unlikely that people can move up the ranks if they were born into poverty. But that's not just me spouting bullshit. "Forty-two percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom, while 39 percent born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top." http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_Across_Generations.pdf Just over half of the people in the lower class are likely to move up, and even then, it's probably not going to be more than one or two quintiles. As far as everyone has responsibility over himself...I think that's a whole separate argument that I don't want to get into, but I'm just gonna say that I truly don't believe that individual humans have what we would call "free will" and that, as such, praise and blame are only useful for encouragement and deterrence, rather than reward and retribution. I'm not going to argue why I think that, because I...Well, I just don't want to. Soja Someone born into wealth can very easily squander it away as well, you know. Someone born into wealth is far less likely to become poor than someone born into poverty is to end up poor.


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