首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Many thoughtful parents want to shield their children from feelings of guilt or shame in much the same way that they want to spa
Many thoughtful parents want to shield their children from feelings of guilt or shame in much the same way that they want to spa
admin
2015-10-21
34
问题
Many thoughtful parents want to shield their children from feelings of guilt or shame in much the same way that they want to spare them from fear. Guilt and shame as methods of discipline are to be eschewed along with raised hands and leather straps. Fear, guilt and shame as methods of moral instruction are seen as failures in decent parenting. Parents want their children to be happy and how can you feel happy when you are feeling guilty, fearful or ashamed? If we were really convinced that using fear, guilt or shame as methods of discipline worked, though, we might be more ready to use them as techniques. But we aren’t convinced that this is the case. We won’t have more socially responsible people if fear, guilt and shame are part of their disciplinary diet as children. Instead, we will simply have unhappy people. Responsible behavior has nothing to do with the traditional methods of raising moral children.
This doesn’t mean that guilt isn’t an important feeling. It is. Guilt helps keep people on the right moral track. But guilt is a derivative emotion, one that follows from having violated an internalized moral standard. This is far different than making someone feel guilty in order to create the standard in the first instance.
My wife once edited a magazine about hunger. A view held by many associated with the sponsoring organization claimed: You can’t get people to give money to starving children by making them feel guilty. So the magazine didn’t show pictures of starving children, children with doleful eyes. Instead, there were photos of women in the fields, portraits of peasant farmers and pictures of political organizers. But the publishers weren’t completely right about believing that guilt-inducing pictures don’t lead to moral action. In fact, it was the graphic pictures of starving children in Somalia that called the world’s attention to the dire situation there. The power of television is that it does bring images of others’ tragedies directly into our home. No rational analysis can do the same. When we are moved to pity, we should also be moved to action.
If we don’t do anything, then we feel guilty. We become part of the problem we see and feel guilty for letting bad things happen to people. How can I,good person that I am, let this continue? What have pricked the conscience here are guilty feelings.
Guilty feelings arise when we have violated a moral norm that we accept as valid. A person who feels guilty, notes philosopher Herbert Morris, is one who has internalized norms and, as such, is committed to avoiding wrong. The mere fact that the wrong is believed to have occurred, regardless of who bears responsibility for it, naturally causes distress. When we are attached to a person, injury to that person causes us pain regardless of who or what has occasioned the injury. We needn’t believe that we had control over hurting(or not helping)another person in order to feel guilty.
Psychologists Nico Frijda and Batja Mesquita of the University of Amsterdam find that people feel guilty about having harmed someone even when it was accidental. Nearly half the people they interviewed felt guilty for having caused unintended harm, such as hurting one’s mother when leaving home to marry.
Unintentional harm may lead to as strong guilty feelings as intentional harm. In other words, being careless is as much a source of guilt as intentional harm. We say, If only I had been more careful, If only I had paid more attention, If only I were a better driver. The fact that a court may not even bring charges against you in the first place may help to assuage some of the pain but it doesn’t remove all the feelings of guilt.
The feeling is useful in so far as it makes us more cautious, makes us better drivers or moves us to socially responsible action. The sociopath never experiences such feelings and therefore poses a danger to society; the neurotic experiences so much of it that he can’t function normally in society.
Feeling guilty for harm you have caused when you aren’t responsible is possible because there is a more generalized readiness to accept responsibility for your actions. Guilt arises when we think we have had choices and then have made the wrong moral choice. Guilt and responsibility appear to go together. If we do harm and feel no guilty, then we don’t believe we are responsible for what we’ve done. This means that we see ourselves as victims—of circumstances, of coercion, of ignorance and so forth.
Remember that people who think of themselves as victims do so because they believe they have no control over events in their lives. They don’t feel responsible and therefore don’t feel guilty either. Several tactics can be used in disavowing responsibility: following the crowd, it is someone else’s problem, it was done under coercion.
None of us is perfect and that we live in an imperfect world. This means that we can’t avoid hurting others. If we accept this, then we have to accept guilty feelings as a consequence of being moral people.
The word "assuage" in the seventh paragraph means______.
选项
A、soothe
B、aggravate
C、recall
D、reckon
答案
A
解析
语义题。第七段末句指出,法院首先可能不会将责任归咎到你身上,而这或许能帮助“assuage”一些痛苦但不能消除所有的内疚感。从后面的“remove”可以推断出“assuage”应与其属于同一语义场,表示“减轻”或“消除”,故[A]为答案。“aggravate”意为“加重”,与“remove”意思相反,不符合语境,故排除[B];其他两项与该处语境无关,均排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/IGKO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Inbringingupchildren,everyparentwatcheseagerlythechild’sacquisitionofeachnewskill—thefirstspokenwords,thefirs
Inbringingupchildren,everyparentwatcheseagerlythechild’sacquisitionofeachnewskill—thefirstspokenwords,thefirs
PresidentBushhasproposedaddingoptionalpersonalaccountsasoneofthecentralelementsofamajorSocialSecurityreformp
ThecapitalofNewZealandis______.
AllthefollowingareclosedclasswordsEXCEPT______.
TheAmericanWay:FreedomTheheartoftheAmericancalendarisJuly【4】Americanshavecelebratedthisdateas"Independence
TheAmericanWay:FreedomTheheartoftheAmericancalendarisJuly【4】Americanshavecelebratedthisdateas"Independence
TheAmericanWay:FreedomTheheartoftheAmericancalendarisJuly【4】Americanshavecelebratedthisdateas"Independence
A、havehighersalariesB、workunderbetterconditionsC、keepindependentminingjobsD、workforshorterhoursC
PresidentBarackObamahascalledonIndiaandPakistantorestart【N1】______.SpeakingtostudentsinMumbai,hesaidIndiawas
随机试题
有限责任公司公开发行公司债券应当符合的条件包括()。 Ⅰ.净资产不低于人民币6000万元 Ⅱ.累计债券余额不超过公司净资产的40% Ⅲ.最近3年平均可分配利润足以支付公司债券1年的利息 Ⅳ.债券的利率不超过国务院限定的利率水平
以下大疱性皮肤病的水疱位于表皮内的是
A.肝细胞点灶状坏死B.肝细胞碎片状坏死C.肝细胞亚大片坏死D.肝细胞桥接坏死E.肝细胞大片坏死急性重型肝炎的病理特点是
根据《环境影响评价技术导则一总纲》,工程分析时,在生态影响因素分析中,应特别关注()分析。
社会工作者在小组工作的成熟阶段,应将工作重点放在()。
【2017-16】《大学》是儒家学者论述大学的一篇文章,它提出大学的终极目标是()。
股权激励
计算机网络是由多个互连的结点组成的,结点之间要做到有条不紊地交换数据,每个结点都必须遵守一些事先约定好的原则。这些规则、约定与标准被称为网络协议(Protocol)。网络协议主要由以下三个要素组成()。
有三个关系R、S和T如下:其中关系T由关系R和S通过某种操作得到,该操作为()。
Nooneexcepttwoservants______thedinner.
最新回复
(
0
)