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juliaoceania -> RE: No one really knows themselves.... (3/20/2010 8:53:31 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyAngelika
Julia, I refered earlier in this thread to cognitive mapping of the decision making process in the field of management sciences. In this case, they aren't so concerned with how someone came to making decisions the way they do but rather when they make a decision, how closely is that decision aligned with what is expected of them and how much of it is based in inherit morals and ethics. It's not as simple as that, but that is one of the core ideas.
We can nature/nurture debate it till we are blue in the face and while origins of who we are and how we have come to be are fascinating, I think a great deal of what we have become, what we know of ourselves and where are we headed is equally if not more compelling.
That said, I'll also add the dimension that even if I'm very self-aware, I am looking at myself through a very subjective lens. Great feedback is that people in my immediate environment tend to see me much the way I do from the feedback I get. But then again, I tend to hang out with people who's view of the world resemble mine. To someone who is more objective and looking at me through a different lens, I might seem like a very different person. They are also bringing in their subjectivity and their perceptions. That is why even though psychometric tests to understand someone's personality are grand, very few are able to be administered without the inherent subjectivity of the one formulating the questions.
- LA
I think the problem with psych tests is that they are ethnocentric and they claim some objectivity when they truly are subjective...
I also think that above someone spoke about when the boats sank whether men stayed on board, or fought for a space in the lifeboat... well that would be a culturally specific value, letting women and children off first. In some cultures saving wee ones would seem wasteful when adults old enough to provide food for the group take a priority. This makes rational sense in terms of the world that both groups hale from... In one there is honor associated with giving up one's life for others.. in the other group it is saving one's life because you know the group counts on you. It is a painful choice that mothers in famine drenched regions face... do they eat and deprive their kids of a portion of food, or do they give up the food and starve... if they starve who looks out for the children?
Culture provides a framework with which to answer such dilemmas, and to be honest, while our desire to survive will often overcome culture because it is a basic instinct, what we find morally and ethically correct is often a function of nurture as opposed to nature... we may go against and resist what we were taught, but even then we are operating in resistance...in other words we are operating in rebellion to what we were raised...
Very few people completely go against the taboos in their culture. An example: most of us are not cannibals, and will only go against this taboo when there is no way else to survive... and then our culture temporarily suspends the prohibition against eating human flesh so that a person can survive... those who have to go against this taboo as a function of survival often are scarred from it emotionally, but society does not hold them at fault for going against this taboo. On the other hand, a person who chooses cannibalism is considered the lowest of the low in our society... this is one of our strongest taboo, and it is a cultural taboo which other cultures do not universally share (most but not all adhere to this taboo). My point is that some of our ethics are indeed nurture, not nature... in fact most of them are culturally determined from who it is acceptable to date to what station in society that we should aspire to. If we go against those cultural prescriptions we can be ostracized, punished, shunned... What we are capable of under distress may be different, but most of us will not go against the most powerful of taboos unless there is no choice. I think most people are willing to give themselves up for their social group out of loyalty and love, although how far that altruism should go is also culturally determined....
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