Parent Interview Blog Post

Moral Issues Parent Interview:

When I asked my mom if she ever had a "moral moment" she had a hard time thinking of one, and of exactly what it meant, so I tried to give her a few examples and further explain what a "moral moment" might be. After moments of thought, the only thing my mom could come up with was this: she was walking out of the parking lot and in to work one day when she passed by an injured bird, hopping on the ground. She knew that stopping to help the bird meant she'd be late for work, but clearly this animal was injured and needed help. So she went in to work, got a friend, and they both went back outside, put a shoebox on the ground with some bird food and hoped for the best. When they went back out to check on the bird it was still there, and still clearly unable to fly. So my mom called me and my sister to come down, get the bird in the shoebox and take it into the humane society.

This story my mom explained was an example where her morals of harm/care were "turned on" and she knew she had to do something to help the poor animal. My mom said to me that she thought that she has a very strong "empathy gene" and therefore is more affected by suffering, and other similar things that evoke empathy. This reminded me of Pinker's article about how there isn't yet proof of a morality gene, but there is hard evidence (like my mom's "empathy gene") that people are ingrained with different kinds, and different levels of certain morals at birth, and these grow and develop over a person's life.

After, when discussing her story, mom also said to me "I know this isn't a great, big example, but it's all I can think of" This made me think... do moral moments have to be triggered by some big grand event? I don't think so, morals are set in place for people to react certain ways, or have feelings/reactions to different every day life events and encounters, so therefore a "moral moment" can occur from any everyday event, thought or encounter. Why then do people think that morals are triggered more from big overarching events or ideas rather than small moments/thoughts?

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