A relatively recent issue of TIME Magazine published a brief article called the "Morality Quiz." (Click the link to view the article online), which I mentioned in class. Take the quiz and think through your answers; are you hesitating before deciding what do, or does the decision seem relatively straightforward? Does there seem to be a disconnect between what your rational mind tells you to do and what intuition/instinct does?
Constructivists, as we talked about today, argue that the confusion we experience while contemplating these sorts of situations (unless you're in that tiny percentage of individuals who are able to shut out ethics entirely from their decision-making) shows us how non-objective social and political reality is. Politics, they argue, is affected by the shared understandings and means that human beings share, rather than by any "natural" or "concrete" facts about human biology. States, like humans, may seek out self-help and survival in an anarchical system, but only because they have been conditioned by shared assumptions about how the international system works (e.g., the system is a "dog eat dog" universe, states are power-hungry aggressors, etc.). Construcivism is concerned with how and why these particular assumptions emerge at particular times, and how they change over time.
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3 comments:
I think that to a certain extent, everyone look out for their own best interests; who doesn't want to succeed? However, the constructivist idea of morality and ethics plays a significant role, particularly when dealing with human life. When i took the morality quiz, I was reluctant to "flip the switch" and take another person's life although it might save my own. Also, the political environment might change the way in which people make their decisions. For example, during war time, citizens act more desperately than they might otherwise.
Above all, the moral aspect of constructivism reflects the idea that politics are run by humans, not machines; there exists a conscience that will alter our decisions based on our ethics.
In many situations, ethics will dictate how an individual acts or chooses. However, note that we are students sitting in front of computers, choosing what we would do in a hypothetical situation. It is my opinion that if a situation such as the 'crying baby' were to actually occur, many of 55% who voted "I could not smother the child" would instantly disregard their ethics, based on their instinct to survive. Similarly, in the political system, the actors are not machines. They are human; they do have consciences and ethics, but they may be forced at any time to disregard them for the sake of their nation's survival.
Denise
I have always had the notion that people are good in general. They know when it is necessary to sacrifice and when it is reasonable to take. In certain life or death situations like these where one person has control of who essentially lives or dies, he or she would be inclined to sacrifice themselves in some ways if it benefits the majority of the people (according to the results after each question). However, we must also take into consideration that everyone who takes this quiz is sitting behind a computer, not actually in the spur of the moment. In those instances, the outcomes could be substantially different when panic, greed, and fear sweeps into the brain.
Constructivists triumph in this article; people's ideologies define a society.
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