hmm =/

[chaoticcliche]

I was having a conversation with my mom on the way home today and she said something that really shook me to my core. It...makes a lot of sense to who she is as a person and what she's gone through. We were talking about someone whose kid is having behavioral problems lately, which brought up the different ways one can discipline a child, and she said (I wrote it down)

"Fear is what drives us to do the right thing"

Which, I think could be argued is true in a way, but the more I asked her about it, the more it was revealed that she was talking more about fear of punishment. She believes people avoid doing "bad" things because they're afraid of the punishment (a real life example: she avoids speeding because she doesn't want to get pulled over and/or get a ticket, whereas I tend to be more concerned with causing harm to myself or others). There's a lot to unpack to a worldview like that. When we look at people more my moms age (50-60s), and even older, this seems to be a really common ideology. There's something to be said about how this ideology has been set in place over human history, and the cycles that continue in order to keep it this way, especially in this white, Christian, working-class demographic. When I think about, it puts a lot of current things in perspective. It just kinda makes me sad.

Anyway, at some point I'm gonna write an essay about it, because again, there's...a lot to unpack.

Comments

[ljwrites]

This is an entire argument in legal philosophy about whether people obey the law out of fear of consequences or out of internalizing the values. In criminal law it's often a blend of both, i.e. you don't want to ruin your life by drunk driving and also you believe drunk driving is wrong. When it comes to other areas of law, not to mention just morality in general, it gets a lot more complex. I'm struck by the fundamentally bleak view of humanity the rhetoric of control through fear reflects--like, do so few people buy into social values that fear is all that keeps them in line? Is that something wrong with people, or with social values, or both?