Child & Family Advocacy W3

 "Culture and psyche make each other up." You can't study one without studying the other.

Professor Haidt: "Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed, they want change and justice, even at the risk of chaos"

"Moral humility avoids self-righteousness which is the normal human condition"

“It felt good to be released from partisan anger. And once I was no longer angry, I was no longer committed to reaching the conclusion that righteous anger demands: we are right, they are wrong. I was able to explore new moral matrices, each one supported by its own intellectual traditions. It felt like a kind of awakening...

"If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong. But years later, when you travel, or become a parent, or perhaps just read a good novel about a traditional society, you might find some other moral intuitions latent within yourself. You might find yourself responding to dilemmas involving authority, sexuality, or the human body in ways that are hard to explain.

"Conversely, if you are raised in a more traditional society, or within an evangelical Christian household in the United States, you become so well educated in the ethics of community and divinity that you can detect disrespect and degradation even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong. But if you then face discrimination yourself (as conservatives and Christians sometimes do in the academic world),30 or if you simply listen to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, you may find a new resonance in moral arguments about oppression and equality.”

He also said: "The First Rule of Moral Psychology: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second."

"The Second Rule of Moral Psychology: There's more to morality than harm and fairness."

*READ As He Thinketh in His Heart by Elder Oaks

can you identify your premise rather than just your conclusive statements. Think of the following words and various definitions that might accompany such words:

Love	Hate	Marriage	Sex
Equality	Nurture	Preside	Gender
Gender roles	Rights	Life	Liberty
Happiness	Truth	Need	Want

 If you aren't aware of your own definitions of these words, how can you expect to understand others definitions? For example, if you or someone else were to say something like "love equals love." Can you define love? Do you know what it is and what it isn't? Do you know how God both defines and shows love? This is what it means to challenge the premise.

The premises or assumptions President Oaks is referring to could be also characterized as moral foundations as we studied in our last reading. If you can determine the moral foundation (or premise) for someone who is in favor of administering hormone blockers to a child that identifies as transgender, for example, you will be much more effective as a child advocate. This may not elicit agreement, as President Oaks just stated, but it will make efforts and interactions much more productive.

Brother Petermann: Advocacy is listening, educating, inspiring, promoting, counseling, and loving. Regardless of others' source of morality, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we first and foremost look to Him first as our primary source, even if we don't always cite that source in our efforts.

As a helpful review for these moral foundations, see the chart below.