Fanli Jia and Tobias Krettenauer at Frontiers In Psychology website
Exactly! "I" construed by those in the West is in large part derived from the historical advent of capitalism. In particular, the consequences for human interactions derived from the Industrial Revolution where the "wage slave" became deeply engrained in such "scientific management" techniques as Taylorism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientifi ... management.Like many other moral constructs, the moral identity concept is rooted in a Western cultural context that stresses an individually oriented morality.
Being a moral person results from a desire to be consistent with one’s moral concepts through which individuals are motivated to gain independence from social conventions.
We now take all of that for granted of course. It's just the way things are. And yet historically there were any number of communities that revolved far, far more around "we". Around the community as a a whole. Around the village.
In fact there are still pockets of them around the globe. In the Amazon rainforest, for example.
Instead, there are those who try to argue that the "what's in it more me" mentality is predicated entirely on what Nature commands or [re those like Ayn Rand and the Libertarians] on what constitutes philosophically the most rational human interactions.
Capitalism becomes just another historical rendition of "social conventions". Indeed, let the workers try to gain "independence" from it when they get around to paying their bills at the end of the month.
Right, tell that to the working class in China...now that the powers that be have embraced state capitalism as the political economy of choice.In contrast, people from Eastern cultures consider a highly moral person to be societally oriented. In this moral orientation, people tend to define themselves in the context of collectivism and an interdependent self.
Still, in nations around the globe these days there will almost always be a complex intertwining of government policies that aim for something in the middle...not quite me and not quite we.Social relationships and group membership are linked to the motivation to adjust to the demands of others and to maintain harmony within one’s group. Being a moral person in Eastern societies may be more reflective of group norms than of an individual’s morality.
The welfare state it is often called.
And, as such, moral relativism thrives.