10 August 2008

The Sucker to Saint Phenomenon

I have been reading an article called Suckers and Saints: How We Rationalize Being Wimpy about a phenomenon whereby a person who is insecure e.g. about being weak rationalizes it by acting morally superior. As the author says, "Claiming the moral high ground is driven by a basic insecurity." This would suggest that those who are poor would be more inclined to believe that money is evil. It also suggests that morality is just rationalization and that a person who is not insecure in any way would have no morality.

For example, many people believe that rape is bad. If you watch the news you may hear about a rapist and you may think that the rapist is an evil person and that you are morally superior to the rapist because you would never rape anyone. However, maybe this feeling of moral superiority is driven by insecurity. Perhaps you claim you are morally superior to a rapist because you do not have the guts to rape people.

This suggests that the fully secure and confident person with self-esteem is the person with no morals, a person who goes around robbing banks and raping women because he believes that nothing is morally wrong.

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