Recently, Southern Weekend published a special report: After the Wenchuan earthquake, Xiaolin, a rural woman in Baisong Town, Changning, Hunan Province, borrowed more than 3,000 yuan from her family and secretly boarded a train bound for Chengdu, with only one thought in her heart, that is, to help the disaster-stricken areas. But when she got home, there was no room for her at home. When her husband filed for divorce, her in-laws glared at her. Her husband left a sentence: "Unless you prove that you are right."
So Xiao Lin's behavior is right? Judging from the current mainstream moral standards, Kobayashi ignored his sick son and went all the way to the disaster area to take care of an injured mother for more than 10 days. This should be a noble act. How could it be wrong? However, my husband's words are also reasonable: "I am a normal person, and I want a normal wife and a normal home. Is this wrong? " During the days when Xiaolin sneaked out, her husband could only explain to her neighbors that she had gone on a business trip. As a result, Kobayashi's "business trip" became the laughing stock of his neighbors after dinner. There is even such a gossip: "Kobayashi has the money to take it to the disaster area to do good deeds. Why do you ask us to borrow money?" In this way, it is difficult for a husband to borrow money from relatives and friends to treat his son. So, is this simple husband wrong?
It seems that this is a thorny issue. In all fairness, in public, most people may insincerely praise: "Kobayashi's behavior is noble." But in private, ask ourselves, can we really understand Kobayashi's behavior, that is, leaving his children to help in the disaster area? On the contrary, it is understandable that Kobayashi's husband and in-laws are dissatisfied. After all, Xiao Lin's behavior is contrary to common sense.
From this, Kobayashi's behavior leads to a question: when moral standards conflict with human nature, which side should be abandoned? In my opinion, it is natural to abandon unreasonable and natural moral standards in this dilemma. Ethics belongs to social science, and the moral standards it recognizes obviously cannot go against common sense. However, what needs to be further demonstrated is why human nature is more important than moral standards.
As a soft constraint, morality is different from accepted social norms (such as not making noise in public) and rigid legal provisions (such as not stealing). It is purely a personal self-requirement, so you can only be self-disciplined and not arrest people. Mother Teresa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, volunteered to go to India to help the poor there. Although her behavior deserves our praise, she can't ask her relatives or friends to follow her behavior, otherwise it would be against common sense. By analogy, if Xiaolin is single, her behavior is only about herself, and naturally it will not cause a storm. However, Xiaolin has a husband, and her behavior should be supported by her husband first, but she went to the disaster area behind her family's back, which is tantamount to imposing her own moral standards on her husband and in-laws, which violates the proper meaning of morality. In this predicament, Xiao Lin had to give up his family if he wanted to stick to his ideal. Otherwise, she has to give up her noble behavior and return to normal.
But Xiao Lin's story has a happy ending. Her husband asked her to prove that she was right. Fortunately, Xiao Lin and others came to prove this. When her husband, who worked as a temporary worker in the local mining bureau, needed 40,000 yuan as a credit guarantee to get the qualification to drive independently in the local mine, Kobayashi went to the propaganda minister of the local mining bureau and asked to reduce the amount of the deposit. As a result, the leader agreed to reduce it to 20 thousand yuan on the spot, on the grounds that she "showed the advanced nature of the workers in the mining bureau by doing good deeds" Is there any stronger proof than this?
Of course, we won't come to the conclusion that the husband's supportive behavior shows that his moral realm has improved. The reason is extremely simple. Moral behavior is valuable because it does not ask for anything in return. If you do good deeds after calculation, you will no longer be worthy of the name of morality. Nevertheless, it is meaningful for the husband to change from opposing to supporting this change. Here, the attitude of the leaders of the Mining Bureau played a key role. The well-intentioned propaganda minister not only affirmed Kobayashi's actions, but also gave him a considerable reward, thus achieving the positive effect that doing good deeds with good results will gradually become social consciousness. In such a social atmosphere, people's enthusiasm for doing good will be greatly improved. In fact, regardless of the quality of human nature in different places, the average moral standards of people in different regions are obviously different, because different institutional environments have shaped different moral standards.