When I heard the term "Moral
Licensing" at first in Mr.Garriock's class, it was so unfamiliar to
me. Throughout few more classes afterwards, simple explanations and suitable
examples were provided to help us think deeply on moral licensing.
One of the example, which was highly impressive for me, was the film named “Nosedive” from Black Mirror. The film mainly talks the social status system happened in the near future. In that society, people estimate each other through using the social status system. The personal grade made by others evaluation controls, limits and disrupts every single matter. The entire film gives a simple lesson. Having too much attention on others evaluation makes you worse.
However, few scenes which have a common point grab my attention while watching the whole film. Especially, when the main character “Lacey” and her co-worker underestimated intentionally other co-worker, it inspired me to find a huge interaction with moral licensing.
As I mentioned before, the five star evaluation system controlled everything in the Lacey’s society. Then, I suddenly assumed that the evaluation system might affect the definition of moral. Although Lacey and her co-worker already knew the importance of the grade, they seems not to feel any guiltiness on their behavior. That behavior must be based on their high grade which makes them believe that they are more ethical than the others who have lower grade. In other words, in the Lacey's society, the definition of the moral depended on the grade. With the changed definition of moral, moral licensing commonly happened without any limitation.
One of the example, which was highly impressive for me, was the film named “Nosedive” from Black Mirror. The film mainly talks the social status system happened in the near future. In that society, people estimate each other through using the social status system. The personal grade made by others evaluation controls, limits and disrupts every single matter. The entire film gives a simple lesson. Having too much attention on others evaluation makes you worse.
However, few scenes which have a common point grab my attention while watching the whole film. Especially, when the main character “Lacey” and her co-worker underestimated intentionally other co-worker, it inspired me to find a huge interaction with moral licensing.
As I mentioned before, the five star evaluation system controlled everything in the Lacey’s society. Then, I suddenly assumed that the evaluation system might affect the definition of moral. Although Lacey and her co-worker already knew the importance of the grade, they seems not to feel any guiltiness on their behavior. That behavior must be based on their high grade which makes them believe that they are more ethical than the others who have lower grade. In other words, in the Lacey's society, the definition of the moral depended on the grade. With the changed definition of moral, moral licensing commonly happened without any limitation.
I highly agreed that this situation
often occurred the real society. Yet the real society failed to build an
accurate evaluation system, people estimate each other through the social
status. Every single behavior is more important than his or her social status
to figure out how moral he is, but social status controlled the degree of
morality mostly. For example, in KMLA, there are few students who estimated badly
because they misbehaved during beginning of the freshmen year. Moral licensing
also happened in this situation. Since those few students had lower social
status, most of the other students who definitely have higher social status
than those students started to ignore and make them isolate. Even though most
of students underestimated, ignored and made them isolate, they never felt the one
emotion, guiltiness. In some cases, most of students even enjoyed the
situation. This situation looks familiar with the situation happened in the
film.
To sum up my short reflection, moral licensing often happened in real society. To solve the problem related with the moral licensing, people shouldn't estimate their morality. The definition of morality changed time to time. But, one thing that people have to remember is the definition of morality should reflects other's thought.
Well done, and I like seeing the connection you make to Nosedive, even though I didn't intend for students to connect it to the podcast. But you did, and your comparison works. Having a high ranking enabled people to be mean to others more readily simply based on the score. Perhaps getting a high score or giving a high score would enable giving a lower score to someone who can't hurt you. Basically "wongta" type behavior to isolate someone. Good work. Your writing isn't polished or completely grammatically correct, but don't worry about it here. The more you read and write freely the more it will improve.
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