Week 4 blog-Vivian
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Smith’s world in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments” demonstrates how society chooses to ‘go with the flow’, even when they know that the majority is not always right nor good. Smith says that the inferiors admire and envy the rich; instead of being mad with jealousy and trying to take down their superiors, everyone wants to serve and aid the rich in keeping their world seemingly perfect. When the rich commit follies, the society choose to overlook those in order to keep their superiors on the high pedestal they currently view them. Yet if the poor do even one wrong thing, society looks down upon them even more.
Smith says that everyone’s goal and purpose of their labour is to attain respect and approbation. He says that there are 2 ways of doing this– one by wisdom and virtue, the other wealth and greatness. He goes on to say that most aspire for wealth and greatness, despite often, the lack of virtue involved in this pathway. He says that the majority also are worshipers of this group of people, and therefore imitate them in hopes to appear more like the wealthy. This includes copying the vices of the superiors. Those who aspire for this know that it is wrong–they “endeavour to efface, both from his own memory and from that of other people, the remembrance of what he has done”. Even if they were to succeed and achieve honor, they would be too remorse of their follies to enjoy the admiration and respect. One may deduce that Smith is implying that wisdom and virtue is best to strive for, but that it will never allow you to survive in an economy in which the majority succeed through vice and folly. So in his world, the desire for wealth (of respect/admiration) overcomes society’s conscience.
This analysis is straightforward and gets the point. But, does Smith say that the wealthy succeed through vice and folly, or just that they are excused for bad behavior more often?
I think you have made a good point here, and it goes along with the saying that the rich get richer while the poor become poorer. This idea has created a lack of drive within the society a, making lower class citizens feel as though they must stay at the social level they are in order to keep things going smoothly. In my opinion a little chaos needs to occur every once in a while, change is what makes the world go around. In order to grow, we must continuously alter our way of living for the better. So I suppose I have said all of this to say that I disagree with Smiths views on this topic.
A nice start at discussing the reasons for society’s poor moral compass, Vivian, though it feels like there’s a disconnect between your first and second paragraphs, and I wonder if you could make the transition between them more smooth. In the first paragraph, you start by observing that according to Smith, society chooses to go with the flow, acquiescing to the desires of the rich — but harshly judging the poor. THen, in your second paragraph, you observe that “everyone’s goal and purpose of their labour is to attain respect and approbation.” I’m left wondering what happened to the poor — could you mention them as you continue the discussion? Perhaps the problem is that the labour of the poor is almost never judged worthy of respect, no matter what happens?