Conscience And Moral Horizons

Abstract

In her book Crafting Selves, the anthropologist Dorinne Kondo describes staying with a local family during her stint as a researcher in Japan. She was planning on visiting relatives on the other side of Tokyo one warm day and started to leave the house wearing a long-sleeved blouse. The woman she was staying with suggested, in no uncertain terms, that wearing long sleeves on a warm day might be uncomfortable. Kondo, an American, responded that the sleeves were breathable and she would be kept quite cool. The Japanese woman was nonplussed.

She immediately retorted that what I was feeling was quite beside the point. I should change to a short-sleeved blouse in some cool pastel, for then “when someone sees you, they’ll look at you and think, ‘Oh, how cool she looks!’ and they will feel cooler themselves.” Chastened, I went back upstairs and found an ice blue short-sleeved blouse, which seemed to pass muster. But I was astounded that I was supposed to dress, not for personal comfort, but for the sake of the comfort of others …²

In American families, the primary loyalty is to self—its values, autonomy, pleasure, virtue, and actualization. Most parents accept this criterion for maturity and try to arrange experiences that will make it easier for their children to attain this ideal. Some societies tip the other way.

Jerome Kagan¹