Unknown Speaker 00:00 79 This is workshop number 12. Unknown Speaker 00:44 From the list that I bought, the backgrounds of people in this room are marvelously diverse. And I should just let everybody talk to each other about what brings everybody together to talk about the topic of morality, which is usually regarded as a very benighted topic. It's, you know, when a suspect if one does research on it, on the other hand, it seems to me from the morning presentations, because that was the central issue that did not get addressed this morning. So I will begin. Also, if anybody is really dying from the habit, what Unknown Speaker 01:34 is it you're watching All right. Well, leading right in from the points made in the panel this morning, a psychological theory is a construction of reality. This is a look at some, why don't know how separable this this sort of epistemologies and other fields in psychology, this is a very bad psychological theory is usually regarded as a description of reality. But it is a construction and the adequacy of any theory rests on its ability to predict and explain. And in the psychology of human development, the present explanatory paradigm is rooted in psychoanalytic theory. It's very interesting to me that the speakers this morning, oh, in some sense, touch base with psychoanalytic theory, I, myself am interested again in psychoanalytic theory, and maybe we'll get to some of what is why that is. But the paradigm rooted in Freud's work has been expanded to the work of social learning theorists, ego psychologists and cognitive developmental psychologists. However, because all of these interpretive frameworks have been derived from a male perspective, they have always seemed best to fit the data on male. Since the pattern of landslides has been used, as the basis for theory construction, deviations from that pattern appears as developmental deviation as developmental failure. The recent extension of developmental theory into adulthood So, only exemplifies the ease with which psychologists have come to move from the seasons of a man's life to use rather than title to the stages of adult development is subtitled. As a result, the data on women have stood as discrepant facts upon the field of human development. And the problem has been a pro approach within the field of psychology in two different ways. One strategy has been to say, let us now try to fit women that are into human development, identify the oppressive factors that have kept them from developing so that they too can conform to this pattern that we describe. My own strategy has been different. I have been interested in what current theory has missed, in other words when I hear this and so I have looked to women's development out of an interest myself in women's development and As a woman, but also as a psychologist as a way of looking at what has been left out psychological theory. Why, in a course that I'm teaching this semester on Freud. We asked why for such a person who was otherwise such a good observer can write very eloquent letters about the offer he has seen, and so forth. Persons surrounded by women, as patients as colleagues in his private life. Why is there development so, quote, shrouded in mystery, so mysterious, so impossible to understand? So I have looked at women's development in search of a really a different way to tell the story of human development as a way of expanding the explanatory paradigm in psychology. Now, if you look at where do psychologists find sex differences, because there's a I mean, it's an always raging argument as to whether there are or aren't sense differences, and both physicians sort of quickly reached some sort of absurdity. Because I think, again, you know, the bias toward making rigid dichotomies. But anyway, where the sex differences show up in the psychological literature, they show up, particularly where there is projective data, by which I mean, where the person constructs the problem. Unknown Speaker 06:33 Therefore, it shows up in psychoanalysis. It shows up in all research using the TI 80, the Thematic Apperception tests where people make up stories, and it shows up in research on moral development where people are asked to complete stories. In other words, the more the person defines the problem, the more one begins to see some evidence of sex differences. I will talk about what I'm now, these differences center, particularly on how the relationship of self and other is constructed. As Nancy Chado as reviewed reviewed this morning, in psychoanalytic theory, the early attachment between mother and child is seen as the basis from which human development then proceeds, where subsequent development is conceived as a series of progressive separations. So that the more separate the more individuated the more ego bounded person is, the more developed this is going to be. However, the findings about self and other that we somehow perceive and construe the relationship between self and other differently, also show up in the fields of perception and cognition, were in the form of findings about perceptive and cognitive styles that women tend to see things embedded in an array, perception is more contextual, whereas men is more analytic. In research on power, women focus on both sides have an interdependent relationship, whereas men tend to structure relationships in hierarchical terms. These are generalities, they don't apply, obviously, to all people. Okay, so if you look through the psychological literature, there's a suggestion that women and then experience and construe the relationship of self and other differently. However, this observation of difference, then gets turned into an evaluative judgment. When separation is equated with development, to the extent that women are less separate than then they have been considered less developed. Now, we're at this is where, as I said, it's a short step from here to interest in moral judgment. Unknown Speaker 09:08 And if there's one area of psychology, and it's interesting, because it ties into literature as well, Unknown Speaker 09:16 where reiterative sex differences appear over and over and over again, the same finding, it's in the area of moral judgment. That is, how prescriptive statements about the relationship of self and other and you can go back to the Bible, and, you know, draw out, compare Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in order to demonstrate the integrity and supremacy of his faith in God with the woman who comes before Solomon, and lies about her motherhood in order to save the life of the child, where's the world priority? And then you can go through Merchant of Venice and you can see that the justice argument is is portrayed or is cast in a male voice and the mercy argument is cast in the female voice. And then, if you move into the psychological literature and Freud's work on some cyclical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes, he says that women have less sense of justice than men, because their judgments are more affected by feelings. As was mentioned, this afternoon, this is a pejorative statement. And then you go to the research on children, and PRJ writes about the moral judgment of the child. And you look in the index, and you look up girls, because I help people kind of suspect that the child is always the male child. And if you look up in the index under girls, there are four entries. And all four entries say that girls are different from boys in the way in which they judge moral problems, they are more tolerant, they are more reconciled the innovation. They have less interesting rules and and building up systems of rules. And therefore they are poor decisions in the legal sense. But again, very important to notice a pattern of observation of difference. And this is the major at least my interest in the theme of this conference, and observation of difference, and then a judgment. That one way is the better way, the developmental way, the healthy way, the right way. The other way is wrong. If you look up boys, and the index to Piaget is moral judgment as a child, you'll find nothing. Because of course, the child is now. But while you can point this out and point out that Kohlberg who did research on moral development, and have six stages of moral judgment did had a sample of all males. Okay, so we can go beyond this. What's interesting is to look at the area of morality and ask how do males define the moral problem? In other words, what is the center of this construction? Let me just tell you what I'd like to my, the route I am following so you can have a sense of where I'm going. And I will make a not so long presentation so we can have a discussion. What I want to describe by telling you a little bit about my own work, and my partner, is how we have become attuned to seeing what it is that males are doing and how we don't have a way of understanding what women are talking about. And I will present two excerpts from to 11 year old children begin to illustrate how it's very clear what the male judgment is, and how difficult it is to try to articulate the woman's judgment. But Unknown Speaker 13:10 to do that, so I have to talk about what is the construction of the world problem. Moral conflicts, moral dilemmas, are generally studied in psychology, the moral judgments, the child is about how the child comes to construct a system of rules, and a system of rules for adjudicating disputes, so that there can be agreement as to what is fair, and the notion of fairness is the center of the child's emerging sense of justice and the notion of justice. It's usually acquainted with the notion of morality in psychological studies of moral development. And justice means an equal balancing of the rights of self and others. And, in a sense, thinking about what Nancy charter I said this morning. It's an attempt after differentiating the self from the original other, who then find work back towards seeing the other as equal to the self. So that gradually, grudging one learns to accord equal rights to other people, so as to ensure that they will respect one's own rights, our own I think for interesting reasons in this country, our morality isn't morality. And that's both. years taught and wondered why women's Jetsons didn't fit in to In the psychological categories very well, they always seem to be somewhat at a slant somewhat at a skew. And I ended up doing a study, I was interested in how people thought about real dilemmas of conflict and choice. And I did a study of women who were deciding whether to continue or abort a pregnancy. The history of that study is interesting, because when I said I was studying women who are having deciding whether or not to have abortions, one of my male colleagues at Harvard urged that I studied men who were having abortions in order to make have a balance, and make the study relevant to human development. The other thing, of course, was that it was assumed and I think it's important to share these experiences, that studying women was sort of something of an oddity, and studying pregnant women was really very bizarre. And pregnancy has been studied by women as well as men, psychoanalysts has been described as a sort of normal condition of psychosis, where the boundaries between self and other get blurred. Or, in other words, women's experiences looked at, from a male perspective as deviant, as odd as crazy as sort of lexan. And therefore, the results of my study wouldn't generalize to other people because the sample was so peculiar, but the most interesting part of the response to the study on the abortion decision, which was the first study of people actually thinking about a real world choice, not a hypothetical one was the unease everybody had as to whether abortion everybody I mean, I, this is at Harvard, in a straight psychology department heard about whether abortion was a moral dilemma. And now that's very interesting. What was the problem? Well, the problem was that nobody was sure whether the fetus had rights. Unknown Speaker 17:08 And since moral dilemmas, dilemmas of conflicting rights, by that definition, it wasn't clear whether abortion was a wasn't a moral dilemma. If you granted the fetus rights, then you had a problem, because in a hierarchical system of rights, I hope that this is not specific. The Right to Life takes precedence over every other, right. So it's hard to grant the fetus rights without coming out in a anti abortion position. On the other hand, if the fetus doesn't have rights, when does it get the rights, and then the rights don't seem so natural. In fact, rights begin to seem constructed. And the decision of who has rights begins to see, like a human decision, and then who makes that decision, and so forth, and so on. So the study made everybody very uncomfortable. However, by looking at a problem, where women did have the opportunity to make a choice where they had control over that choice, it was possible to begin to see how women defined moral problems. In other words, in the paper I wrote about that articulates how that definition centers on the issue of responsibility, and how conflicts and responsibilities do not fall into the need hierarchy of a logical system of rights. So they don't come up with a clear, unambiguous solution to a moral problem. In fact, in the women's definition, the moral problem was, by virtue of its occurrence. It couldn't, it was irreducible in the sense that you had to make a choice, but each choice would be at the expense of something, and so forth and so on. I then there was I had a sense of how women's thinking about moral problems developed from the initial concern was simply survival, to sort of participation in a social consensus, where the concern was with goodness. And this is very interesting. For women, goodness was often identified with caring with nurture, and so forth. But in the conventions of our society, there's one person who's excluded from the good woman's care. Right, herself. Now, you know, in terms of that's a problem of class inclusion in the logical sense, as well as other citizens. But women then had to deal with this, if they were articulating a morality of care, then why wasn't it moral to care for themselves? And so the sort of polar terms or women's moral thinking that terms of selfishness and responsibility were then reworked, so as to bring and include and include the self in what was then articulated as a universal ethic of care. Unknown Speaker 20:07 I defined that sequence by analyzing the women's responses to a dilemma where they constructed the moral problem. I did not come in like most psychologists and say, Here is the problem. Now, will you solve it? This is the husband, his wife is dying, he can't get the drug, what should you do? But say, here's a decision in your life. Will you tell me how you are thinking about this decision? What alternatives? Are you considering? And how are you thinking about the alternatives. And what I was interested in is whether they use people use moral terms, like, Should or write better, I mean, the usual everyday language of moral discourse. And then I was interested in one of the things that are found in the women's responses was a sense of a double language, a public language and attempt to speak in public language and a private language, a divided judgment. Anyway, I want to that's I've written some about that. So I want to go beyond I then began to ask the questions, how General was this? How special was my population? Could you find this in other women and I did a cross sectional study of boys and girls, men and women, starting at age seven, and going, the oldest subjects are 65, or people or 65. And just asking moral dilemmas to see what kind of constructions will emerge. And with the 11 year olds, it was particularly interesting, because so one of the things I kept coming up against, and I think it's, I'd like to tell you about this sentence problem concerns me is, I interviewed women at Radcliffe, in another study of college students, and they said morality had to do with obligations and responsibilities. And when people read these interviews, or these Day to everybody thought that the women I was taught who I was talking about, were at some other place or some other time. You know, I mean, and I went, when the students who are on the editorial board of the Harvard educational review with the manuscript in front of them identifying these women as regular women, they were sure that the women were from the Midwest. Or were some other place that somehow when women come to Harvard, they don't talk like that. So I started to sort of find out try to find out well, I went interviewed women, lawyers and women doctors to try to find women in in these other groups. And it was interesting, because there was a sense in which the moral construction, that is the nature of the world problem, what was the moral issue really seemed to be very similar, there was a lot of commonality. I don't, that's not a definitive finding. That's an impression. So we went to 11 euros. And I picked, I was looking for children who would be comparable to mind Harvard sample. I was trying to look at the sequence of development. So I picked two bright, articulate 11 year old children. And who didn't seem to fall into sexual stereotypes a little girl wanted to be a scientist when she grew up. Although if you asked her why she wanted to be a scientist, she said, because she wanted to take care of people interested and presented these two judgments of these tickets to my class, do this and talk about how to think about what the children are saying now. Again, let me just remind you that in moral in psychological studies of moral development, moral development is seen as the progression progressive understanding of the notion of justice. Okay, so here are these kids, the little boy, they were asked, Coburn's dilemma as to whether it was right for her husband to steal a drug to save the life of his dying wife. And this 11 year old says that it's right for the husband to steal the drug. Because for one thing, a human life is worth more than money because he can get the money later from rich people with cancer, but he couldn't get his wife again, because people are also different. You couldn't get her again. So he begins to see the logical priority of life of a property asked if she should steal the drug, even if he doesn't love his wife. He replies he should, and goes on to elaborate that if he got caught, the judge would probably think it was the right thing to do. And put the husband on her own. Asked about the fact that he's stealing he will be breaking the law. He quickly replies the laws have been stakes, and you can't go writing up a law for everything you could imagine. It's clear that he saw the dilemma from the outset. As a clash between the right to life and the right to property, that he had some sense of the logical priority of the right to life, Unknown Speaker 25:07 as well as the view of the legal system, which took into account its function of protecting the social order, the judge, she said she'd give the husband the widest possible sentence. He also saw a request beyond the law to principles which formed the basis for considering certain laws as mistakes, and others as unintentionally violating the spirit in which they were written. The sense emerges clearly of a social consensus, that is assumed around moral values that are known, that will allow one to know and expect what others will recognize as quote, the right thing to do, as well as understanding of laws as manmade and subject to change through agreed upon procedures. What I want to emphasize really about this, is that in looking at moral judgment, it brings together two aspects of women's experience, one being the political aspect, who thinks of himself or herself as within the social consensus as someone who will be protected by the legal system, and who sees oneself as outside. And also then the distinctively the distinctive concerns that affect women's conceptions of self and other. So in a sense, both issues and women's experience, the political and the cognitive are mixed together. All right, it's inch. It's certainly easy to describe his judgment, a little girl, dismayed everyone? Because it was sort of most clear what she wasn't doing. Should the husband steal the drug? Well, she said, I don't think so. I think there might be other ways besides stealing it, like if he could borrow the money or make a loan or something, but he really shouldn't steal it. But his wife shouldn't die either. Why shouldn't he steal it, because he might save his wife then. But if he did, you might have to go to jail, and then his wife might get sicker again. And he couldn't get more and it might not be good, because they really should just talk it out in find some other way to make the money. asked again, why he shouldn't steal the drug. All she can do is repeat the phrase, it's not right finally adding claiming that he took it, he might not know how to give it to his wife. Finding the dilemma clearly insoluble, the terms of its resolution continue to elude her. Asked why it's important to save a life she says because if she died, it hurts a lot of people. And it hurts her. I mean, because you don't want anybody to die. You want them to live as long as they turned, believing that if the husband and the druggist had talked to this quote, and talked it out long enough, they could reach something besides stealing, that the solution lies in negotiation and compromise. The dilemma remains to her in these terms, insider, I think he should try as hard as he can to stay alive. Because if you have a chance to save a life, you really should. But he really shouldn't steal, I think there might be another way. Now, what I'd like to pay attention to and Mark is that, first of all, she embeds this in a narrative. In other words, she cannot think of the problem outside the context in which it might appear she has to envision what would happen if a husband stole the drug, then what would happen to the wife and begins in a sense to embed the moral problem in a narrative that places it in a context. And since there is none given, on the other hand, she sees the problem not as the clash of rights that can be resolved through logical hierarchy, but rather is a failure of breakdown human communication that can be mended with its own thread. And which people should talk about what's I've not given you the terms or my terms of thinking about this, what's interesting as you first presented is, all you can see is what you see here. And these terms of use of play, I have placed in a super absurd introduce, I'm referring to even more because of the sample of 18 year olds, 27 year olds and 34 year olds. And if your The point I want to make is a developmental theory is not built from the ground up. In other words, you don't start within infancy and early childhood. It comes from a vertex that's actually caches friends, in other words, one defines maturity and then one goes back and looks for the route to maturity. So if moral development is based on the notion of understanding the concept of justice as equality, then moral development usually comes angstrom a vertex of adolescent thought, where the realization of separation, individual rights and so forth is part of the Unknown Speaker 30:09 development of leaving childhood leaving the family. But if you move on to adulthood, the nature of world thinking changes. And then if you go back and look at Children's responses from an adult perspective, they begin to look very different. And particularly, it begins to become here, what the little girls are saying. Because if you compare the 18 year olds, the men are still talking about rights. Let me give you a vote doesn't make any difference whether we're talking about his wife as as an 18 year old man, or a stranger he's stealing to save a human life. The dilemma involves a hierarchy of values, this society values money more than life, that's murder on the part of society for setting up the kind of system that would allow something like that to happen. You do what you think is right, unless it infringes on somebody else, or only being protecting individual rights. Whereas the woman talks about responsibility. The principle is the thing which is a stake is the preservation of the life of an individual to whom he has committed himself. I think the feeling of responsibility of not wanting to hurt people of wanting to preserve life or things like that are all expressions of tolerance and tolerance associated with the fundamental root of all human interaction. So what's happening in man's focusing on how people are all alive, and we should respect everyone's rights alive, voluminous, focusing on the issue of difference in how tolerance for difference turns valid, human understanding the two sides really understand. Okay, quickly go on to age 27. The law according to the man operates to maximize the social good in general situations, specific situations like this dilemma require adjustments in moral principles determine the adjustments. In those situations, you have to be guided by a moral principle, we'll call it in this situation, the moral principle is the obligation to save for life, the value of human life is far greater is any claim to property and so forth and so on. moral decisions would optimize the social good for everyone, all the people involved. Anyway, I think the woman asks for more information, and she wants to know the context, it would be very hard to stand up in court she says and say I don't love my wife, I just decided to steal section app must be premised on caring. So in other words, these things you see begin to be elaborated. But in at least in this in this cross sectional sample. In 35 year olds, you begin to see the sense the themes coming together, which both changes the assessment of the 11 year old and also experienced the definition of what constitutes rotation. Okay. 35 year old doctor who deals every day with issues of making decisions involving life and death, mail says things are much less clear cut when you're actually doing it than when you're talking about it. And he says that he used to think about ethical issues or extract them from the emotional pressure of the case at hand. But now, he deals more with how they appear in the situation that funds he says, I've been immersed in the particularity of my life. And I think one develops more rough and ready approach to right and wrong and if time is taken to devote to what are serious questions in the abstract. Women, on the other hand, begin to integrate the notion of rights with the notion of responsibility. The point I want to make is this if you look at adult world records, it becomes clear that this 11 year old girl's thinking which seemed in some ways, so diffuse, so inconclusive, so indecisive, has a germ of truth to it, which will become elaborated more clearly, further learning choices. And that the difference in the woman's perspective has been holding, for instance, a very important truth about morality in general. On the issue of diff difference, it seems to me that it's important, rather than psychology to look at what hasn't been explained by psychological theories to look at differences. And one way sex differences are certainly among the more salient, at least now is one way of reassessing and reevaluating our notions of human development, which they only perpetuate on the part of women with a feeling that there's something wrong with them something missing, something they are not seeing without any sense of how to describe what it is that they are articulating a lot of the discussion this afternoon on language. And the different form of construction, such as whether a moral problem is seen as a narrative or whether it's seen as a dilemma. Abstract is a very pertinent to the kinds of differences that I've been trying to describe in my research. I would like to let people ask questions or raise questions even looking Unknown Speaker 36:11 at their construction. Unknown Speaker 36:30 That's interesting. That's a very interesting point, because and I mean, in some way, she seems to be most not doing that. In other words, she's not abstract. And she's not producing a moral problem to a set of abstractions such as the right to life and the right to property. On the other hand, she is trying to envision all possibilities of human configuration. And then it was a wonderful example of another of the dilemmas that is used to study moral development should be thought of, should a sunlight or his father when the father has gone back on a promise, that's it. And usually, you know, it's thought of as a conflict between authority and contract or truth or something. There was one woman from an African society and a classmate of mine, who began to say, well, you have to think of all the possibilities, if the Son is younger than the Father has sent us a child and the father is an adult, and it would have one meaning and if the father was at the end of his life, and the son was a grown man, then the dilemma would be a different dilemma. And you see, that's the interesting time between two literature in a way because the, and the critique of Piaget cognitive developmental theory, which is, how does the configuration of context affect the meaning? And, you know, there's, there's a paper that was that Elliott Turrialba called meaning and context, is there any other kind. I mean, obviously, it's a different dilemma. If the father is an old man, and the son is 40, than it is if the father is 40. And the son is 10, you know. But in psychology, we are, Piaget has focused so much on the development of the concept of identity, logically defined as the concept of constancy. And how children learn. You know, math workbooks, there are four things in each array. And, you know, so that you can hear what was prettier? Well, yeah, maybe see, well, that's an aesthetic judgment. And that doesn't develop that's either there or not, it's like saying, you know, women, there's so mysterious, they're so intuitive. I think all that means is, and therefore, what can you say about the lever to the poet says, All it means is a we don't have a language to describe that side of human experience. And so it's seen as not they're not developing, not changing, either present or absent. We don't know why, and we can. But this is that any conflict, you see moral judgment moves toward the notion of, if you analyze the moral dilemma into conflict of life versus property, then you can say at anytime, anyplace life should take precedence over property. Everybody nods their head, someone says, Wait a minute, you know, then you have to look at the configuration. But that's a very good question. So you don't usually think of all possible combinations as all configurations in which the developer could appear, but that is precisely the issue. So Unknown Speaker 39:46 I wonder also, our responses to that issue, look at change. Either Well, specifically in stone age. If it hadn't been It was white person stealing gloves for an acquaintance. But we just didn't feel like this acquaintance enough to get the gun and the whole issue of connection commitment Unknown Speaker 40:16 he would love. Unknown Speaker 40:19 It made some difference in the responses and perceptions Unknown Speaker 40:24 of people as to whether that's well, you know, it's interesting. The interesting thing is the assumption that underlies it, it's very tight I have, really, Unknown Speaker 40:32 because I can imagine that there would be a real difference in response to the jury that may already get up and forth. Let's say, Well, I don't love that she's my wife. I love her but I still be broke anyway, for the better. He said, Well, this is my neighbor actually feels right for my neighbor to die for. What difference? Say, well, because I thought it was widely used for everything and being a wife. And you standing around swipes for Unknown Speaker 41:15 retirement or doing his nails. Unknown Speaker 41:21 I guess what, I'm guessing that the question was Unknown Speaker 41:22 more loaded, Unknown Speaker 41:25 or unloaded in even an additional way? Unknown Speaker 41:27 Okay. There is a question added, which is, what about a stranger? What about her friends and stuff? Like, would that make a difference? And that's an interesting question. What I thought, originally you were getting out, which I think ties into to some of the other things of difference is that if separation is so hard won for males, and always somewhat fragile, and somewhat tenuous, and they kind of have to, in a sense, separation is assumed, and one has to find one's way back to connecting with other people, then what are the ties between oneself and other people, and you construct a Homeworld system, how the child comes to see that he has caused his family to his community in his country to humanity, that being the highest level. But if you start with the notion of a female self, that is defined through relation, in context in relation to others, then the developmental problem for the woman is going to be rather that she assumes connection. And then the question is, how have you? What have you learned? How can you? What are? So that's why I said, in my, in my own thinking about this, these are two sides of a fundamental human truth. And there's the truth of separation, the truth that we are separate, and also the truth that even our separation only emerges out of relationship. And so the paradoxical relationship of separation and attachment in human development leads, I think, necessarily, to a to context or dialectical moral. Unknown Speaker 43:11 I would wonder if you could tell us a little about whether there's the Kohlberg or you're trying to problems have been studied cross culturally, and I'm getting at a specific notion, and that is that part of Colbert's hierarchy of stages, is really just modern industrial societies hierarchy of stages. That is we think, universalism is better than particularism. Knowing is better than being and so on. And that I'd be curious to know whether when we say, well, a traditional society, it takes longer, and therefore they're less moral. Whether we're just imposing our particular values of the moment. Unknown Speaker 43:55 Well, okay, it goes back to my original point. A developmental theory is somebody's construction of human development, and moral development. The people who don't develop are those people who are unlike the theorist. So women, and people in other cultures and so forth, because the assumption being that they haven't yet got to that result. And specifically, are Unknown Speaker 44:24 the sex differences different in other cultures? Well, that's Unknown Speaker 44:27 interesting, some of them it's interesting I, I did really a textual analysis of the responses that women to the abortion dilemma and picked up as the salient dimension, the reiterative themes, the reiterated words, words of selfishness and responsibilities as the critical moral dimension and showed how the notion of responsibility sort of first emerges. Studying abortion was an interesting dilemma, because it so brought up such central moral issues of women's experience. That is the Experience of pregnancy of connections, what is the connection between self and other so sort of raised the issue of responsibility? This is particularly common in the adolescence. What is the responsibility to itself another, but also the issue of choice. And that is that Unknown Speaker 45:17 what responsibilities we choose Unknown Speaker 45:20 to take on the themes of selfishness and responsibility I really came to from looking at these tests independently. Beatrice Whiting, an anthropologist, who was doing cross cultural work on childbearing, began to talk about responsibility training in young girls. And she describes one finding, which is very, very fascinating. He take two year olds, pairs of two year olds, two girls, two boys in a boy and a girl, will there be differences in the social interaction of these pairs? Now two year olds really, more or less, usually think of as, at the stage of, quote, parallel play. I mean, you know, everyone's playing by himself. That's description. Well, they're just waiting describes that. That's true of the two boys, that's true of the boy and the girl. But in the pair of two girls, you get more reciprocal social interaction, even at age two, the two little girls are responding to one another. And there was, and she talks about that cultures vary from very, very young age on girls are I don't know what the words are engaging or something responsibility training. And there's an interesting study, and I don't know the reference of a particular culture in which in one age cohort, there were very few girls. And so they had to look to the boys to do these assume the roles that are usually assigned to the little girls. So the little boys got drawn into all this responsibility training. And the study found that the boys were more like girls than most boys, but not as good as the girls are doing this now. I mean, these are shreds. These are pieces of evidence that suggests that some of these sex differences Unknown Speaker 47:20 clarified for me why Colbert problems for me always missed the boat. I mean, asking the wrong question. There was one I but there's a young, very young man and woman get married, and they've never had sexual relations, and she doesn't want sex. So he asked her permission to sleep with some other woman. And the moral issue is, is it right or wrong for him to slip with the other woman? If his wife doesn't object? To me, that is not their core problem. Unknown Speaker 47:59 In psychological measurement, and I mean, you can see it on projective tests. And you can see it right across the field, which is questions Who defines what the problem is. And if you allow the problem to be defined by Nan's, then women can get very good at solving those male problems. I mean, they can really be very good, they can learn that logic, they really can and to do that whole thing. But you, if you, you can begin to pick up a sense of divided judgment of I, you know, I could talk this way. But on the other hand, if you want to know what I really think, I don't think that's even the problem. I think you're looking at the wrong thing. I think you're asking the wrong question. In fact, I think the whole same thing with the little girl says the same thing, right? You're not asked him, you don't run my understanding, what can I just ask? That's why I think if you know that for people involved in education, people involved in counseling, in a sense, it's very important to validate this experience for girls and to begin to help them find a language to which they can validate and describe it. And for that, I just, when I did my work, a women's world judgment, and began to describe how you could see women's moral thinking as developing See, nobody saw it developing got to stage three and stopped, which is the story of women's development, for talks about the second wave of repression that overcomes girls at puberty. And almost all of the developmental studies show girls leading the boys in elementary school, right, they're better they sit still, they get higher grades, and then something happens, you know, puberty happens, and the girls develop and plateaus and the boys going up. Well, now you could say what's wrong with the girls, but you could also say, what's the criteria of development? And when I did the research on women's world judgment and began to define the categories of women's role judgment, and why they weren't coming to a conclusive decisive resolution of the dilemma, and that instead of seeing their thinking is confused. You could see that in fact that they were aware of more aspects of the problem which made sense you resolution impossible. The women in in my classes at Harvard began to come up. And suddenly, I used to think what's wrong with my thinking? You see, and I never, it never occurred to me now, I think these 11 year old girls are also being told. Well, that's a nice response. But let's try to think about the rights involved. Would you say some more about your sense of what Unknown Speaker 50:29 apparently of the ethics of using a kind of dual language you're Unknown Speaker 50:34 alluding to in your research? And what effects you saw out the Unknown Speaker 50:41 sample trying to sort out which language they were when they make their decision? Or whatever it is? Unknown Speaker 50:48 Yeah, okay. Let me talk about when rights comes into one's moral thinking, this is this is really talking about my current work. And it's speculative on my part. So I'm interested in what you Unknown Speaker 51:06 think that the dual language I mean, that women in this society at present, and certainly in the past me, you can find if you look at I'm interested in novels written by women and how world problems are constructing the characters and Georgiadis novels, and Margaret babbles novels and so forth, final payments. Because how how women see, see these problems and the extent to which they see them as problems of care. And on the one hand, I think it's important to legitimize these problems in our society as a whole, does very bad, poorly, with problems of caring responsibility. It's much easier for us to construct the abortion dilemma as an issue of human rights, the right to life versus the right to choose, who is against either life or choice. But it's an issue of responsibilities such as Who will take care of the child and gets born, what kind of resources are available to women who decide to continue pregnancies, and so forth, and so on this society. So turns out that and so it's not only that men aren't talking about in our whole social system, these issues are very tough to point to bring up. But it's also interesting, because there's a, there's a kind of naive assumption on the woman's profits in that little girl's thing, which is there's everybody talks things out, everybody will be able to solve the problem, right? If people just sit down and so kind of men have a magical belief in truth, their truth will be revealed that we want to women have a magical belief that all human problems can be resolved by talking. So let me tell you when this comes to group, policy, telling a story of when the crisis the moral crisis of her life, which occurred and sophomore year, she had a friend, male, who she with whom she was friendly, and was involved in, he asked her to lie. Unknown Speaker 53:18 And she didn't want to her main role principle, she said, was not hurting. She didn't mean to hurt him. But she didn't want to know. And he got hurt. Unknown Speaker 53:33 And she didn't know what to do. I mean, there was sort of no way of talking about it, in the sense that this is what he wanted. And she really didn't want this. And so she said, so she decided that principle wasn't all there was to it, not hurting people, because you could hurt people, even if you didn't intend to. And what the principle wasn't even addressing was the issue of integrity. And so she said, she got a new principle, the new principle was, to thine own self be true. To which then she added, you can't worry about hurting other people. Now, at that juncture, her moral judgments go up a stage in Culvers progression. And in fact, she is dealing with a developmental issue, which is where his her knees were to her needs, and what are your horizon? How do they fit in, in situations of social conflict? How can she think about her needs in relation to other people's needs? But as she begins to do it, she initially experiences it as a point of moral nihilism. Really, as a kind of abandonment of morality, morality is caring, and to think of oneself when we'll have to stop caring. And in several different contexts, certainly in the abortion study, this came this the same point thinking the same kind of language kind of again and again is the critical transition in women's trying to read it fun morality, we define morality of care that is not based on self destruction or self deception or disguising one's own participation in some sort of elaborate form. So the two languages problem, in a sense, she's reaching for the other language, the language of rights that will justify her right? To, you know, make choices and happenings and so forth. Then once she's done it, I would say, then the the problem is, how will she integrate that with the neurons? Unknown Speaker 55:47 In Elliot and I, that was that she thought if you abandon the basis of caring for others, then the only thing that you have nothing to hold on to and you just disintegrate as a person and society is doing? Unknown Speaker 56:04 Well, yes, I mean, Murphy told rumor mill on the floss, and then in the hole that her dialogue with Steven guest about, you know, if people stopped caring, when civilization as we know, it will come to an end and the whole thing will fall apart. I think that all the literature of drowning heroines, drown the heroine at the moment, they begin to approach that issue, because to give up caring is to bring the world to an end. We can't go on yet to keep on. There's no it's that impasse at which they think they go under. But yes, I think that is what's Elliot's point. And I'm interested in the relationship between mortgage drabbles novel waterfall where she comes back to the same dilemma that Elliot writes about mill on the floss, which is a triangle involving a woman, her cousin Lucy and her cousin, Lucy's man. And the question is, if the woman falls in love with cousin, Lucy's man, what is the right thing to do? And the problem that I saw drabble struggling with in that novel was how to tell the story. Was there how can you what is the moral judgment? And is there a way to judge the situation that allows other than Elliot solution, so I think that is right, the final payments is about Unknown Speaker 57:25 me maybe one of the problems for women is to recover the rights, the values of rights for themselves and the history. First wave feminism was to buy into the concept of rights, and in any way to recover the morality of rights for yourself as being that today Unknown Speaker 57:48 we have a conflict Unknown Speaker 57:51 between rights and autonomy, but the whole rights morality should lead to satisfaction with autonomy. Unknown Speaker 57:59 That is why but what autonomy means and I thought that Nancy Turner just did a wonderful job this morning, I'm looking because I have a wonderful thing to read that Beatrice Webb this Charles emphasis is when you see what is autonomy mean? Unknown Speaker 58:16 It means it means to me recovering those rights for yourself so that you can use the same principles and apply them for yourself so that you don't have to be lost in a world trying to figure out the situation and inventing your own narrative, to also know the principles as well as the rituals of behavior. Because Martin moral systems are based on both principles. And they're based on rules as well as on but well, Unknown Speaker 58:51 as well, as always in a service hobby, potentially. Unknown Speaker 58:55 That's, that's all it takes for the bush to be set up. And the sad things that Unknown Speaker 59:06 we're doing the book and in our case, they're not the names of men that we have, I have a nice round tables around where the results are in those fields already feel a little overwhelming talk. Exactly to to speak out, I was hoping when she watched, you know, my daughter, that what they've been getting, I think is is a reinforcement of the nurturing of the peacemaking aspect ever since they were you know, Unknown Speaker 59:38 neon. Unknown Speaker 59:41 And wherever the boys had always the value because their job is to go out and do. Unknown Speaker 59:50 And yes, so the malls Unknown Speaker 59:52 and the autonomy for women then it's like, we didn't make it. And somehow a little girls have been gut feel that somehow it's not their rule. So they have to make a story out of it. And they don't actually know. But it happens all the time of seeing and feeling their way. So Unknown Speaker 1:00:13 I just wanted to read you speaking of the feminist who fought for rights, because this is what I mean, is there a sense when you because begin to listen to this language, it comes up all over. This is Beatrice Webb, who 16 years after publicly rescinding her well known opposition to bring the sucker to submission, hang on for one second, she explains that she does not believe in quote, abstract rights, unquote, but prefers to regard life as a series of obligations, obligations of the individual to the community and the community to the individual. Now, I would maintain that if you think of morality in terms of obligations, that you are not going to get decisive answers that your right action is decisive, and one has an abortion or one has debated some kind of either or, but the point in terms of the judgment is that the problem doesn't reduce to a clear so that all the right is on one side, and all the ones on the other. And that sense of ambiguity that is, which is another way of talking about the indecisive knees. If you ask yourself, from a perspective, from a male perspective, how do women's judgments look, the answers, indecisive, and she's so wishy washy, wishy washy. from a woman's perspective, how to men's sessions, where Richard self legal means they get rid of the house, not the problem. But to adopt them the male perspective for the women sessions, I think it's even better. It's bad. On the other hand, if you want to, it's some point that little girl has to come to terms with these issues. It's tricky. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 1:02:02 You're welcome. You're given a direction. But when I hear this so limited? Well, what strikes me as a little bit different, is that she posits the absolute resistance to putting students in, it's like, a dance, that she cannot go. Unknown Speaker 1:02:32 Because I feel that this bill was already accepted. Sort of, well, the law, or the father is checked into her life. And she's, as you say, you know, going around like a squirrel. Unknown Speaker 1:02:46 I agree with you. That's the political part of it, that she really feels that the law is outside. I mean, that she can't even think about it. Because she can influence it, because it's not her law, and so forth. And so I knew that. There's another example. But what if I went back to six year olds, and told you you have a little study? These are small studies. showing kids two pictures of two kids in a sandbox pulling in a toy. The question is what's happening? Little boy says, fight. This is three little boys, three little girls from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Little boy says it's a fight. The question is who's right? You know, whose toy who has the right to the toy? And you have to settle it because the violence and someone will get hurt. Little girl you say what's happened? Some of them say nothing. Unknown Speaker 1:03:48 And airplay, and a little girls taking the toy was the baby's fine. What should happen? Bring in the mother to take care of the baby. But what's what's going on in the little boy season is a conflict in whites question of property whose first who has it is legitimate. And you got to settle it by morality so you don't have violence. Little girl sees it as a situation where caring has broken down, that the children instead of caring for one another are fighting for one another. If the children cannot deal with the issues of care, then you have to bring in the caretaker, the boy brings in the judge, the girl brings in the caretaker, to restore social orders. Now, I think that in a sense, what strikes me this this is, at least my current perspective on these questions is that both of these are very legitimate and very important perspectives on human conflict. Wishes endemic inevitable will always exist. And it's problematic because the girls are in trouble if they only have the carrying ethic, particularly because it will get embedded in a convention that will tell them it's Wonderful to care as long as it's not for yourself, because that's selfish. And then you get into all kinds of very devious parents of relationships and so forth that we all know we can talk about. But the boys are in trouble too. They're not in so much societal trouble with their personal trouble. Because without an ethic of care when they get to be adults, no matter how much people would like them to participate in parenting, to charter our town halls, on and so forth. They want to have the faintest idea. I mean, there'll be in respect to caretaking like the math, the girls are in respect of the law. I mean, they will have developed according to Erickson, steam them, once they have mastered basic trust, then develop it is autonomy, animation, industry and identity and they will be so separate that will be very hard for them to understand what their needs are what it is. So then you have all these discoveries about midlife crisis and adulthood? And what do they know about loneliness and alienation and distance and inability to care? So I think there's a lot of evidence, the women are more socially at risk, because there's a whole legal system that's tied into this male point of view that protects the male point of view, and doesn't protect. But both are really psychologically at risk as long as the squid. Carolyn, Unknown Speaker 1:06:22 in her new book, remember, says what for me has become the absolute normal hydro problem. She says, Okay. Conservative theorists like trilling like Christopher lash would like to end like Durkheim 80 years ago are saying people are economically particles, they don't care about each other. They're They're selfish. They're alienated. They're, you know, all the things that 20th century man is supposed to be and they all they want to be different. And Carolyn Halperin said, Okay, this is very true about men, but women who've ever been so engrossed in title now, so they can't buy into that. On the other hand, I know perfectly well that you can't have a durable relationship with friendship or marriage, anything, or really deal with other people, unless you can, in some sense, sacrifice your sense of yourself persisting above all other things, on the one hand, and on the other hand, what do women do with that, given that they've just gotten those precious little selves? I mean, do you have Is there any prescriptive or her attempt at prescriptive literature on that subject? Or does anybody DEAL WITH IT debate? Unknown Speaker 1:07:25 Well, you know, the most pragmatic sensitivity, if women want men to share in the childcare, they better start paying attention to the development of, you know, thinking about nourishment and responsibilities so that when they get to the point where their parents, they have some way of doing this, otherwise, it's like, someone better deal with the economics of part time work, you know, if you're going to prescribe this, because otherwise, it's a nice idea. And I think that's very powerful idea. And I think that in fact, I mean, again, going back to the cross cultural studies, our our culture is way off on one skew, in the sense of how much our child trainings is this six culture study, changed children toward independence and egotism and competitive achievement, rather than interesting children with care of other children so that they learned from a young age on what caring means and what responsibility means and so forth. So prescriptively, that's where it would go for me in terms of how one raises children. And so when these 211 year olds make their judgments in the classroom, that in a sense, psychologists, teachers, adults will say, in a sense, that's right, you're both right. You were both talking about something very important. Let's analyze each judgment. I see what she sees that he doesn't see, as well as what he sees that she Unknown Speaker 1:08:40 knows what you're talking about, isn't what you're talking about. They're predicated on involving men in the women's movement. Making them see it as something which will change lives in general. Unknown Speaker 1:08:57 Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And you see, otherwise what happens is, we look at what happens to the abortion, men appropriate. The abortion dilemma now get a few token women to sort of articulate various of their positions. And caston is an issue of rights. And in my mind, and in my study, there were a couple of teenage girls who decided to have babies said California's dream come true. And wonder if there was no no resources when there was socially isolated and it was very difficult situations they found themselves in and where was the government? At that point, well, of course, they will know. So it seems to be very important that these moral questions morality is not an issue that some kind of side issue. And you make all prescriptive statements about relationship between self Another moral stables. It's time that women took on the issue of morality, because the, in a sense of seeding this moral discussion to men has allowed it to go on in a way that keeps perpetuating the system. So that's why, in a sense, you know, he'd say to what, how do I see my work in political terms? It's quite trying to describe this, because I think it has enormous importance for how women think about themselves, and whether this whether it is prospective to win some legitimacy in the society as a whole. Because you can see how easily it's not done by the rights perspective. If you're not sure what you're talking about. That's, that's what, oh, I take an ad Yes, right. But Unknown Speaker 1:11:17 she doesn't have the obligation. And you haven't no one today has to go defend that. Don't commit yourself, nor solidarity for what she recommends that the same finishes to integrate your own personal life. That's right. Unknown Speaker 1:11:41 Politically to do both as Unknown Speaker 1:11:45 well, I guess the question is interesting to be politically, psychologically, how much can you do this, let me tell you, another student, who just did a thesis undergraduate thesis on anger and, and ask them about their experiences of anger, their dreams, and fantasies about anger, and so forth. And when she began, she believed she was a junior, senior college. And when we were oppressed, and one of the modes of women's oppression was that they couldn't express their anger and that it was very important for women to be able to express their anger. And the women she interviewed were five women who were seeing juniors in college, sort of her own age and five women who were in their 30s. And the younger women all seem to have problems dealing with how to express anger and legitimize itself. But she said that this student said she remembers the moment when doing her thesis was the thinking change. And the moment when her thinking changed, she said, Well, she was interviewing an older woman, in her late 30s, this woman was talking about how angry she was at her husband, because a child by his former marriage, who was quite a disturbed child was just creating havoc in their family. And she felt he wasn't handling. But being a woman, she understood why he wasn't handling it was because of his own guilt, and so forth. But the question to her was, she thought if she expressed her anger toward him, given his feelings about would be very destructive for him, that he couldn't deal with it in that situation, maybe couldn't therapy, but not with her. And so she began to think about her need to express her anger, his need to feel somehow whole, or you know, and it was a dilemma and the students had a dull moment, she began to see it as a dilemma, rather than as a simple division problem. Now, the trouble was the question of, I think that you know, the, the woman I illustrated with about my her new principle was to thine own self be true, you can't worry about hurting other people. You know, and at that point, she moves up the stage and Kolb's theory. And she can generalize that that everybody should be true to themselves each other and then you're right, scam your show. But the problem is, I think it is, it's a real problem, who is going to then articulate the other point of view? In terms of survival, for women, there's a lot going. And this then maybe gets into the question you guys, which is if women insist that if they're going to relinquish some of that holding function from in society, that someone else is going to have to cover it up. That's maybe where the leverage is. Unknown Speaker 1:14:47 Given the power structure has been extended, I just really don't see how it's going to be done in our lifetimes. And, frankly, unlike a suffragette, I have very serious reservations about working for the next generation. Unknown Speaker 1:14:59 Well, I I think that, you know, when Nancy Chara emphasizes parent child relationships, and that's I think that's an important focus. Because if, if women who have children and cysts are don't are unwilling to assume the public function of nurturance. That's one place that most involved in Unknown Speaker 1:15:28 that small change, Unknown Speaker 1:15:29 I'm sure. But what's interesting about shadows focus in part is that while it's certainly beneficial to be a co parent, rather than is it effective, so parents that the most important thrust I think of the development in the context of the book is the impact on children are no longer. Unknown Speaker 1:15:49 Yes, that's right. Voted. Hero success is a perfect example of when you want to make sure that's cutting corners, where women have anxiety about succeeding in competitive situations where one person's success is at the price of somebody else's failure. How can we help women to get over the problem so that they can compete in they can succeed in competitive situations and not worry about the losers? Now, that's the dilemma. How do you judge that you talk about? We don't say. That's fine. I think. Unknown Speaker 1:16:47 So I think that is largest. Unknown Speaker 1:16:51 obligation, right? Unknown Speaker 1:16:58 Okay, but that, but it's related, because the morality of rights is how you bring a bunch of sort of fractured individuals back together. Unknown Speaker 1:17:09 Alternatively, I Unknown Speaker 1:17:10 mean, when you talk about applying the right thing, the right Unknown Speaker 1:17:19 way and hearing that that's your solidarity with fear, the value of fear taking Unknown Speaker 1:17:31 would be other reasons. Unknown Speaker 1:17:35 But isn't nothing and talking about how women can empower one another, how they can validate for one another, the importance of of their point of view, or what they're saying so that they don't feel so subordinate to the male perspective? And they don't? Would they do that? Unknown Speaker 1:17:56 Incorporate, right. All right. Unknown Speaker 1:18:10 That's right. I mean, that the statement of All's fair in love and more, needs to be, in a sense validates the right to succeed at whatever expense to other people. It's, you see, my sense is that these perspectives are in conflict. When they are fundamental conflict, it's like, you know, you go back to the Merchant of Venice, justice and mercy, lead to different solutions. And there's something to be said, for the ability to understand the justice perspective. And there's something to be said for the other perspective. In other words, the separate self versus the self in relation to others. And as you move toward one pole, then you need to retrieve the other issues and so forth. Our society has divided this argument up in terms of sex stereotypes, man, if that's very destructive, because it leaves each sex missing half of something very important about social understanding moral understanding. I don't I think that it's the understanding of that tension. That is important in Unknown Speaker 1:19:19 our society, because of the possibility of a university over the last week, then there is a possibility that there is a reconcile of the two sides. McGinn, one says rather than the two sexes Unknown Speaker 1:19:44 is really a change in thinking Unknown Speaker 1:19:46 that these are not internally divided. points of view are inevitably, actually by gender divide Unknown Speaker 1:20:20 getting infected the story again in many ways Unknown Speaker 1:20:34 whether or not it was provided by a vendor, you still have like the medical world, we're right. And Unknown Speaker 1:20:43 that doesn't mean that those perspectives they don't have to be decided by gender Unknown Speaker 1:20:50 to be valued in a different way. Unknown Speaker 1:20:54 As part of the systems as long as the tribute one and validation we're in trouble and new validity or selling or carrying? Just to sell the most estimates or assessment first that make us feel good. That's what we need to get to so that leads to us Unknown Speaker 1:21:47 without making mistakes Unknown Speaker 1:21:53 little girls really buying into Unknown Speaker 1:22:03 that feeling like I can't talk to our new language. Let them try searching Unknown Speaker 1:22:16 in Hi such a faith in human capacity her her position? Yes. Because I would argue that in understanding the tension is reclaiming conflict and apart but that's that's that word is weighted in a pejorative manner I know in our language, but the notion of conflict and then contradiction, which could have no Unknown Speaker 1:22:39 meaning sort of in Jean Baker Miller. Unknown Speaker 1:22:42 Well, yes, good now tell you that in the study, I've done a college students, which is in longitudinal over time. And one of the interesting things that comes out with the men talk about in that study is how this is a quote, the justice approach blinded them to what was going on. Now, what does that mean? What is it, it means is that the wish to eliminate conflict, made it necessary for them. And again, these are quotes fragments from interviews to stay really far away from people. You see, in other words, that if you get too close to somebody else, you will discover that their point of view is different from your own. So one way of dealing with conflict, one way of eliminating conflict, to make sure that you have the right answer and that there's no other answer is to stay far away from people. But intimacy means to get close to somebody else and to have to deal with I would say the reality of conflict, the reality of difference. And then you see the women who talk about morality being tolerance, which becomes very close to what do you mean by respect for persons. You see, does that mean respect for persons meaning I'll grant them equal access to what I want. That's the male perspective, I want you or this respect for persons need the capacity to understand and respect their point of view, as different from your own point of view. And the second thing, a much, much more complicated thing to do. In other words, to acknowledge their personhood and their perspective. So that in men's experience, the thing that toggled the absolute morality, the objective truth, the Justice principle that resolves the dilemma once and for all, was intimacy was getting close, usually to women, and having to deal with the fact that there were many things going on in the dilemma many points of view, and therefore, they will then talk the truth becomes relative moral truth then becomes attached to another narrative, which is of course, like aluminum, we're dealing with oval. So a sense of reclaiming conflict as the condition of teaming Relationships, the attempt to reduce conflict and relationship has been what has been most destructive for women because women have had to become just like, everyone would be just alive, if people just liked each other week was reclaiming conflict is to reclaim difference. And then a morality that can deal with human difference, as well as human similarity is a much more encompassing much more integrated world system. And I think that what we have described so far in our psychological theories, and certainly worked at best in our culture is a morality of human similarity. Everybody should have certain rights protected. But the notion of what would How would you articulate in reality, that little compass difference with contested relationships, and one of the things that's different. In the in the sort of triangular situation, one of our people in our study talked about girl a versus girl B, well, that's, you know, like making a moral equation out of a sexual triangle. And the problem that he never realized is that a girl a really was just like, Girl B, the problem never would have arisen in the first place. Yeah. I was extremely honest. Unknown Speaker 1:26:23 And I built Unknown Speaker 1:26:27 a number of years ago, above, Francis Flaherty, Unknown Speaker 1:26:32 filmmaker, Robert wires, and trying to make a new film, she was in the mid 80s, and have not engaged in traditional, and it's just one conversation, and it struck a chord in me that went very deep, and I've always kept it with me. And all day that lines been coming back to me. And it seems kind of universal. And no, today I'm doing well. On the one hand, there's something about Unknown Speaker 1:27:13 our overall that we're talking about, that the only thing is separateness Unknown Speaker 1:27:19 will, yes, this is a human model, connection. And connection to me has a good deal of meaning even caring, caring still seems to me to be bound up with maternal models. And that, I mean, not that we don't care, but then we're stuck within certain models, we just think about a human connection to have greater freedom to invest today. On the other hand, the line troubles me because when I hear you talk and actually listen to while I read the dark, it seems as if the way in which we all think about separation, is such a very conditioned thing is coming right out, and only we as women, are better and for worse. Unknown Speaker 1:28:20 Well, I mean, what's striking to me, is the question of, you know, what's prior. Or I think you're in trouble, because it's separation, or there's a connection. And for a long time, it was assumed that you can read this and Freud, that sort of the little girl first was a little boy, until puberty, when she becomes you know, a little bit when the second wave of repression hits you. And the notion that somehow the self is primary, and the whole 18th century view, that people came together in the state of nature, and made a social contract, and so forth. It was an individual rights predated the social contract, has been a very sort of peculiar construction of human experience, that now we're turning around the other way, now that all fetuses are first female, and the male is an addition upon it. And the sense of self only emerges from relationship and in that sense, is a secondary, not a primary human truth. I think that that is I liked your quotation, what extent are moral problems emerge out of separation? Because then you get into conflict. And there's sort of kind of a romantic view that I can forget back to the state of nature. We're all connected. We have no moral problems and everything would be fun. But the fact is that separation is to a human truth, you know, in sort of a lifecycle perspective, there is a kind of move from connection to separation. It's, I think that we get into trouble as soon as we start to, to put these terms into a hierarchy. It's again, I the word dialectic has become so fashionable and hates to use it because it's like a kind of password and social science theory right now, double helixes and dialectic, you know, but the sense of of the fundamental truth being a system intention, it seems to me a very kind of much more encompassing perspective. And that is we can make a mistake. Unknown Speaker 1:30:59 Difficult to. Separate. Unknown Speaker 1:31:10 But that's right. It's only if you want to resolve all conflicts in a sense that you have to keep Yes. Right. And then you have to keep being separate in order to get away from the conflict in the Unknown Speaker 1:31:21 sense that implies there's a single right answer. Unknown Speaker 1:31:25 For all conflicts with Unknown Speaker 1:31:27 your activities, do we say well, supersede all in from the conflicts that come cyber country? Unknown Speaker 1:31:32 We Unknown Speaker 1:31:38 raise human beings first, and why are we going to set up a society? That I think really, when he wasn't aware, in that sense, it was beginning to be abandoned had to in our society. Unknown Speaker 1:32:04 Yeah, I mean it since that's what I mean, that's sort of belated rediscovery of the connections that, you know, if you pour something into a river, it comes out in the ocean. Unknown Speaker 1:32:18 The thought of trying to keep apart things that are really connected and really are two together, like people from different parts of the world, and Unknown Speaker 1:32:28 especially if there's additional irony, as we started to talk I was thinking about, people like to be more than that woman is outside. And that's a theme that I find very blessed with a lot of ways, but at the same time, there's this other thing a woman has, she makes connections. And then there has to be an outside and also some connections. So what I was trying to think about is how that how that worked, or how that happened. And maybe what's happening is that there is some deep way in which the male power structure where men as individuals, you can see that there's a need for the making connections. And for whatever reasons, which I can't explain, that's not something I've done in the mail system is put on women to do it for themselves and absolutely the system. But then what happens to women is that they are then outsiders because of the fact that it is a more making the connections. So we talked about double binds, like fear of success, which is a double bind, to have another double bind person or that's responsible for seeing that some connections are made in the world, and then being able to spend time with the outside. Unknown Speaker 1:33:38 Oh, yes. I mean, Gene Miller talks about this, a lot of men have allocated to live in a whole series of functions and women have held those functions of nurturing parenting and connection and dealing with dependency and so forth. And so what's interesting, though, you see is that, that the men have devalued us functions to at the same time they have relied on women to perform them. And women adopting the male perspective, have devalued themselves in performing those functions.