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Parenting
with Gary & Anne Marie: Preschool
How Does the Human Conscience Work?
The human conscience actually functions at two levels of existence—a lower and higher conscience. The lower conscience contains an innate sense
of right and wrong, which all humanity shares. The higher conscience is subject
to training and receives the specific standards of right and wrong formed by
beliefs and values.
From the dawn of time,
according the book of Genesis, the lower conscience was very much a part
of the human
experience. Referenced in the fourth chapter
is
one such account. God pronounced a curse on Cain for murdering his brother
Abel. He was to become a vagrant and a wanderer of the earth. Cain responded, “Whoever
finds me will kill me.” Here we see the lower conscience operating. How
did Cain know others would require his life as a result of killing his brother?
No law at that time had been established. Even God acknowledges the probability
of that action by marking him as “one not to be touched.” Cain
was operating off his innate sense of right and wrong. Here is a story over
five
thousand years old reflecting an anthropological description of mankind then
and now.
Much more central to parenting a preschooler is the workings of the higher
conscience (also referred to as the heart of a child, heart of man, the moral
conscience,
and the trainable conscience). Aristotle acknowledged and pointed out the
trainable side of the human conscience. It is here that the knowledge and
standards of
right and wrong are written on the heart. It is the place where values, virtues,
prohibitions, and moral initiatives are located.
All parents have a social obligation to train their children in community
values. With their moral pen they write a prescription of right and wrong,
what to
do and what not to do, and all the moral reasons why or why not. Since
parents offer
instruction both by precept and example, attention must be paid not only
to what moral truth is imparted to a child, but how it is imparted.
The Conscience: How It Develops in Children
What role do parents play in shaping
the conscience? A big role! Our discussion centers on four activities:
- Establishing the Moral Warehouse
- The Activities of the Conscience
- The Moral Search Mechanism
- Signs of a Healthy and Unhealthy Conscience
Establishing the Moral Warehouse
The ability
to receive and store moral principles speaks to the capacity of the conscience.
Every
person of normal birth possesses this capacity. It
is the place where parents make deposits of moral knowledge. You are constantly
teaching your child in many different ways, in a number of differing contexts
throughout the day. You instruct your child to share, be kind, tell the truth,
be patient, ask nicely, be polite, show respect, act courteously, and say
please and thank you. This is a process that takes place day in and day out,
week by week, and year by year. Believe it or not, those moral impressions
are going somewhere. They are stored in the child’s moral warehouse—the
conscience.
We have all
seen them—large metal warehouses. Imagine a warehouse standing
on a field. You step inside the roll-up door onto a glistening clean cement
floor. In front of you is a neatly divided warehouse made up of aisles and
metal shelving used for storage. Some shelves are bursting full of various
virtues while others are spilling over with admirable character qualities.
You recognize each of these items because you and your spouse have placed them
there. On one shelf rests your teaching of kindness. On another is honesty,
and down the aisle there is a group of virtues that demonstrate respect: for
elders, parents, teachers, and authority. Not far from there are the virtues
of sharing, kind speech, and self-control. Each is marked with a dangling red
identification tag, making these virtues easy to find and retrieve. This is
the moral warehouse of your child’s conscience. Some shelves are bare,
waiting for future instruction in virtues to be placed.
In child
training, the management rights to that warehouse belong to parents. You
are the managers
of your child’s conscience. You have the marking
pen. You write the values on their hearts. Some parents do this with fervency
and intent, while others take a nonchalant approach. Fervency is highly preferred.
As the shelves begin to fill, the four activities of the conscience can start
their work.
The Activities of the Conscience
The conscience
has the ability to assess behavior in any moment and render judicial opinions,
either by accusing or
defending one’s actions. Accusing
speaks to the negative side of the conscience, while defending speaks to
the positive side. When we say our conscience accuses us, we are referring
to its ability to make a judgment on a potential moral violation based on
what is in the warehouse. The conscience (that inward voice) warns man when
he is about to do wrong. If he does not heed that warning, his conscience
will accuse him. This is done through the mechanism of guilt.
Guilt, shame,
and empathy are moral emotions common to the human experience. Any attempt
to
get rid of guilt is an attempt to get rid of the conscience.
Guilt is not a condition of the healthy or the sick, but of right versus wrong.
When we cross the boundary of our own conscience, guilt is activated. We did
something we knew we shouldn’t have. Guilt is there to remind us to take
care of our misdeeds. If a person never experiences guilt, either his conscience
has been hardened, or he has an empty warehouse desperately in need of filling.
The good news is found in the positive function of the human conscience. The
conscience will also prompt us to do right and confirms us when we do. For
example, you see a crumpled piece of paper lying in the hallway. You sense
a prompting from within—“Pick up the paper even though you didn’t
drop it.” You do and suddenly that feeling of “rightness” comes
over you. That sense, that you complied with the integrity of your heart, is
your conscience saying, “You did the right thing.”
So the conscience
will prompt us to do right and then confirms us when we do. It also warns
us of potential wrong and then accuses us if we cross the line.
For example, a gum wrapper casually slips from your hand. Even as your feet
move forward, a thousand impulses prompt you to stop. “Guilty! Guilty!” your
conscience screams, until you glance around to see if anyone else can hear
it. The next question is—How is this possible? Why is my conscience bothered
by my behavior? Here is how it works.
The Moral Search Mechanism
The four activities of
the conscience—prompting,
confirming, warning, and accusing, operate in harmony with the values stored
in the warehouse. The
conscience also has the ability to monitor the moral horizon and alert one
to potential ethical situations possibly in need of a response. Once alerted
to a need, the prompting or warning mechanism moves us to action.
Every day we participate
in numerous potential ethical situations. Whether you’re shopping, sitting in class, doing laundry, driving home, watching
television, sitting in the grandstands of your child’s soccer match,
or chewing gum—you are constantly confronted with ethical circumstances
challenging the values in your warehouse. The moral search mechanism, like
a continuous scanning radar beam, looks over the horizon, taking in data, evaluating
it for moral liability, and then responds by going to the moral warehouse in
search of a value or virtue to act on.
The search mechanism,
like a busy, bright red R2D2 robot, begins moving up and down the aisles,
searching each
shelf. It is looking to see if there is
a corresponding value in need of satisfying. If it finds many or just one,
it pulls it off the shelf and immediately returns to posted sentries on guard,
warning and prompting. The robot than takes the value and waves it in front
of the sentries, demanding, “You need to do something about this!” Of
course, if nothing is found on the warehouse shelves, the search ends and nothing
happens.
At a private memorial
service, an elderly pastor stepped into the room, joining the men and women
already
gathered in the prayer chamber. All the seats were
taken, and one could not help but notice that this elderly mourner needed a
place to rest. In the back of the room, at least one young man’s search
mechanism, found in his conscience, was on the move. The situation for him
presented a moral dilemma—elderly pastor; chair needed. This information
was sent through the warehouse carried by the search engine robot. Scanning
the aisle looking for related values, the robot pinpointed two red tagged virtues
needing consideration. One was labeled “Respect and honor age.” The
second file carried the heading “Preferring others over oneself.”
Lifting these values off
the shelf, the robot, lights flashing, rushes back to the conscience waving
the files,
announcing, “These values need attention!” The
prompting mechanism says, “Honor this man by offering your seat.” The
warning mechanism replies, “You are dishonoring age by ignoring this
man’s need for a seat.” Both mechanisms call for a moral solution.
In response, the younger man rises, greets the elderly pastor, and offers his
seat. The gentleman accepts. This action satisfied the moral standard written
on the young man’s heart, prompting the right response. That is how it
works.
You have a search mechanism operating in your warehouse. You know the sensation
of the prompting to do what is right, and you are familiar with the sensation
of warning when you are about to do something you know is wrong. Both sets
of feelings operate in conjunction with your moral warehouse and the values
and virtues placed there. But what happens when a person grows up without sufficient
moral guidance?
Let’s add a little twist to the true-life experience illustrated above.
What if, as a child, that young man’s parents never emphasized the value
of respecting age or preferring others? Would respect for age be naturally
present? We’re afraid not. The search mechanism begins its scan of the
aisle. Not finding a corresponding value tagged “Respect age,” it
returns empty-handed. There is no prompting or warning because nothing is found.
What does that mean for
parents today? If there is no principle to stir the child’s heart, the child stays morally immature, either becoming the
victim or the bully because of his lack of social discernment. There is truth
to the old proverb that says, “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is
he.” Our lives are the product of what is in our hearts. And what is
in the heart of a child is the product of parents putting their moral convictions
into their child’s moral warehouse. The only difference between you and
your child’s conscience is the amount and complexity of the resident
life values. Children start with a simple sense of right and wrong that grows
into a complex moral scheme reflective of the home and society at large.
Signs of a Healthy and Unhealthy Conscience
Positive and prohibitive
are terms describing conditions of the heart as a result of right or wrong
training.
The healthy, positive conscience says, “I
ought to do this because it is right,” or, “I ought not do this
because it is wrong.” The prohibitive conscience says, “I must
or else I’ll be punished.” With the latter, the motivation to
do right is not because of the love of virtue but rather because the individual
fears reproof or punishment.
Positive development
takes place when parents build into their child’s
conscience the reason why “right is right” and “wrong is
wrong.” A child will develop a healthy conscience when his parents are
good models of the qualities they desire to see in their child and when they
encourage the child to do right as opposed to only discouraging him from doing
wrong. Such a child sees obedience as attractive, not as a distasteful action
done merely to avoid punitive retaliation for failure to comply.
The prohibitive conscience is not a guilty conscience, but an ongoing state
of potential guilt. The person who lives this way has not necessarily done
anything wrong, but lives his life as if he were always on the verge of doing
wrong or constantly worries that others will think he is doing something wrong.
In this case, doing wrong is the overly sensitive fear of disappointing someone,
being misunderstood, or being rejected if he or she does not conform. Practically,
this results in the coward that dies a thousand deaths. He may do many virtuous
acts, but not out of love of what is right, rather out of fear of rejection.
Here are some of the ways parents instill a prohibitive conscience in their
children.
- Parents manipulate
their child by creating the fear of losing Mom or Dad’s love. Conditional
love then becomes the motivator for right behavior.
- Parents manipulate the conscience by making their child feel
guilty. For the child, avoiding guilt becomes the motivator for right behavior.
- Parents fail to provide
the moral reasons for behavior. As a result, the constant fear of punishment,
reproof, and rejection—not the love of virtue—becomes
the motivation for right behavior.
The one who lives with the fear of potential guilt (i.e., potential rejection
for wrong decisions) does not work from a pure heart. Virtues become burdensome,
and a life of moral freedom is nonexistent. The effects of a prohibitive conscience
can be lifelong.
Article
by Gary Ezzo / Anne Marie Ezzo
