Each of the five factors named in the acronym has a general trend manifested in ethical thinking. To more specifically identify or express a factor’s ethical influence, however, the reader must first define each factor.
While the term “Western Civilization” is ubiquitous and has worked its way into the structure of both secondary and higher education, it retains at least some ambiguity. The word “western” is by itself merely a geographical designation; Sierra Leone is west of Paris; and Dakar, Senegal is west of London.
So what does “western” mean in the context of WEIRD morality? Other terms which are often given as nearly synonymous for ‘western’ included ‘European culture’ and the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition.’ These phrases, also, are ambiguous and problematic. “European culture” is now found around the world in the global embrace of some of its distinctive values (e.g., social and legal equality for women, the value and dignity of every human life, etc.). The “Judeo-Christian tradition,” the source of those values, has diffused itself as people from Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and other traditions embrace those values.
So while there is some intuitive meaning to the word ‘western’ (e.g., Shakespeare, Luther, Michelangelo, Leibniz, John Locke, Edmund Burke, etc.), it is nonetheless fraught with vagueness. It carries this ambiguity with itself into the larger meta-concept of WEIRD morality.
The second component of WEIRD morality, education, likewise needs clarification. There are many types of education. Do all of them constitute constituent elements in WEIRD morality? When a madrasa (madrasah or medresa) educates its pupils in the Islamic trilogy of the Qur’an, the Sira, and the Hadith, how does that rote learning compare to a four-year degree in philosophy obtained from a Big Ten university in the United States? The use of the word ‘education’ within the WEIRD context leaves room for some additional specificity.
The ‘I’ in WEIRD represents ‘industrialized.’ Arguably, however, many exemplars of WEIRD morality are found in post-industrial societies. Certain aspects of industrialization might perhaps have an impact on ethical reasoning: concepts like interchangeability could encourage a greater degree of abstraction, and less emphasis on individuality, in moral reflection.
The notion of ‘rich’ is, like the other words above, to some extent relative. But if there is a more independent social understanding of ‘rich,’ it might relate to measurable, observable, and quantifiable aspects, like infant mortality, average lifespan, realistic anxiety about starvation, etc.
The final element in WEIRD morality is democracy. This word, too, is subject to a variety of meanings. One misunderstanding of ‘democracy’ fosters the habit in thought of overestimating the significance of majority or plurality opinion. Mixed with a hyper-Romanticist and postmodern privileging of passion over reason, of emotion over thought, this misunderstanding of ‘democracy’ grants legislative power to such opinion to establish morality. In extreme cases, such opinion is held to replace morality and ontological reality is denied to morality.
The examination of WEIRD morality, with its weaknesses and strengths, has been encouraged by Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.
