Crossing the Murky Moral Terrain of Ethics

By: Mark Matousek

Narrated by: Justine Willis Toms

Are there universal human ethics? Are we moving toward a more ethical future? In this interview, Mark Matousek discusses his research on the subject of ethical wisdom through interviews with social scientists, spiritual leaders, ex-cons, altruists, and philosophers.

He describes the five innate moral and ethical categories he finds to be hardwired into humans, and how our emotional impulses effect our ethical behavior. Mark outlines the major ideological difference between the two political groups of conservatives and liberals, as well as the differences in moral and ethical approach between men and women.

Mark Matousek is a featured blogger for Psychology Today and The Huffington Post. He’s a popular lecturer and writing teacher and the Creative Director of V-Men (with Eve Ensler), an organization devoted to ending violence against women and girls. He’s the author of two award-winning memoirs, Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story (Riverhead 2000), and The Boy He Left Behind: A Man’s Search For His Lost Father (Riverhead 1997), as well as When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living (Bloomsbury 2009), and Ethical Wisdom: The Search for a Moral Life (Anchor Books 2011).

©2012 New Dimensions Foundation (P)2012 New Dimensions Foundation

placed class concepts in perspective

loved everything about this interview - length, breadth and content. the author's heartfelt and concise explanation of the correlation between ethics and morality was what I needed to start formulating my own opinions.