Morality Between Asian And Western Societies

The Comparison of Morality between Asian and Western Societies

Introduction

Morality is a tool of indispensable regulation means in human society, which has an invisible mandatory "soft restraint" and brings about enormous influence on national, society and individual activities at all times. Moral standards of societies are products of a combination of different factors, including time, region, culture and others. Influenced by globalization and increasing Internet social network, the distances between countries are gradually shortened and the exchange of information becomes convenient and fast. Meanwhile, whether differences exist between Asian and Western societies sparks off an extensive debate. Some moral universalists support monism,
By comparing oriental the perceptions of the same thing with occidental, there are noticeable differences on various aspects. The first focus is premarital sexual behavior, and according to The Pew Research Center’s 2013 Global Attitudes survey (2014a), the top five countries which have the most negative attitude towards premarital sexual are all in Asia, in obvious contrast, eight out of top ten countries which hold the positive attitude are Western countries. Occidental are in a more sexually permissive environment, whereas it is common to be abstinent and teaching adolescents refuse sex until marriage. For instance, in unacceptable groups, Indonesia is the extreme country having 97% respondents think it is immoral, but only 6% in France. Additionally, extremely similar findings are presented about homosexuality, which shows seven of ten countries supporting LGBT group are from North America and Europe and only one Asiatic society, Japan, in the top ten of believing that homoerotism is morally acceptable (Per Research Center, 2014b). Furthermore, nearly all European societies and North American having more than a half supporter think people should accept LGBT except Russia, but Eastern is the opposite (Per Research Center, 2013). These inward restrictions show the different value judgment and moral
Asian societies, especially countries in East Asia cultural circle, were greatly influenced by Confucianism (Tu, 2017), which advocated the view of home state nation, hierarchical Confucian habits, the idea of moderation, abstinence and value justice higher than material gains. China and Korea’s government still use some thought of Confucianism as principles, such as harmonious and politics improving virtue. Furthermore, eastern societies had a long history as centralized feudal monarchy countries and the process of modernization was slow. These are sharp contrasts to the conceptions of Greek Thinking, Renaissance and Enlightenment, which concentrated on the freedom, shaking off spiritual shackles and individual wealth. Additionally, successful bourgeois revolutions created the suitable environment to practice these thoughts. Therefore, two different understanding of morality were