Why Disgust Is A Beneficial Virtue For Society
Deep-seated feelings of disgust have been unfairly slated by those of us who want to legitimize and destigmatize morally reprehensible acts. While we must heed warnings of how innate feelings of disgust can be weaponized and misapplied, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It may be all we have left amid a society hellbent on rationalizing away evil.
Courage, temperance, humility, gratitude, justice, and patience – what these values have in common is that they are highly coveted virtues. Possessing them distinguishes a person’s character as being morally well-regarded. What is a virtue, at its core, if not behavior that exhibits high moral standards? But to have high moral standards, you must be discriminate in which values to adopt. As Scientific American explains, the dominant philosophical view of moral development sees becoming virtuous as a process whereby you transform problematic emotions; the cowardly person’s fear is transformed into the courageous person’s emotional attunement to danger.