Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Are We Post-Moral, Yet?

Every so often we hear pronouncements like "we are a post-racial society," implying that race no longer matters. After all we have a President whose mother was a white American and  whose father was a black African. Now, I for one, think that many of us say stupid stuff all the time, but it may because are conflicted over who we are. Our liberty, for one, allows us to believe we should be able to do most anything we want as long as we believe we aren't hurting anyone unduly---this is where law and the interpretation of it come in handy.

So, I am for same-sex marriage as a matter of fairness and equality. I don't believe it infringes on anybody else's rights as dictated by their religious beliefs because no one is demanding they find a same sex partner and marry that person, but I understand how it doesn't fit their construct of morality. For the same reason, I don't believe that a person's right to choose life for themselves or a fetus they are carrying is my business or tearing the fabric of society or making religious ideas less valuable, but again, I understand how some may see this as immoral.

But let me walk backwards for a moment. Do I think that morality matters? I do. By definition alone, I think we need it to ascribe meaning and apparently people from the 14th century forward did too. 

And what is that definition, Daniel Webster, please remind us. "Morality is:
- the degree to which something is right and good : the moral goodness or badness of something
- beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior."
So, yes, I agree that there are degrees of rightness and goodness. This is my personal morality speaking. I think it is bad to steal, but also okay to accept money if the cashier gives you too much change back. I think war is legalized murder, but killing a no-see-um a sacred duty. However there are things where everyone likely agrees. You should not microwave a baby because it is crying. You should not drag somebody to death behind your truck because you do not care for his skin color. You should not run over your spouse because he/she is cheating on you---though, maybe, there is some wiggle room on that one for some?
For our own survival we've had to be judge-y people. When you have to choose which plant may kill you or sustain you, your judgment becomes more and more acute, evolutionarily speaking. Over media such as this we are making harsh judgments over everything from celebrity life choices, political decisions, and who is or isn't trend-worthy. Morality is the type of judging we need to do and there likely should be a lack of agreement about where a neckline is appropriate and where it is just too much. There should not be much distance between that same judgment when we learn that a man has killed people and has cut them up and alphabetized them in a motel mini-fridge.
Much as it troubles me that we embrace dark humor and violence as much as we do, I also understand that, to varying degrees, they are a coping mechanism for the absurd. But, with a degree of contradiction, I feel like these extremes erode our moral code detector. Both things that are in questionable taste humor-wise and making violence seem like it is no big deal, are desensitizing us to real misery and real human loss. The fact that we have trained military people to use drones to kill people almost virtually is horrifying to me--precision (within tolerances) murder-by-proxy is still murder. 

As current presidential candidate Donald Trump banters boastfully about killing and how he'd be glad to do it himself given the opportunity, we really have to ask ourselves if we are through the looking glass and in a post-moral phase of human existence. When even our leaders discount the rightness or goodness of human life, it certainly has me scratching my head. And, not for nothing wondering if we can reverse course, even if we wanted?

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