A study by University of Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith has turned up evidence that 18 to 23 year-olds have almost no grasp of what constitutes a moral decision or indeed what place morality has in our lives or our society.
Is this surprising? These kids were raised in a society where morality does not exist, a society that has replaced morality with an existential sense of fulfillment. The question is no longer, “is this thing right or wrong?” The question is now, “does this thing make me happy?”
Just to clarify, I am not speaking about any kind of religious morality. This is not a God thing. This is a how do humans get along with each other thing. This is a how does a pluralistic society function, thing.
And the answer is that societies work when the humans who exist in them live lives of courtesy and respect for others. Societies work at their best when the humans that fill the ranks are considerate and helpful, even when it means going slightly out of their way to accommodate their fellow humans.
I don’t know if society ever functioned this way but it sure doesn’t now. It seemed like it did when I was growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s but maybe it was just aftershock from the greatest war the world has even known. Maybe it was because everyone was so glad to be alive and so aware of the devastation that had covered much of the globe outside our shores that they were particularly aware of how to treat their fellows.
Sure there were still thieves and con men, there were still robber baron’s mistreating their employees and there were still politicians, trying to climb over the bodies of whomever was in their way, to advance their agendas. There was bigotry and hatred but there was also courtesy and consideration. People got up and offered their seats to others, people offered assistance to those in need, people were respectful to those whose actions nurtured respect regardless of whether or not they agreed with each other.
People have always been in business to make money but there was a time when they also had a sense of being in business to create a service or a product that would be helpful or fill a need in society. That concept no longer exists. In today’s America people are in business to get more. There is no sense of giving something, only of grabbing as much as they can. That sensibility results in Bernie Madoff, corporate bonuses and the money thieves of Wall Street along with the corner grocer who sells bad fruit for good and the deli owner who doesn’t try for a sanitized kitchen because it takes an extra hour of payroll to do that.
As I am writing this, the din of blowing horns brought me to my office window where I witnessed a man with a U-Haul completely blocking our small street so that traffic has backed up to the next corner. He is slowly unloading his truck with no thought to the fact that he is inconveniencing a whole line of drivers who are now stuck behind him. This kind of aberrant behavior is now commonplace. This driver has made a moral decision. Do I ignore the welfare of others just to make my life more convenient or do I drive around the corner, find a spot and bring my goods back here where they are to be delivered. He has chosen his own convenience: the rest of society be damned. This may seem like a small thing until one of the trapped drivers who possibly is already enduring a bad day leaps from his car and confronts the trucker; tempers flare and suddenly one of them is dead. Then all of a sudden it’s a big deal and people say, “How could that happen?” It happened because we, as a people, have adopted a pattern of unmoral, selfish, inconsiderate behavior that all but demands it happen. Social mores that have been developed over centuries to keep it from happening have been abandoned wholesale and there is nothing to replace them.
How did we get this way? I don’t know. Maybe the gentle era I grew up in was the aberration, maybe this is the only way humans, in their still unenlightened state are capable of interrelating, maybe it’s just an inbred greed that makes us want more of whatever is available then we have worked for or are entitled to. Whatever it is, it’s destroying this country. And for those of you who are true believers, religion is not the answer.
I see enormous bigotry, little accommodation and no logic in the party lines of our current religions. Why? How can this be? Well maybe because religions and their creeds are brought to us, despite the protestations of those who claim to have a direct line to the Creator, by men, men with an agenda. Why else would religious leaders be spending so much time preaching against those who don’t look like us, don’t pray like us or don’t copulate like us. Where is the, all loving, all forgiving God that all religion are supposed to be based on? The preachers have turned Him into a nasty, bigoted, vengeful old man who seems to take sides against any cause that is inconvenient to them.
The Pope and the bishops, rather than condemning the pedophiles among them, spend their time protecting them from legal authority. The orthodox rabbis, rather than being a mediating force are expanding their efforts to turn Israel into a model of that which caused its formation. The Imams focus their morality on blindly condoning the most brutal and inhuman acts against their female population. Are these the moral acts of men of God or are they the disgrace to which, it’s promulgators have brought modern religion.
It doesn’t take a cleric to teach us right from wrong or what is the moral thing to do. Moral concepts have been evolving all through the history of humanity. What we need now are men of good will who are willing to sacrifice a tiny portion of their lives to enrich the lives of the rest of humanity. I am not speaking about money here; I’m speaking about the small gesture. The tiny act of consideration, the attempt to help. We need to offer those things as much as we need to accept them. It will make a better world for all of us.