Posted by
Andrews on Monday, May 11, 2009 10:39:48 AM
If you ever want to end a party, or at least start a bitter argument, I can suggest no better method that stating that there are moral absolutes. Even better than bringing up contentious specific issues, say politics, religion, even abortion, the simple assertion that there are absolute right and wrong, and that doing a "little wrong" is still wrong, will evoke the most angry responses you have ever seen.
Oh, not at first. At first people will just dismiss you, or suggest you "must be religious or something," but if you stick with it, persist in saying that there are acts which are always wrong, people will eventually start shouting, waving their hands an standing far too close for comfort, red faced and trembling.
Before you get to that point you will hear the usual arguments. First some version of the
Les Miserables argument about stealing bread for a starving child, maybe someone will throw out the "killing during war" canard, and the examples will just get more and more absurd. But if you stick with it, before long people will start to become enraged.
I can't say why this topic more than any other upsets people so, but I think I have a guess. People tend to allow themselves a lot of exceptions, things they know they probably shouldn't do, but do anyway. However, as most people are unwilling to accept guilt, and don't want to see themselves as bad, they simply create "nuance", arguing there are "grey areas" at least "at the borders", and try to turn their own small vices into "exceptions". So when someone argues that there is no such grey area, it threatens to turn their morally dubious acts into outright wrong, and so they see it as an accusation aimed at them. And thus the angry reaction.
Then again, the truth is, there truly
is no such grey area. There are acts which are permissible and acts which are not. To make exceptions, is, as I argued elsewhere, to eventually allow anything. Sometimes people think we are making exceptions because they misunderstand the ethics. For example, as I said above, soldiers killing in war is not an exception. Killing is not in itself immoral, killing without cause is. Killing one who threatens us is not immoral. And you can see why that it. Extending the principle to its logical conclusion does no harm. If you take the right to kill one who threatens you with physical harm is taken to its logical conclusion there is no harm done. So it is not an exception, people simply make the prohibition against murder overly broad and think all killing is forbidden.
However, this is probably a much larger topic than I can tackle this morning and do it justice. So I think I shall return tot his in the near future.
POSTSCRIPT
More interesting is the lack of such an angry response among those groups who maintain a tradition of guilt and repentance, such as traditional Catholics (among others). These groups seem more likely to accept their own failings as actual wrongs, rather than insisting the moral system be blurred around the edges.