Remember when morality used to mean something? Yeah, me neither, at least in hindsight, so maybe take the “again” off of that, and simply make morality great? How do we do that when we apparently have a lack of agreement on what is moral, and what is not?
I used to think that the social and economic fabric of a given community begins to fall apart when you add the “nth” person to the population, as if at some point you reach a critical mass after which you get lawlessness, and disrespect of each other’s rights. I no longer believe that. I am now more inclined to believe that it is the emergence of the first extremely wealthy person, or persons, locally or at large, that drives a great deal of bad behavior.
Is morality even a real thing? Maybe it is a code, written by the privileged to control the underclass masses, which the authors have no intention of adhering to themselves. That certainly seems to be the case in modern times, where “accusation is projection.” When you accuse your political opponents of something terrible, it is really projection of your own immoral acts.
The weaponization of morality should itself be considered unethical, and ought to be illegal.
Indeed, the correlation between morality and authority is troubling, especially when one invokes divinity to justify their argument for what is right or what is wrong. A religious document is no better than the dictionary I reached for to see if there is a difference between morality and ethics. At least the dictionary is unbiased, with no agenda beyond education.
Morality, ethics, and, ideally, legality, should all be determined by consensus. When only powerful, and usually wealthy, people are making these decisions, it creates understandable resentment, if not outrage. It becomes clear that what is “moral” is meant to preserve economic and authoritarian privilege, rather than promote the public good.
Morality is frequently used as a distraction from the concentration of wealth and power. In reality, there is nothing inherently controversial about sexual identity, or sexual preference in partners, for example. Science can demonstrate that such conditions and behaviors are naturally occurring, with seldom any negative effects, until some righteous bigot starts a fight over it.
We are still too influenced by theology, marketing, and family and friends to reach our own conclusions organically as to what is moral.
We are suffering needlessly from some very arbitrary moral constraints. We cannot have the freedom to use some drugs recreationally, for example, because it would infringe on the profiteering of large pharmaceutical corporations and their majority shareholders. We could have very durable, high-quality goods made from hemp, but there is an ongoing smear campaign by powerful lobbies for cotton, pulp and paper, and other industries that would lose their stranglehold on clothing, paper, and other product manufacturing.
We have to question, then, who benefits from these moral judgments. The weaponization of morality should itself be considered unethical, and ought to be illegal. We cannot rely solely on representatives in government to do the right thing when their first allegiance is to campaign donors. Increasingly, we cannot rely on the judiciary, either appointed, or elected (again with the campaign donors who own them!).
It is sadly ironic that in this day and age when we have a literal global village, connected by the internet, that we are not able to reach consensus on right and wrong. We are still too influenced by theology, marketing, and family and friends to reach our own conclusions organically as to what is moral. Not to mention that we are at the mercy of the tech bros who architected our social media and continue to weaponize that, too.
Maybe we were meant to live in small clans after all, in numbers few enough to ensure the welfare of all members. Maybe I am dreaming of a utopia that never existed. What we do have is our imaginations, and our will to bring to fruition a truly just society where everyone prospers in tangible and intangible ways. We have to keep experimenting.
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