I am a moralist. I concern myself with the right way to be. This strikes me as our most important question. It also interests me.
To say one’s an -ist is not to say one’s good at it. -ist is a verbal handcuff, linking a person with a thing, as in bicyclist, philatelist, bigamist. That I’m a moralist doesn’t make me “moral” – a loaded descriptor – only attracted by the topic. Why isn’t everyone similarly enthralled, -ists wonder (as in scientist, etymologist, etc.)?
Morality became a hot topic in the Western World post-Reformation. Before then, the right way to be was dictated by the Church – and before the Church, the State. You did what you were told. No use debating if you had no choice.
After the Reformation, moral authority was split among rival religions, then split again. The individual had to choose among competitive creeds. We even had to decide whether to be. When Hamlet asks, “To be or not to be?” he’s exercising a shocking new freedom and coping with a weighty new concern. Heretofore, God, not man, answered this question; if in doubt, one needed only to consult God’s deputies here below.
Morality interested intellects mightily from (roughly) 1600 to 1900. Writers like Shakespeare, Bunyan, Pope, Dr. Johnson, Kant, Bentham, Mill, the Romantics, pretty much every Victorian had a lot to say on the subject. Drama evolved from the morality play, an illustrated sermon. All fictions were fables in disguise.
Interest in the subject dwindled in the twentieth century. The morality-thumping of earlier centuries came to seem old hat. Folks in liberal democracies pretty much agreed what it meant to be good. States became more considerate of common people, who cast the vote. Brutal battles were fought over how to treat women, persons of color, the poor, non-heterosexuals and other minorities, but by then a consensus had emerged among thinking folk what one ought to do. Morally, the Golden Rule became the rule of the road. A beneficent parent, the State should have no orphan children: “equal justice for all.”
I was raised in a starchily moral household. My dad was a throwback to the good old days of parental do’s and don’ts. Kids got no vote. Right and wrong was proclaimed, never explained. Anybody properly raised knew the right thing to do.
Moral authority and norms melted during my lifetime. We Woodstock Generation baby-boomers (me, Donald Trump) advocated an “anything goes” relativism. “Right” meant what you felt like and could get away with. “Wrong” meant getting caught.
The horror of Trump woke me to our moral decline. In what universe was it OK to grab women by the pussy, lie, gloat, steal, connive, abuse? His person, far more than his politics, revolted me. Yes, dammit, there was right and wrong, permissible and impossible, decency and in-! Without these navigational tools, the ship of state would founder and life would make little sense. Shouldn’t we all aspire to be good?
Our moment transformed me into a student of morality. What did it mean to be “good”? Were laws arbitrary and self-interested or did they emerge from a shared sense of right and wrong? Absent the automatic authority of state, church, school, could one think one’s way to moral certitude? How should we be during our time on earth? How should I? Please explain!
Questions that seemed obvious and fuddy-duddy in my boyhood took on fresh urgency. What made Trump and his adherents abominable, intolerable? Why were my fellow citizens so confused? Could we prevent civilization from slithering into a ditch where it would drown?
Plenty to think about.