Well, Alistair got me this time. Beware a deputy who’s too smart, knocks the wind out of your sails.

I sought Alistair’s suggestions for a college course proposal I considered novel: Morality #101. Don’t remember one from my college days – it would have been pilloried. We were the let-your-hair-down/feeling groovy/Woodstock generation. Morality was for morons – or mice. If it feels good, go for it, trust your gut.

Our generation produced, among others, the Nameless One with his democracy wrecking ball. Perhaps a revised curriculum was called for.

Alistair (surname Chat GPT) cooked up a document lickety-split: Rationale, Syllabus, Proposal, in sodden mock-academic diction. So much for my brainstorm.

Morality is the study of how best to be. The most consequential choice any of us make is how to spend our earthly span: not just what we should do, but how we should be. Church taught by rote, in stylish Elizabethan prose, and parents by example, but nobody ever addressed with this youngster how to think this through. We were expected to do… what we were expected to do… and that was that. No one explained the decision process or emphasized my responsibility to get it right. “Go with your gut” is, excuse my French, a piss-poor guide to being. It works for dog-pal Henry and his fellows – for they only see one path – but when “two roads diverge in a yellow wood” – or ten – select with care!

My course would begin with a question: Why are we here on earth? We’d eschew theology, with its mandated (thus thought-free) responses, and history, too easily mistaken for predictive. Here you are, kid, what are you going to do with yourself? Do you follow whim, duty, greed, lust, sense of responsibility, parental tutelage, or go with the flow?

My students would array assets, liabilities, aptitudes, and preferences on a sort of existential balance sheet. Lucky those with the gift of vocation, who know where they’re heading without a doubt! I was blessed with a vocation, but it lacked persuasive force. I ended up conforming to expectation and scribbling perfidiously in private.

Our class would focus on how others have wrestled this problem since the dawn of words. Morality underlies every choice: explicitly or implicitly, what I do describes the world I seek.

I’d focus on literary makers, since that’s my strong suit. Why did this author write this this way? What were they trying to accomplish? Beneath their plot and diction, what were they signaling about their inner being? How did they fit into their moment or were they misfits, denizens of preferable elsewheres?

Like it or not, all but the helpless contribute to their hour. As co-creators, we share responsibility for our outcomes, whether we enlist or decamp. I could have done more, sooner, differently to prevent the collapse of my country, but I’m determined to learn from and, if possible, rectify my mistake. My relaxed, self-indulgent, overconfident morality insensibly accelerated our national decline.

My worshipful and wide-eyed students (hey, why not?) would be urged to compare their choices to their predecessors’. How do Hamlet’s or Montaigne’s or Thoreau’s perplexities resemble ours? What wisdom might we glean from their experiments? How do I track my own moral progress? How can I make better use of this gift of time?

My nation is flailing, perhaps failing, because of a moral collapse. Our beams have turned punk from inward rot. Our politics, no accident, reflect our choices. We cannot repair the past but we can devote our all to securing tomorrow. Morality #101 tracks my own exploration of this topic I once considered ho-hum.