“Morality is so yesterday.”
A put-down line. I pause puzzled, put down.
The older I get, the less I speak aloud. Younger, I was quite the chatterbox, cocky about my fluency. So what if my wit wounded? Sociable conversation was a sport, zingers a weapon to hone, Wilde, Shaw, Mencken and their ilk, maestros of badinage.
I still contrive put-downs – I’ve a taste for the epigrammatic – but these days I keep them to myself. Smartasses aren’t smart, though their words may smart; they’re obnoxious showoffs, oblivious to the complexity of truth. Writing gives me a better chance to say what I mean, but still it’s hard. T.S. Eliot, who was pretty good at saying, groans in his supreme poem:
That was a way of putting it - not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings.
Morality, of all topics, may be the most treacherous to discuss – and these days the most pressing. By morality I mean the examination of right and wrong, how to treat each other, the optimal use of our earthly span.
Morality differs from religion, which begins with a creed and works backward, and from philosophy, where debates about concepts don’t mandate behavior. Morality is practical – what should I do here and now? – and judgmental – am I making the most of my span?
My preoccupation with morality surprises me. My dad was ostentatiously “moral”, laying down the law with Mosaic certitude. His kids’ job wasn’t to question but obey. My generation – the so-called “Woodstock” – repudiated parental strictures. We would “do our own thing,” “express ourselves.” If it felt good, go for it!
Invisibly, morality evaporated during my lifetime. Cynicism replaced idealism as our national outlook. The leaders of my youth were viewed as good people. Now we believe them all bad.
Trump is amorality personified. He doesn’t care about right or wrong or how to treat others, only what’s best for him. Soldiers who die serving their country are “losers” – obviously! So what if you lie, cheat, steal, rape, as long as you get away with it!
That one human is repugnant is no surprise. That half the nation tolerates such conduct is the surprise of my lifetime. Maybe morality is “so yesterday.” But if that’s true, democracy’s unworkable, because democracy depends on collaboration, compromise, civility, trust, shared ideals. Tyrants don’t need morality; their rule is predicated on power. Do my fellow Americans really prefer servitude to latitude, obedience to decency? Or has modernity obsoleted morality as it has, say, handwriting or lace-tatting?
Each of us must decide what to do in our changed national environment: do or die, fight or flight? And if we opt to fight, in what arena? My little contribution, I’ve decided, is to focus on the whys that make us wise. Either we revive the science of morality – yes, science – or perish of our ignorance. By my calculus, every vote for Trump was an immoral act, a crime against our community, a body-blow to democracy. Why I believe this I’d like to teach.
Will my efforts make much difference? Of course not. Will they make a tiny fraction of a difference – maybe one three-hundred-millionth? If all do all we can, maybe we can get something done – or if not, at least we tried.
Do not underestimate the peril of our hour. Now is no moment to avert our gaze and hope for the best. Neither does impotence excuse indolence. Believers in morality must hang together, or as witty – and very moral – Ben Franklin put it, “we will hang separately.”