Morality Play

Things got kind of strange at work today... Tall young Michael made some comments about women, how he thought women should be subordinate to men or some such, and it all sort of went downhill from there. Heather countered him, mentioned my name, and the next thing you know we're embroilled, eventually getting all the way to gay marriage and religion. I feel rather odd about the whole thing. On the one hand, I feel like if I'm going to go around with a very good opinion of my own articulation of ideas, and support for my positions, I can't really avoid these kinds of conversations. And to a point, they can be very interesting. But it's hard with tall young Michael, because he's so naive and definitely uneducated in many, many ways... but somehow he also strikes me as sort of innocent. He says terrible things, really not ok... but I feel, ironically, that I should be gentle toward him, because he is still, in some fundamental way, a little boy. He wouldn't thank me for that, I know. And it's hard because I express myself in such measured, qualified prose, which at this point is natural for me in matters of import, but doesn't seem to be natural for anyone else there, so I'm not sure if they understand what I am really trying to say. I think the really difficult thing there is that I have adopted such phrasing because I have been taught that it is in some ways essential to clear communication, and yet often it hinders my ability to communicate in situations where people have not been so trained. So that kind of defeats the purpose right there, doesn't it? I have an inordinate love for linguistic care, and I don't know if this makes me a more precise communicator, as I would wish, or not. And Heather is so forceful and convinced that it is hard to disagree with her. Or maybe it's just that now we are on a "side" together in the argument, but in actual fact I do not agree with all the conclusions she draws.

Maybe the point is that I am really, really, really confused about morality, and it preoccupies me to an extent that even my closest friends don't always understand the mixture of intensity and trepidation with which I approach the subject. Because intellectually it is clear that morality is a relative, culturally detirmined thing. But my heart wishes for a standard against which I can hold my own actions and those of other people, and therefore... be justified in judgement, I suppose, be it good or bad. I know judging is a trap, but it is so incredibly hard to avoid, and to be honest I like it. When I can make a judgement I feel safer, more certain about the world.

And it's easy to question morality when those around you have a different point of view, but it's not something we even think to question when we are all making a moral judgement in consort. For example, later in the day we watched Oprah, and there was no debate over whether the mother who gave her children Xanax to sedate them was morally wrong to do so-- we were all certain that she was. And I am certain. But what if this was a highly contested issue? Would I remain certain?

I think one of the bottom lines I come to is that morality can be detirmined situationally rather than generally. Take the issue of gay marriage, or marriage at all. There definitely may be couples where it is morally wrong for them to marry, and couples where it is not wrong (I don't know if marriage is morally "right," since to me that carries a bit of a compunction to commit a right act). This has nothing to do with their respective genders. Are there actions, then, that are always or almost always wrong? It's interesting to get to this point, because I think that murder is essentially worse than rape, however I would say that rape is always wrong, while killing may not be. It's so CONFUSING!

Also, I'm often nervous about expressing my views in a company where people disagree with me, and I don't like this about myself. I am morally scrupulous, but I'm not sure that it makes me essentially better as a person.

Then there's the fact that I love shady characters and antiheros, and can forgive in fiction what I would condemn in life, and especially in myself.

WHAT IS MORALITY? Is it relevant? Is it absolute? Is it relative? Is it the essence of what makes someone a "good" person, or is it merely an attempt to codify compassion? Does it actually relate to compassion directly? Now accepting submissions on all of these questions!

Ooh... and if anyone really thinks that women are inferior to men, I think your opinion is the intellectual and moral equivalent of horseshit.

I'm a bundle of contradictions. Love to my faithful readers, if you happen to exist... sound off! Inquiring minds want to know.