Waves

New Morality

What’s Wrong with the Old Morality?

New Moral­ity turns out to be a tricky term. It was a term used in the 60s to rail against lib­er­al­ism and the threat of ‘hip­pie cul­ture’. The Para­dox Series use of New Moral­ity refers to the real­ity that since reli­gion splin­tered into thou­sands of sects dur­ing 1399Neptune-Pluto1892 in the West cen­tral moral author­ity dis­ap­peared or at least turned muddy. For instance, pro-choice Catholics in the US face must an uncom­pro­mis­ing pro-life hier­ar­chy. Indeed, stick­ing to Catholi­cism, that insti­tu­tion recently (1992) apol­o­gized for the 1633 Inqui­si­tion of Galileo!
To be sure I do not sin­gle out Catholi­cism or Chris­tian­ity. We can look to the Tal­iban and their treat­ment of women as more 14th Cen­tury than 21st. Nor should we sim­ply sin­gle out reli­gion. In my mind, Nixon’s total dis­re­gard of law while in pres­i­den­tial office prac­ti­cally gave per­mis­sion to the Cheyneys and Rums­felds to treat laws as an arbi­trary guide rather than the law.
Sure we know mur­der is wrong. Lying and steal­ing still ranks as one of the things humans should not do. But what about the moral­ity of doing noth­ing about global warm­ing (or pol­lu­tion in gen­eral)? Is cloning morally accept­able? The “Octo­Mom” affair puts the moral­ity of the in vitro firm  (and her) sense of morals in ques­tion. What about the power com­pa­nies who put mega­tons of coal-ash laded with car­cino­gens in earthen dams all across the US? Was it morally cor­rect for com­pa­nies and traders to rake in $$mil­lions on shady deriv­a­tive trad­ing and mort­gage pack­ag­ing, acts that brought the planet to edge of another finan­cial depres­sion? If not, why were many of the cul­prits rewarded instead of jailed?
So read­ers know my posi­tion, I am an anti-religious agnos­tic. In that light you should know that I do not favor a reli­gious solu­tion. I do how­ever think we need to find a moral cen­ter that rec­og­nizes our sec­u­lar real­ity. Cer­tainly, I have no illu­sions that this work will set us on a path to a moral­ity revised for the post-modernism. But I do hope to I can begin a dia­log about it.