The curious unseriousness of all our moral debates

By: American Decency Staff

I've come to believe that there is something fundamentally unserious these days about moral discussions.

Imagine two farmers, brothers working the same five hundred acres, arguing about whether to take a big chance on the next harvest, by sowing a lucrative crop in fields that are already worn thin in nutrients. Jim wants to do it, thinking that they may as well, since they're in debt and the only way to clear it will be to win big. John thinks that the risk isn't worth it, and that if they sow the usual crops while letting half of their fields lie fallow, they'll go deeper in debt for the coming year, but they'll stand a decent chance to clear things up the year after.

Nobody will say, “John, you must be gentle in addressing the gamblers,” or, “Jim, you are unwelcoming to the cautious.” We would all understand that the tone of the argument is not to the point. The stakes are high. A mistake could mean losing everything.

Or imagine your daughter is being pursued by two young men who want to marry her. One of them is good looking, well spoken, full of life, wealthy, and shiftless. He is unemployed. The other is ordinary looking, slow of speech, solid, of modest means, and absolutely trustworthy. He has not been unemployed since he was sixteen. She has had her head turned by the shiftless man, and you see her as in a car speeding along a mountain road with hairpin turns.

Some people may advise you to be chary of your criticism, because if you push too hard, you may push her right into the arms of the bad man. But not even they would tell you not to take the matter seriously. The stakes are high. Misery threatens on the horizon.

So why do we not view with the same sobriety such questions as now beset what remains of our culture? We wouldn't say to a child, “Each of us has his own opinion regarding whether it's good to eat the strange fruit on that tree, so go ahead and eat it if you like.” We wouldn’t say to someone about to drive a car recently repaired, “Each of us has his own opinion about the steering differential, and whether it will disengage at a high speed, but go ahead and try it out if you like.” That's because we take poison seriously, and cars careening over a guard rail. No one calls the cautious man a toxophobe. No one accuses him of prejudice against unknown berries, or alternative gear styles.

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