On A Modern Morality
Prediction: I am not a political creature, by nature; I have very little patience for the round-and-round which is the nature of the beast. I will predict, however, that the fight against the institution of same-sex marriage and everything that goes with it will, eventually and inevitably, be lost. On a nation-wide basis.
Not because of the inherent rightness of the cause in question or the doe-eyed nobility of those who fight against it, but because the modern American ethic, regardless of its original basis, is an ethic of harm; more accurately, the lack thereof.
If an action or a course of action does harm to others, then it is wrong. If it does not do immediate, quantifiable (or qualifiable, perhaps) harm to others, then we almost unilaterally regard it -- not as right, necessarily, for that would be making a moral judgment to which we feel collectively as though we have no claim -- but certainly not as wrong.
And it is because it causes no harm to others, fulfilling that first Hippocratic tenet, that we cannot, as a secular nation, classify this particular institution as being in any wise wrong.
Without making any observation or judgment regarding that specific issue -- for that is a whole different can of incendiary worms -- I would point out that any moral system in which wrong can be definitively defined but right cannot is a system that is doomed to inevitable and possibly catastrophic failure. Perhaps, as China Miéville suggested, 'not with a bang, but with a long, drawn-out breath'.
Not because of the inherent rightness of the cause in question or the doe-eyed nobility of those who fight against it, but because the modern American ethic, regardless of its original basis, is an ethic of harm; more accurately, the lack thereof.
If an action or a course of action does harm to others, then it is wrong. If it does not do immediate, quantifiable (or qualifiable, perhaps) harm to others, then we almost unilaterally regard it -- not as right, necessarily, for that would be making a moral judgment to which we feel collectively as though we have no claim -- but certainly not as wrong.
And it is because it causes no harm to others, fulfilling that first Hippocratic tenet, that we cannot, as a secular nation, classify this particular institution as being in any wise wrong.
Without making any observation or judgment regarding that specific issue -- for that is a whole different can of incendiary worms -- I would point out that any moral system in which wrong can be definitively defined but right cannot is a system that is doomed to inevitable and possibly catastrophic failure. Perhaps, as China Miéville suggested, 'not with a bang, but with a long, drawn-out breath'.