Misrepresenting Morality
Apparently, Time Magazine has no idea what the definition of the word “morality” is. It is also certain that they don’t understand the concepts inherent in it as is evident in a recent feature titled “The Morality Quiz,” where Time shows that they imagine that all there is to morality is life or death decisions resulting in sacrificing one person to save multiple others. Using decades old false dilemma questions engineered to elicit the conclusion that there is no such thing as a black and white moral choice, Time attempts to prove that Americans are either soulless killers or weaklings. Worse, as far as Time is concerned they imagine that the “foundation” of morality is mere “empathy,” meaning that the most important aspect of morality is “feeling” for others as opposed to societal exigencies or religious precepts. Confusingly, it’s also all a matter of kill or be killed to Time Magazine, which certainly takes all the messy “right” and “wrong” stuff out of the equation, eh?
In their opening statement, Time’s quiz ignores the societal aspects of morality to focus on empathy. “The deepest foundation on which morality is built,” Time begins, “is the phenomenon of empathy, the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you.” It seems to me, however, that empathy isn’t the basis of morality, but that self-interest is. It isn’t what hurts others that keeps us mindful of morality, but how a violation of that morality would hurt ourselves. If we break with morality, it will come back to hurt us through societal opprobrium, so we are mindful to uphold our moral precepts.
Time also imagines that animals have just as much morality as man. “And human ego notwithstanding, it’s a quality other species share.” Well, one can understand why Time imagines that animals share man’s morality since they only define morality as a kill or be killed societal question. But, morality is far more complicated than that, isn’t it?
From there Time urges readers to take their quiz to “see how you compare to other TIME.com readers,” and they assure us all that their quiz reveals how “scientists” use these “dilemmas to study morality.”
The quiz is filled with stark dilemmas that really have little to do with concepts of morality and more to do with reactions to life or death situations. Certainly how we deal with death is guided by morality — or can be — but reactions to these extreme situations do not measure much of importance nor does it say much about what we as a society think of morality and what is moral.
The first question asks if you could kill a crying baby in order to save the lives of a group of people hiding from enemy soldiers hunting them. The second whether you could throw out a grievously injured person from a lifeboat to make room for able bodied victims of a sinking boat. The last few ask if you’d throw a switch for a speeding train when that switching would kill only one person for the benefit of saving three and variations of that same scenario.
These are extreme conditions, naturally, but not one of them deals with the many moral decisions that people must make on a daily basis. In fact, none of these questions can even be answered satisfactorily because they are wild situations and no one can really know how they’d respond in these cases. Better would be to ask for examples of decisions people really made in their lives as well as simply ask straight forwardly how they view things like sex, murder, theft, etc.
But even more to the point, the questions Time asked do not describe the societal mores that people live with. Time’s absurdist questions do not inform a researcher of the various ideals and precepts that their subjects hold dear giving researchers a skewed view of morality.
Additionally, these questions can only have one result in mind and that is to inform the person asked them that there is no true moral choice that can be made, that every decision made by a person is based solely on utility. But, how often will the average person be in a life boat or be hunted by enemy soldiers with a squalling baby to give their position away? Wouldn’t a person be far more likely to face a question of theft from their place of work or with a sexual situation of some sort?
What do stark life or death situations ultimately prove, anyway? After all, a peaceful citizen can be placed in a situation of war, be asked to violate their normal behavior and kill other human beings, yet go right back to being a normal, peaceful citizen once the war has passed. This fact alone pretty much shows that the most extreme situations do not necessarily form the rule for morality.
In the end, there is a conclusion that can be drawn from Time Magazine’s Morality piece and that is that the editors do not believe there is such a thing and wanted to make sure you don’t either.
Sadly, Time Magazine is pretty much like every other left leaning agency in the USA today trying to impress upon all who’ll listen that everything is relative and the situation advises the ethics and that there isn’t any real moral code.
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Stumble It!
“What is important is to uncover is moral and intellectual dishonesty, and thereby discover corruption where it lies”, says metalman. I agree with the major premis. The ‘thereby’ and whatever follows is very important but not the main issue. Reality, and how we approximate to knowing it, is. We need to uncover our honesty.
And this is where Time is at fault. It is not being intellectually honest, with itself and its own obligation to seek the Truth, nor to us as readers. It falls into the same trap as WTH who asks, “morality is far more complicated than that, isn’t it?” To which I ask, is it? Time seems to want it to be and takes us on the Cook’s tour, all nicely packaged so we don’t have to do the walking or the work. To them, life is a Quiz Show.
We can go with Time all around the Peter Singer bush with hypotheticals about allowing one to die to save the many or the lifeboat exercise. We could circumvent the difficult by analysing and making the usual utilitarian assumptions or the intra-human dimensions as though they were the only things that matter (We, we are the centre of the Universe, aren’t we).
The various attributes of human beings, such as empathy, exist within Reality and reality is hard to cope with. We prefer to want things and to see things in ways which we would like reality to be, rather than how it is. We are all too often dishonest even with ourselves and that is the impediment to our discovering our perfect place within reality. Metalman’s corruption is a consequence, and that is the very thing, in all its manifestations, that we need to avoid. But it isn’t the rationale for honesty. The corruption of ourselves is the major consequence.
Our time is limited. We do so much that is deceptive, deceiving others, such that we deceive ourselves. We waste valuable time. We are so busy distorting reality with our dishonesty, our lies, our deceptions, in order to make reality conform to our wishes that we fail to grasp even the smallest aspects of reality. Or ourselves. We busy ourselves in illusions of our own making. Delusions. We rob others of their ability to apprehend reality.
We may resort to Biblical views but even there we simply find only straws to be grasped, like a papyrus lifeboat. We have to look inside instead. Honestly. Not to find what we want. To find what we are. Truth is the objective and the reward.
We live in an immoral society that has broken trust with Truth. Rejected it. That is its immorality. We have developed sytems which deliberately avoid Truth; rules it inadmissable. These systems are killing us.
Bugger the injured person in the lifeboat; we are all being grievously injured and thrown overboard.
But……
Vote #1 Amfotas. Know a Sea Change!
I think the scriptures are like a set of certified weights that are used to test a scale for accuracy. Every society needs to be tested for accuracy by an absolute standard of the Ten Commandments, and the Apostle’s determination of how much of the Torah had to be followed by the Romans. That is morality. Sometimes we get way too many rules and it becomes oppressive. Other times we get don’t have enough rules and become lawless. We need the standard.
One thing that often gets confused with morality is sobriety. Preachers like Billie Sunday confused it thinking alcohol was an evil substance. The scriptures always assumed wine was a normal part of your daily life and you shouldn’t get drunk. Hippies want no laws against street drugs and say “don’t impose your morality on us.” They confuse sobriety with morality. We need laws about sobriety because we all drive on eight lane freeways, over eighty MPH, with all the other cars eight inches away, for eight hours a day, and sobriety is important to impose. But it isn’t morality.
Another one that is more and more frequently being imposed, because insurance companies are so much a part of our lives are laws about smoking cigarettes, wearing helmets on motorcycles, and wearing seat belts in cars. These are not based on morality but rather are based on risk. The mentality of insurance companies is to view all behavior in terms of risk. But it isn’t morality.
Finally the Christian Marxists read the parable of the rich man and Lazarus who laid at his gate full of sores and the immediately conclude the rich man ended up in hell because he was rich and Lazarus went to heaven because he was poor. They insist God is always on the side of the poor, and want the government to take take from the rich and give to the poor. This is greed and a violation of the Tenth Commandment thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s expensive house. With the popularity of the prosperity gospel God wants you rich at least there is a return to the idea wealth isn’t evil. God never judges people based on their wealth. It is a wonderful thing to freely and secretly give to the poor like God does but it isn’t morality.
I most especially mean our so-called “education” system! thanks for your reply.
Mr. Huston,
I believe it is the goal of the ‘Powers That Be’ to steep us in moral reletavism so that they can pass as much corrupt legislation as they want and steal as much as they can without anybody asking too many questions. A stupid citizen is a pliable citizen, and Time magazine was never anything more than an establishment rag.
Interesting: you mention the “left leaning agencies,” in our country. Ah, yes! Among these, do you mean the public ‘education’ system, which has sought to destroy all vestiges of critical thought? Where one book is as good as any other, as long as it is replete with political correctness? Where parents threaten to sue teachers for giving their kids bad grades? What other agency has the perfect opportunity to produce minds incapable of basic moral and intellectual reasoning? After all, they can barely reason about anything!
Much more meaningful morality questions would have been the following:
1) You believe that abortion is wrong and a mortal sin, and you have said so to your friends and family. Then your seventeen year old daughter tells you that she is pregnant and wants an abortion. What do you do?
2) You notice that a cashier has given you five dollars too much with your change. Do you give the money back, or keep it?
3) You realize that you could probably get away with around $500 dollars more in tax write-offs than you deserve. Do you claim the phony write-offs, or not?
What these questions really ask is the following: Do you think that a particular thing is immoral when others do it, but not when you do it? Do you claim to believe one thing, but act another way when it is convenient? Do you propound a certain set of beliefs to yourself and others, but act against those beliefs when you have something to gain by doing so?
What is important is to uncover is moral and intellectual dishonesty, and thereby discover corruption where it lies. Unfortunately, it takes some reasoning ability to do this, and today’s kids are too busy being coddled by the Nanny State to learn how to reason.
Time magazine knows young people well. It knows that today’s youth cannot understand a thing unless it is put in bombastic, cinematic (and simplified) terms. Perhaps that’s why the moral dillemnas they present sound like they come from an action film. That’s about the level of thinking they’re dealing with.