Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Sometimes You Have To Choose
Mark Daniels looks at The Maltese Falcon and finds a morality lesson. And Mark is right.
As our culture continues to assail the walls of centuries-old morality, they do so under a claim that the standards are arbitrary. As Mark points out, they are anything but, and the case can be made that they are not arbitrary even outside the context of a religious underpinning. As religious people we fall short of what we are called to do if we rely solely on religious arguments to uphold our moral stances.
For example, genetic tinkering is as old as mankind, it's just that now we do it in the laboratory instead of the bedroom. And we should ask ourselves where has such thought lead us over and over again. Well, the Nazi breeding programs would be the most horrific example, but towards totalitarian domination is the inevitable trend.
That is just a single example of what I am talking about. We need to learn as a society how to lengthen the moral view of our young people. Problem is, those of us with some age aren't much better. We may be more devoted to duty, but our own moral views remain short term. It would therefore be inevitable that the duty would slip in following generations.
Rather than decry the trends, I suggest we start with ourselves. Where have we chosen the easy over the difficult? The feels good over the right? How can we avoid that mistake next time?
Related Tags: morality, long term, decision, history
What's intriguing about this is how, from the mouth of a morally complicated character, a guy who routinely uses others and bends the rules to suit himself, Hammett presents the choices each of us must make between what's compelling and attractive on the one hand and what's distasteful and difficult on the other.The first thing I thought of whenI read that was this post by Joe Carter on how women that have had abortions feel in the aftermath. In it, Joe points out precisely how short a view the women take by their exclusive focus on themselves and the now.
It's almost always easier, it really is the path of least resistance, to do the wrong thing. For Spade, it would have been easier and brought him quick gratification to throw in with O'Shaughnessy, who had already warmed his bed, who might soon have wealth beyond his imagining.
But Spade took a longer term view, something we always need to do in our moral reasoning. And by longer term, I'm not referring to the eternal perspective, though that shouldn't be irrelevant. It ought to matter to us that the God Who judges over the lives of us all cares about whether we do right and wrong. But here I'm really thinking of longer term in this life. While Brigid O'Shaughnessy might have provided Spade with momentary pleasures, satisfying the immediate cravings expressed in that haungry look he gave her, he knew that sooner or later, she would turn on him, just as she had Thursby and his partner Miles...and who knows how many others? He knew too that he would become a fugitive for as long as he lived.
As our culture continues to assail the walls of centuries-old morality, they do so under a claim that the standards are arbitrary. As Mark points out, they are anything but, and the case can be made that they are not arbitrary even outside the context of a religious underpinning. As religious people we fall short of what we are called to do if we rely solely on religious arguments to uphold our moral stances.
For example, genetic tinkering is as old as mankind, it's just that now we do it in the laboratory instead of the bedroom. And we should ask ourselves where has such thought lead us over and over again. Well, the Nazi breeding programs would be the most horrific example, but towards totalitarian domination is the inevitable trend.
That is just a single example of what I am talking about. We need to learn as a society how to lengthen the moral view of our young people. Problem is, those of us with some age aren't much better. We may be more devoted to duty, but our own moral views remain short term. It would therefore be inevitable that the duty would slip in following generations.
Rather than decry the trends, I suggest we start with ourselves. Where have we chosen the easy over the difficult? The feels good over the right? How can we avoid that mistake next time?
Related Tags: morality, long term, decision, history
