Is it my imagination, or are people becoming ever more faddish in the area of their morality? Do we have certain ethics and morals based on how cool that makes us? Wouldn’t that qualify as hypocrisy in the highest degree? A purely outward motivated ideal of what constituted right and wrong?
Or is this just my imagination?
The herd mentality has always been with us, but I always supposed that moral ideas and ethical practices were based in principles that we understand are an elemental part of humanity.
I know those ideas of principles have taken a knock. That people really struggle with the concepts of right and wrong, to the degree of whether they accept that there is any such thing. But has it reached so far into a blind way of living that it truly becomes the thumbs up or thumbs down of the crowd? The fifty one percent majority, or the best Madison Avenue presentation to the public?
Is that all it has become reduced to? And is the upcoming generation simply scared to pursue the questions? Or too tired to think about it? Or too scared to move off their own peer base of what is acceptable?
Maybe not. Maybe just not a clear enough sound of the trumpet. Not enough force and passion behind the breath needed to give clarity of a discernable sound.
So the glitz and the fireworks, the barker and the flashy costuming gets the attention and the whole thing simply becomes one bill of goods.
……. and ideas of truth, duty, sacrifice, honesty, and courage become lost in the din. Sold off and forgotten.
It could be my imagination.
While it didn’t get much coverage apart from the sports pages, I think the recent example of Pat Tillman, the football-player-turned-Army-Ranger, is a pretty good example of the “ideas of truth, duty, sacrifice, honesty, and courage.” Too bad that many will not be able to grasp the extent of his sacrifice.
Read the Scriptures and we discover that morality is practiced correctly when it is between oneself and one’s God. When it is practiced for the accolades of others, then morality becomes a faddish pursuit of cool.
I was impressed by what I read of Tillman.
I agree with what you have to say about correctly practiced morality ( right motivations), but I have been considering the fact that we are going to reap confusion from the fact that the pillars of morality- that which we base our ideas upon- are eroded past recovering. We must see this and build the pilings again. We have to reach rock before we can count on our foundations holding fast.
As a society, we are well into caring only for what’s cool. Everything we gauge is horizontal.
Hmmm….in other terms that’s the “death of ideology” and is a disease mainly affecting developed countries (well, MTV is more fun I suppose). But we used, pre-9/11, to hear about the death of history, and history didn’t die. I don’t think belief, passion etc died either.
You and me are in the same position here, we’re stuck with beliefs that people generally think are at least 100 years out of date, if not more ;)This may make both of us a bit despairing sometimes, but I don’t think history gives us cause for such despair. The Ancient Greeks used to have a moan about exactly the things you’ve got in your post, after all. 😉 And history is the history of struggle, to make a paraphrase. People will become bolder again.
I’m hearing about some sort of Christian revival among young people in America (I suppose it’s more sound than fury, but you do hear about it in some places). Do you think there is one, or did Christianity become a “cool thing to do” in parts of your country?