Making Morality Out Of Nothing At All
THE DIAGNOSIS
This generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime and can’t bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. An increasing number of Americans agree that “the truth,” rules, and laws are faintly embarrassing rituals that only a sucker would let hold him back. The attack upon our institutions is a trend—a thing that grows in direct proportion to our greed and ignorance.
—Matt Taibbi
THE TREATMENT
…..hoping only that love with all its confusions and potential destructiveness can repair madness, weakness, aloneness.
—George Crane, The House of the False Lama
Earlier this evening a group of us discussed the nature of morality, or made our best attempt. I had little to say until the end. Earlier in my life I lived as a moralist. The years have passed. those rules upon which I desperately relied became increasingly unreliable. With the passage of time life becomes more complex and one suffers damage along with others. Shit happens. I am certain that: “love will keep us alive”; that love is improvisational, a matter of listening, paying attention, openness to error, and inclined toward forgiveness. That is where morality comes from. And that is why one cannot know what is the right thing to do until one is engaged in the concrete situation.
“But I’m never gonna make it without you,…” No truer words have ever been uttered. We need one another friends. We’ve got to risk it.
