No Myth or Ceremony Required: Ethics

There are no concrete rules or laws that should be followed no matter what. Even “Thou shalt not kill” has the extenuating circumstances of Self-Defense in even the most liberal society. Morality can be instilled via a religion, a government, a code of ethics (like those a doctor or lawyer may pledge) or developmental education, but none of these mean anything if these ethics are not personal. Each person has their own set of values that they take seriously. The rest is just things they do (or don’t do) to avoid some form of external consequence.

If a person steals cars without remorse because he doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with that, he is not going to stop because the government tells him it’s illegal. He is going to do the best he can to avoid being caught. The same can be said for all of the Catholics I meet that have sex before marriage and use contraception or Larry Craig (an anti-gay politician) prowling the men’s room for some rectum swashbuckling. The external pressures of society only create an atmosphere of fear and persecution. They do not change the morals of the people affected just because they stand in the same room.

I’m a 26-year old Artist living in Las Vegas that does not smoke pot. That puts me in quite the minority. Is this because marijuana is legal in Las Vegas? Are Artists allowed to do drugs because it helps them do their jobs? No. There are very few people in the U.S. that can legally smoke pot and yet millions of Americans do. This is because the law is generally considered nonsense and is thus ignored with the exception of avoiding the police when you have some in your pocket.

I think I’ve made my point.

Almost every philosophy in the world applies some form of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as Jesus Christ puts it. The popularity of this phrase is indicative of its simplicity and wisdom. How many people actually follow it, however? It seems to me that this piece of wisdom can be the only “law” one would need to live in this world successfully.

This philosophy leads into the opposite side of the same coin. “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone” spoken by John 8:7. I like this phrase because it is a bit more realistic than “Don’t cast stones” even though it pretty much says the same thing. Do not judge other people if what they do hurts no one. I may not like what goes on with Hugh Hefner and his 7 girlfriends, but he’s paying for them to go to school and learn to read, God bless him. There is no real harm in this, so I choose to look at him as a guy who likes a different flavor of taffy than I do.

“Judge not lest ye be judged” (Matthew 7:1) seems like a threat pronounced by a wrathful God shaking the pointy stick of Hell at you, but that is not what it means to me. To me, it hammers the “Don’t casts stones” idea home further and I have seen evidence of this in my life. It seems the most outspoken individuals on the front against one or another group are the ones that get judged the harshest by society when they are found to be less than perfect themselves. If you have biases, keep them to yourself or one day you may be the subject of the same type of bias because you make yourself out to be a target.

“What if this person who I disagree with spreads his behavior to others!?” you might say. If we use the High Hefner example, we could say that perhaps my son decides to take on a public life of polygamy. OR (even worse), my daughter decided to be a girlfriend of Hugh’s. I can look at this with disgust and anger because this man has corrupted my child’s moral fiber, or I can realize that the ethics that I taught my children were not ones that they agree with. In the end, I must trust my children with making their own decisions as intelligent adults*.

The same way that seeing an advertisement on television for cigarettes isn’t going to make me go out and buy them, this situation is not Hugh Hefner’s fault. He is just enjoying a different flavor of taffy. Your sons and daughters are just as free to follow his example as they are to follow a religion you disagree with.

People are never going to all subscribe to the same exact principles of personal morality and it is not any individual’s place to force them to. The only way to force another person to think the same way you do is to remove their freedom, which is obviously wrong. So live in harmony with the people around you and revel in a feeling that each and every one of you chose your own path in life because you were free to do so. The freedom that you have (or wish for) will only be a reality as long as you respect others’ freedoms.

Hypocrisy is easy. Peace is hard.