November 8, 2004

• MORAL VALUES 2

  You're probably going to see a lot more of this in and on the news, the pundits seemed to have picked it up.
  What we probably have here is what sociologists call a "loss of consensus". By that they mean fairly large groups have very different interpretations of what's right and wrong in a situation. The most obvious right now is abortion. The RTL's view it as murder, others don't.
  The moral value in question is murder. I read a warblog yesterday where a soldier described a nighttime convoy where an Iraqi girl ran in front of his humvee. He hit her (at 50mph) and she was torn apart and reduced to roadkill by the rest of the convoy. This affected him more strongly than anything previously.
  He now questions whether or not we should be there at all. Was what he did murder? It apparently came close enough to bother him.
  We make moral choices all the time, mostly automatically and are often confused when we run up against someone making alternative choices. We most often condemn the other's choice and damn him. Ideally, we should all get back on the same moral track, but getting there is hard.

  • 11:32 am
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