I don't want readers or the other blogger to think that it was an empty challenge when I challenged him to find the best essay in the substantial archives of Fred on Everything. It looks like I'll be done with the 500+ essays by the end of April, as originally estimated.
But limiting myself to one essay will prove more difficult than expected. Normally I find Fred's pearls of wisdom sitting in a single paragraph or sentence, rather than in an entire two-screen essay. For instance one of the essays today says:
Much of the unpleasantness of modern life occurs because we will say "no" to almost nothing.
Why does this happen?
It happens because, instead of deriving law from morality, we now derive morality from law. In a healthy society, laws enforce morality; they do not dictate it. In America today, the opposite is true.
By untying law from the anchor of morality, we give up control over our lives.That is the kind of thought you don't get from the politically-correct, lame stream media. You could take off into the mountains or desert and think about these sentences for a week or two. Nevertheless a duel is a duel and I will honor our agreement at the end of April by choosing a single essay.
Comments
The Secret Service 'scandal', the Marine urination 'scandal' and the most recent Army body parts 'scandal' are some recent examples of one side of the coin.
The other side is how we hold Entertainers (I include professional sports participants in this class) up as cultural icons that must rise up to virtually no standard.
Yes, finding selected gems within Fred's essays is relatively easy but deciding on the one 'best' will make you sweat. Then there is the problem of explaining Why it is the 'best', that is making me sweat now.
Bob
Society and law each does its best to define proper behavior and enforce it in order to bring some order to the natural chaos which would ensue without their presence. It is an ever changing phenomena though and thus it is not perfect and never could be.
In my opinion, true morality is looking within and being willing to discover one's one demons. We all have them, you know, but most would rather point the finger outward, which is so easy to do for there is surely fault there as well.
The critical question is the degree of awareness and control one individual has over one's own thoughts and actions and we all know how difficult that is. If it is difficult to introspect honestly and control oneself in all matters, surely it must be evident that it is impossible to do with others, yet that is what we prefer to do. Looking to others instead of oneself allows us to wallow in our sense of superiority and righteousness.
To me, this is the root of immorality and each of us can only face this issue privately.
Think of the analogy of a language developing in a certain country. The inflection of verbs and nouns, and the grammatical structure, can be quite complex. Yet it evolved organically amongst common people without being imposed on them from a Central Language Committee, state control of school textbooks, PC language police, etc.
This social upheaval has been largely a grass roots effort coming from the common people. Civil rights, women's rights, labor unions bringing in better wages and safer working conditions are examples. With these movements came moral changes as well.
Can you give me examples of what you are speaking of?
"As best I can see, the problem is one of a general loosening of social control. Police and laws work well only as backups to, as enforcers of, rules of behavior that are built into a society. Cops can arrest, say, a drug dealer, but doing so is effective only if people agree that drugs are not to be tolerated. We no longer have a consensus that much of anything isn't to be tolerated. Perhaps more correctly, law and social policy have made it impossible to enforce the popular will."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-talk-huppke-obit-facts-20120419,0,809470.story