My co-worker recently came into work saying how distressed she was that AshleyMadison.com was advertising on the radio during the day. For those who are in the dark about this website, it is a "dating site" catering towards those with spouses. That is, it's a forum for adulterous affairs.
One may be curious how the creators of this site manage to sleep at night knowing they are the facilitators of what virtually everyone believes is a moral evil. Putting aside the obvious motivation that is the root of all evil, when questioned, the creator responded to the effect that he is not actually encouraging adultery because all of his clients already wanted to have affairs beforehand. In fact, he is providing a service to the dating community by giving these individuals a place where they can honestly present themselves as being married rather than lying about their marital status in order to get dates.
So the moral hedging proceeds. Similar arguments are made for condom distribution in schools and for provision of clean needles to heroine addicts off the street. "Well, everyone is doing it anyway, might as well keep them safe!" Take that mentality a bit further, and you have AshleyMadison.com. "Well, everyone is doing it anyway, might as well profit from it!" Curiously, this argument has been leveled recently by libertarians for government profit, but that is another discussion for another day.
What I want to focus on is this creation of a combined feeling that (1) everyone is doing this and (2) people are going to do this no matter what. The perception of the universality and inevitability of sin is the biggest obstacle to both the moral teaching of institutions such as the Church, and to the moral life of individuals. By assuming that affairs will take place and by creating the perception that affairs do take place on a regular basis, one most definitely does increase the prevalence of adultery by making it seem more natural. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It has long been argued that the world that the individual perceives as 'reality' is socially constructed. That is, we take cues from our environment and from the behavior of others to determine how things really are. If smoke enters through a ceiling vent and no one in the room seems to notice or react, people conclude that there is nothing alarming about the situation. If a group of people is presented with two lines and asked to determine which one is longer, people will be more likely to answer what the group is answering even if what the group is answering is obviously incorrect. This is not due to weak wills or small brains, it's due to the fact that human nature necessitates social verification for the establishment of reality. These people didn't believe with one part of their brains that the building was on fire or that the other line was longer and then just react with the group because they were intimidated, these people actually believed there was nothing wrong in the first case and that the group was correct in the second case even though they were mistaken.
Social construction is a powerful thing. Now let us talk about morals.
People (I believe) are natural Aristotelians. That is, they believe deep-down in Natural Law theory: that we can derive what ought to be from what is; they can see how they ought to behave based upon the way their environment is and how other people are behaving (particularly people in whom they place a great deal of epistemic trust). If a man is walking down the street unwrapping a candy bar, he will be more likely to litter with the wrapper if there is already litter on the ground. He will be even more likely to litter if he sees someone else litter first. That is, he internalizes the fact that "this is a place where people litter," and from that fact, he concludes, "I ought to litter." Maybe he even generally believes that littering is bad, but in this case, since everyone else is doing it, it's ok. He's not going to be the sucker that sticks the wrapper back in his pocket if no one else is.
So when we give out condoms to children or when we advertise adultery-facilitating websites on the radio, we are saying, "This is how people behave. Children have sex. People cheat on their spouses. Everyone is doing it. This is the way things really are." Suddenly, when a person is faced with a challenge to a moral standard which she has been taught by her parents, church, and friends, she is reminded of that website and those free condoms, "Maybe I'm the only one not doing this? Maybe there's something wrong with me."
"Maybe that line only looks longer than the other, but I'm actually mistaken. Maybe that smoke doesn't mean there's a fire. Maybe it is ok to litter here."
No man is an island. Everything we do, the world we create, the norms we profess as inevitable and universal, all affect the behaviors of others. We depend on one another to know what is real and to know what is good, and to pretend otherwise to push responsibility off of ourselves is, well, denying reality and goodness.
Be careful what you say. Be careful what you do. Someone else's soul may depend upon it.
One may be curious how the creators of this site manage to sleep at night knowing they are the facilitators of what virtually everyone believes is a moral evil. Putting aside the obvious motivation that is the root of all evil, when questioned, the creator responded to the effect that he is not actually encouraging adultery because all of his clients already wanted to have affairs beforehand. In fact, he is providing a service to the dating community by giving these individuals a place where they can honestly present themselves as being married rather than lying about their marital status in order to get dates.
So the moral hedging proceeds. Similar arguments are made for condom distribution in schools and for provision of clean needles to heroine addicts off the street. "Well, everyone is doing it anyway, might as well keep them safe!" Take that mentality a bit further, and you have AshleyMadison.com. "Well, everyone is doing it anyway, might as well profit from it!" Curiously, this argument has been leveled recently by libertarians for government profit, but that is another discussion for another day.
What I want to focus on is this creation of a combined feeling that (1) everyone is doing this and (2) people are going to do this no matter what. The perception of the universality and inevitability of sin is the biggest obstacle to both the moral teaching of institutions such as the Church, and to the moral life of individuals. By assuming that affairs will take place and by creating the perception that affairs do take place on a regular basis, one most definitely does increase the prevalence of adultery by making it seem more natural. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It has long been argued that the world that the individual perceives as 'reality' is socially constructed. That is, we take cues from our environment and from the behavior of others to determine how things really are. If smoke enters through a ceiling vent and no one in the room seems to notice or react, people conclude that there is nothing alarming about the situation. If a group of people is presented with two lines and asked to determine which one is longer, people will be more likely to answer what the group is answering even if what the group is answering is obviously incorrect. This is not due to weak wills or small brains, it's due to the fact that human nature necessitates social verification for the establishment of reality. These people didn't believe with one part of their brains that the building was on fire or that the other line was longer and then just react with the group because they were intimidated, these people actually believed there was nothing wrong in the first case and that the group was correct in the second case even though they were mistaken.
Social construction is a powerful thing. Now let us talk about morals.
People (I believe) are natural Aristotelians. That is, they believe deep-down in Natural Law theory: that we can derive what ought to be from what is; they can see how they ought to behave based upon the way their environment is and how other people are behaving (particularly people in whom they place a great deal of epistemic trust). If a man is walking down the street unwrapping a candy bar, he will be more likely to litter with the wrapper if there is already litter on the ground. He will be even more likely to litter if he sees someone else litter first. That is, he internalizes the fact that "this is a place where people litter," and from that fact, he concludes, "I ought to litter." Maybe he even generally believes that littering is bad, but in this case, since everyone else is doing it, it's ok. He's not going to be the sucker that sticks the wrapper back in his pocket if no one else is.
So when we give out condoms to children or when we advertise adultery-facilitating websites on the radio, we are saying, "This is how people behave. Children have sex. People cheat on their spouses. Everyone is doing it. This is the way things really are." Suddenly, when a person is faced with a challenge to a moral standard which she has been taught by her parents, church, and friends, she is reminded of that website and those free condoms, "Maybe I'm the only one not doing this? Maybe there's something wrong with me."
"Maybe that line only looks longer than the other, but I'm actually mistaken. Maybe that smoke doesn't mean there's a fire. Maybe it is ok to litter here."
No man is an island. Everything we do, the world we create, the norms we profess as inevitable and universal, all affect the behaviors of others. We depend on one another to know what is real and to know what is good, and to pretend otherwise to push responsibility off of ourselves is, well, denying reality and goodness.
Be careful what you say. Be careful what you do. Someone else's soul may depend upon it.
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