Pen-Elayne on the Web

Relatively Immoral

As I suspected, I'm still too tired to blog much today, but I want to keep my "new content daily" promise to myself. Just wanted to relate a conversation that Rob and I had today about moral relativism. It's hard to imagine that we once lived in a world where, 33 years ago today, most people - including the media - were horrified that National Guardsmen fired upon college students, killing four young Americans whose only crime was to protest what they considered an unjust war. (Thanks to Cyndy Roy at Mousemusings, link at sidebar, for reminding me of the Kent State killings.) And today nobody bats an eyelash at the National Guardsmen stationed throughout New York City (we spotted a few fresh-faced lads yesterday at Columbus Circle) who would cause far more civilian havoc were they ever to employ their rifles. (But of course they're not there to protect as much as intimidate, on the theory that a fearful population is a docile one.) And nobody seems the least bit surprised at Bush's characterization of millions and millions of citizens throughout the world as a "focus group" to be disdained (when his reactions to actual focus groups for moneyed interests is in reality quite the opposite) when they protest what they consider an unjust war.

I have trouble getting a handle on the 21st century, maybe because I remember what life was like before Reagan and Thatcher began the downward spiral which still affects so much of the world. I remember when at least lip service was paid to the idea that the disparity between rich and poor was too great and ought to be remedied, not worsened. I remember the outrage when people who needed serious mental help were left to fend for themselves, and the subsequent hardening of the populace's hearts against these now homeless people, years before lack of pity (which perhaps masked secret shame) turned into actual glee at their plight. Heck, I wasn't even reading comics until '85 or so but I still remember when the point of writing and drawing superheroes was to portray them as, you know, heroic. I remember back before irony and satire became crudeness and meanness. I feel like the world is becoming more curmudgeonly and I'm the naïf left behind, blinking and bewildered.

There's a saying that even the most evil person doesn't see him or herself as evil. (Another failing of many slot-A-into-flap-B written superhero comics today - that the heroes are assholes and the villains are one-dimensional cookie-cutter.) But you know you're in trouble when the people you consider the most amoral and callous are the very ones who don't even question their own actions, who seem to have no thought behind what they do. There's moral relativism and then there's the absolute lack of any moral clarity at all. I can kind of understand the former, even if I may not agree with someone else's scale, but the latter just infuriates me. Nobody should be that damn sure of themselves, particularly when their policies can affect much of the world. It's bad enough to be shrewd and calculating and Machiavellian, but to be cocksure and smarmy and arrogant about it... I mean, it not only makes you look evil, it pretty much makes you evil. Of course, I'm sure that was only true under those old, outdated moral codes, conceived of in a time when heroes were heroic.