Reply: What Immorality does

I think most of us sense that there is a relationship between a society’s morals and its thriving. It is hard to say just what the relationship is, but, in general, as immorality goes up, thriving goes down. (I would define immorality as the failure to treat people and things, including oneself, as they should be treated.) One can imagine a society becoming so immoral that it dies. No such thing can be said for morality. It is not possible for a society to be so moral that it dies.

If this is, in fact, a law of society, in the way that gravity is a law of nature, the corollary to it would be that if you want your society to thrive, you should take an interest in its morals. You should hold yourself, and others, to high moral standards.

But a counter-story has arisen in our time. This story says that morals – especially, but not exclusively, sexual morals, get in the way of happiness.

So, we live with two stories and, I think, we choose based on our whims. Are morals good because they are the lifeblood of society, or are morals bad because they keep people from finding happiness? We are wishy-washy in our answer.

Hence, our current mess.