A lot of people speak of morality as if it is cast in stone and is some kind of universal truth. It is not. At best, it is something that works on the “to each his own” principle. It follows then that there would be many “flavors” of morality. There is the morality that emerges from teachings of imaginary deities, the Marxist morality practiced by communists around the world, morality of the Objectivist kind, Nietzsche’s master and slave morality, and so many others (Nietzsche actually considers morality a ruse used by the weak to rule the strong). Morality is important – everything we do is influenced by our morals – but so is identifying its source; more so when morality is codified and becomes law – something that every citizen of a country is expected to follow. Bad choices here will lead to disgruntlement and chaos.
Abortion and euthanasia (or even suicide) are issues that affect women and the terminally ill. But law is used to deny them the right to their own bodies and lives. “Taking a life” is immoral – this idea is taken to its extreme to justify bans. This report on abortion was run by the BBC some time back. It is related to the access women have to abortion in Northern Ireland. Then there was another report which talked about a woman in Britain who planned to go to Holland for euthanasia and who feared that her husband would be arrested when he returns to the country. I can’t find that particular report but this one explains the problem.
Homosexuality is another controversial issue and there are many countries in the world (including India) where the practice is outlawed through a technicality – making “unnatural sex” illegal. No distinction is made between sodomy and rape. And society gains a tool to target “different” people. The Islamic theocracy that is Iran hangs gay people. While Iran is an extreme case, I don’t think there are many countries in the world who have not, at some point of time or the other, indulged in “legal discrimination” (discrimination by government, as opposed to by private parties – there is a huge difference in these two concepts and unfortunately, a lot of liberals either don’t understand this or simply don’t want to) against homosexuals.
British mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing was probably one of morality’s greatest victims. Turing was the one who, in trying to tackle Godel’s undecidability question, came up with a design for what we now call computers; and the one who cracked the German Enigma cipher machine during the Second World War. In The Code Book, Simon Singh quotes a Bletchley Park veteran – “Fortunately the (military) authorities did not know that Turing was a homosexual. Otherwise we would have lost the war.” But the government did come to know of it later on. And it forced him to undergo hormone treatment that made him impotent. This persecution resulted in his committing suicide at the age of 42. The British rewarded his contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany with death.
Prostitution, nudity and anything related to sex has always been controversial, particularly because of religious reasons. Iran (again) has recently decided to punish bloggers who write things that are detrimental to society. And freedom is such a precious commodity here in modern India that sometimes I wonder whether we fought for freedom or for freedom to enslave. Well, here you have to be careful what you write about. Write bad stuff about India’s royalty – the Gandhi family, or about Hindu gods, or warrior kings, or politicians and you could be thrown in jail and thrashed soundly. Worse, someone will arrive at your place and thrash you. While the Hindu epics describe kings having multiple wives, wives with multiple husbands, children born out of wedlock etc etc, and there did exist a time when sex and nudity was not considered taboo (Kamasutra and the Khajuraho temple complex, for example), present day India is imprisoned in a Victorian era morality. Raja Ravi Varma too seems to have played a major role in the covering up of the Indian body. The various religion-based outfits apparently suffer from amnesia, or stupidity, or both.
Drugs, smoking, views on charity – the list goes on. Society and government intervene into areas that have absolutely nothing to do with them, according to one morality, on the strength of laws and customs based on a different morality. This is a clash between different moralities and there can be no meeting point. This is the primary reason why societies find themselves caught up in conflicts. And unfortunately, present day government offers no solution to the problem. The best we can do is limit the applicability of “moral laws” to small territories – on a city or state level rather than on a national level. While moving from country to country is not possible for many, people unsatisfied with the laws in one city or state can move to another one. And it is so much easier to get the laws changed at the local level than at a national level since a small electorate means each voter has more say. But this requires politicians with the intelligence and drive needed to make it happen. And we don’t have them.
For all the idle talk of morals and civilized behavior, when people fail to come to an understanding, they turn into cavemen and resort to the use of force. “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me,” Orwell once wrote (The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius). Theirs is a different morality, he should probably have added.
