My childhood taught me that you have to behave, be nice and not disagree with people or people won't love you. You should always live a good, Christian life (whether it's not stealing or not playing cards) because no one will like you if you don't. And for God's sake, don't speak your mind or people REALLY won't like you. Just agree with the majority's moral standards and let it go at that.
Another important lesson from my childhood was paying attention to "What will people think?" This was a major theme, to alter your behavior so that "People" will think well of you. Don't go to that guy's house unchaparoned or "People" will think you are not a good girl (and, more importantly, they won't LIKE you). So when you ignore that stricture and go to the guy's house unchaparoned and get raped, it's YOUR fault, not the guy's, right? The not-good girl had it coming and SHE is the one who slipped, morally speaking.
Unfortunately, recently, I've found this still to be true. On Facebook, I've reconnected with several friends from grade school days. They are mostly still in the same home town, still insular and conservative. So, I express my opinion on various political matters and, surprise, they don't like me because my views don't match theirs. I made the mistake of having an opinion which doesn't jive with their moral standards.
In my late teens (always the late bloomer), I tried very hard to behave badly...couldn't even do that very well. My biggest rebellion was to smoke cigarettes (a rebellion I'm still paying for, unfortunately). I hung out with the "stoners" but they wouldn't include me in their stoner sessions because they thought I was a narc. I tried to hang out with the "good" kids, but I might be a stoner and a not-good kid. I got the reputation for being "loose" without ever actually having been "loose". I didn't get to have fun and still got blamed for having it! To my family and former friends, I'm a black sheep and a not-good girl. To my friends, I'm impossibly conservative and too good a girl.
I once played a board game where one is given a moral situation and then has to choose from several reactions to that situation. Then the other players decide whether or not one would actually react to the moral situation in that way. I drew a moral situation which had actually happened to me in real life. So I chose the alternative that I had actually done.
Turns out the game is really about whether you are a good liar. The other players, most of whom had known me for many years, ALL decided that I was lying and that no one would have chosen the moral high ground in that situation. I was devastated, not only because I lost the game, but because I didn't understand why everyone understood me so poorly. Does everyone else in the world have this cloud hanging over them...that people don't believe they're as good as they are and nothing will change their minds? I've told several people close to me who didn't know me as a child that I was a very good girl, mostly to knowing smirks. They don't believe me. Makes me wonder if I REALLY understand anyone else, at all.
I believe in situational ethics. Whatever the most loving thing to do is what is the most moral. Under this moral code, murder is never acceptable but euthanasia might be. (Did you know that the Bible distinguishes between "murder" and "killing"?) I once discussed this with a woman, a good Christian Southern woman, who said that she didn't believe in situational ethics...that ethics do not change EVER, but that the most moral act depends on the circumstance. (!!!???!!!)
I lived for a time with a man who was a chronic liar. I think he actually couldn't help it. I think he'd lied for so many years that he was physically, morally and mentally incapable of telling the truth. (He was also as crazy as a loon, but that's another blog!) It took me several years to realize that he was lying and that, even on inconsequential topics, he COULDN'T tell the truth. His belief was that everyone lies, all the time, and it's no big deal to lie. He once told me that a mosquito I had just swatted wasn't a mosquito but was in fact a Equadorian flying gnat! I guess he was just practicing lying. I haven't practiced enough, evidently, 'cause even when I lie (like when I lie to set up a surprise birthday pary, for example), I can't get by with it.
Which leads me to believe that we all, having no experience with moral processes outside our own heads, believe that everyone has the same moral/immoral standards as our own. If you believe that everyone lies, then of course, it excuses your own lies. Everybody does it, right? We can't imagine someone always telling the truth, so we believe those people don't exist.
If one tells the truth, as best one can, then it is practically impossible to believe that others lie or even to tell when they are lying. And so we are gullible, believing in the good in everyone. If someone tells us that the Congress is planning death squads for the elderly, then we believe it because the person who told that big honkin' lie is a Christian and incapable of lying.
We watch the evening news and are shocked at the guy who kills his entire family and then himself. "How could anyone DO that?" we cry. How could anyone, let alone 19 anyones, fly planes into buildings and kill over 3,000 people? We struggle to understand the moral and emotional deficit of the serial killer, the killer who cannibalizes his victims, the suicide bomber, the rapist, the child molester.
The truth is, if we could understand the serial killer, the suicide bomber, the child molester, THEN WE WOULD BE THAT PERSON. If we understood this kind of depravity, then we would have the same depravity. So it's really a blessing that we DON'T understand the depravity. It means we have way higher moral standards than the person who COULD do that.
It is left to those of us who are good people to deal with the depraved amongst us because, it's a given that the depraved won't see anything wrong with it. As good, moral people, do we put those people to death? Do we lock them up and throw away the key? Do we lock them up for a time and then let them out to perhaps commit more depravity? We don't have many good options, do we?
We can't wrap our minds around the moral code of any other, so we assume that will behave just as we do. None of us understands the im/morality of any other.
