How To Have A Moral Code Without Religion
Feb. 26th, 2011 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailbheI'm mainly thinking of the tweet I've seen forwarded around everywhere - something along the lines of "The Pope says atheists can just pick and choose which morals to have, so today I will choose to frown on the rape of children and think homosexuality is fine."
I seem to have a pretty strict moral code, one way or another. I don't live up to it, of course. I think that if I did it would be a sign to me that it wasn't strict enough.
But when I was four my mother explained to me how fare-evasion on buses was theft, not from the bus company, but from everyone else who used the buses, because their fares all get a little bit larger to make up for the missed fares of non-payers.
She's a bit of a communist hippie type, my mum. A very respectable communist hippie type.
We used to pick up rubbish on our way home from the beach. We composted biodegradable waste, and used non-fatal rat repelling things instead of traps. Off-hand I can think of twice when we gave shelter to desperate people with nowhere to go. We didn't waste things. Two of her children were vegetarian for years until separate and unrelated health issues stopped them. We've all been boycotting Nestlé for about as long as I can remember (she also boycotted Cadburys a bit, not very thoroughly, because they were one of the companies which sacked women on marriage). She gave us books and encouraged us to watch films about race - mainly American ones about black Americans, because that's what we had access to, but in Ireland in the 1980s it wasn't wholly usual.
Of course, I took a lot of this upbringing and brought it to extremes. Local organic this, fair-trade ethically-sourced that, recycled the other.
I think it boils down to the need for good people to not do nothing. I question pretty much everything I do (I am trying very hard not to think about the processes involved in paint manufacture and distribution, though). I try to give my children the space to make their own decisions while letting them know what I think is the right thing to do.
In general I feel like a loony extremist; one thing that has been nice about True Food Co-op and Quakers is that I'm relatively normal there.
I seem to have a pretty strict moral code, one way or another. I don't live up to it, of course. I think that if I did it would be a sign to me that it wasn't strict enough.
But when I was four my mother explained to me how fare-evasion on buses was theft, not from the bus company, but from everyone else who used the buses, because their fares all get a little bit larger to make up for the missed fares of non-payers.
She's a bit of a communist hippie type, my mum. A very respectable communist hippie type.
We used to pick up rubbish on our way home from the beach. We composted biodegradable waste, and used non-fatal rat repelling things instead of traps. Off-hand I can think of twice when we gave shelter to desperate people with nowhere to go. We didn't waste things. Two of her children were vegetarian for years until separate and unrelated health issues stopped them. We've all been boycotting Nestlé for about as long as I can remember (she also boycotted Cadburys a bit, not very thoroughly, because they were one of the companies which sacked women on marriage). She gave us books and encouraged us to watch films about race - mainly American ones about black Americans, because that's what we had access to, but in Ireland in the 1980s it wasn't wholly usual.
Of course, I took a lot of this upbringing and brought it to extremes. Local organic this, fair-trade ethically-sourced that, recycled the other.
I think it boils down to the need for good people to not do nothing. I question pretty much everything I do (I am trying very hard not to think about the processes involved in paint manufacture and distribution, though). I try to give my children the space to make their own decisions while letting them know what I think is the right thing to do.
In general I feel like a loony extremist; one thing that has been nice about True Food Co-op and Quakers is that I'm relatively normal there.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-27 08:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-28 01:03 am (UTC)