Morality

Sometimes I wonder if morality is nothing more than not acting on our impulses. I've just finished The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Steinbeck's last novel. The main character is Ethan Allen Hawley, a man of integrity, whose honesty has prevented him from receiving the wealth that people have offered him. Yet a bribe he refused in the beginning is accepted at the end, and Hawley's deceits are at times nothing short of betrayal (or even murder, in a way, in the case of his friend Danny Taylor). It was Hawley's intention to rob the bank behind the grocery store he clerks, but his plans are compromised, not by his own integrity, but rather by an honest act performed by his boss Marullo, who is being deported, and whose deportation he owes to none other than Hawley. A government man comes to tell Hawley that Marullo is giving him the store. Because Hawley is a good man. An honest man, the government agent repeats several times. And here he was about to rob a bank. The only thing that kept his morality intact, in that specific instance, was his immorality in another instance.

I was talking to Laura yesterday, or maybe it was Scott, about how I sometimes consider myself a bad person for the thoughts I have. Oh, the people I'd love to swindle, back stab, cheat. But I never do it. So is morality noble thought or simply noble action? And is noble action really action, or simply the passivity of one lacking the guts to follow his impulses?

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), the government has solved the problem of dishonesty and emotion and passion by 1) strict conditioning, and 2) allowing the masses to indulge in their every impulse. The conditioning is essential to keeping part 2 from exploding into chaos, because people are conditioned to only have certain impulses, depending on their caste. In this world, orgies are condoned and monogamy criminalized. For them, morality is based on impulse.

I think it is generally considered that an essential part of morality is honesty. Honesty is generally advocated as, not only the telling of truths, but also of "being true to oneself," of not allowing the wishes or actions of others to shape you into a person you don't want to be. But how can we be true to ourselves if we don't follow our impulses? By denying the things we want we are allowing ourselves to be shaped by the majority vote of society, whose morals are drawn from nothing more than tradition, which is a proud way of saying the consensus of the powerful. It seems, then, that we have two choices: be honest, or be moral. But never the twain shall meet.