About twenty-five years ago we swore off frozen pizza. This afternoon while at the grocery store I said, “Surely they have gotten better after all these years.” So we selected one with a famous name thinking that was a good choice. If anything it was worse than I remembered. Maybe this one was left over from the batch I ate from twenty-five years ago. We should have paid attention to our old rule.
Sometimes my students try to tell me that certain standards are old and don’t apply in the 21st century. Why is it that I have this feeling that if there were a good moral reason for something fifty years ago there is still a good moral reason today? Because we change does that mean everything changes?
Maybe we didn’t have a good reason years ago. I have this idea that something is only wrong if it is harmful. If it isn’t harmful, it isn’t wrong. Does the passage of time erase the harmful effects of certain behavior thus making it okay? Perhaps the issue is we did not think it through fifty years ago or maybe we did and we forgot our reasons thus making it necessary for us to think it through once again.
Written by Roger Bothwell on November 30 2008
rogerbothwell.org