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Where
are we in the ‘morals revolution’? Dr. Shere. Hite. We frequently hear of ‘the
collapse of the old moral order’ – supposedly as stable and eternally true
as the stars. However, the change from a moral system in which only the
reproductive couple (woman as ‘helper’, man the legal head of the family)
was declared good and valuable, in favour of today’s ‘new morality’ with
many primary relationships accepted, does not mean the ‘collapse of
society’, but instead its renewal. It is clear that the moral order
is changing (as it has before) and that there are various moral and sexual
orders that are stable and create ‘good citizens’ – one need only think of
ancient Greek or Roman civilizations. However, there has never yet been – that
we know of – a moral order based on the full equality of women and men in
society. Nor a social order in which women had ‘sexual freedom’, i.e.,
sexual autonomy and rights over their own bodies and reproduction, as called for
by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Women (Beijing and New York,
1995 and 2000). Today men – not only women – have ethical questions about
their lives, and often want to change things, speaking of a desire for more
freedom or wondering how much time they should spend at work or at home. What we
are witnessing, and ourselves creating, is a transformation to a new moral and
ethical system, one more diverse and individually honest than the previous rigid
‘good traditional family’ prototype. In the past, the ‘traditional
family’ ideal (with one ‘proper father’ and one ‘proper mother’),
forced many people who did not happen to ‘love the right person’ or feel
‘the right kind of love’ to build appearances of such a family anyway,
pressuring them to falsify their feelings or force themselves in any way
possible to fit into this system, lest society categorize them as ‘immoral’,
‘immature’, or ‘psychologically disturbed.’ In fact, the more diverse
ethical sensibility emerging is improving the previous, more limited, system. This new morality – with more
focus on equality than the previous ‘moral order’ – can lead to a more
stable and happy society; indeed, relationships between couples have already
improved during the last ten years. Today’s new morality calls for each person
to care for others around them, thus continuing the best of the previous value
system, but not pressuring people to necessarily care for others in the context
of the nuclear or traditional family. This new moral landscape has room for
various forms of families and relationships, ways of life. The ‘moral order’
of the past imposed by church and state functioned through laws that prescribed
to whom and when one could marry or have sex, whether children were
‘legitimate’, whether women were ‘citizens’. The new moral code draws on
centuries of tradition valuing ‘love’, ‘kindness’, ‘understanding’
and ‘tolerance’ – but goes beyond them to include new ideals of equality
for women and men, as well as more value for the individual. Today individuals
are responsible for using their own judgment about the quality of love they feel
(or don’t ), deciding when to have sex, create ‘families’ or
relationships. Some will question whether individuals are capable of making
moral choices, and doubt whether they should be trusted with them (‘human
beings are basically selfish, therefore they will not be moral’, they hold).
But in moments of doubt, ask yourself whether ancient Greek or Roman societies
were ‘less moral’ than our own today. Of course there will always be those
who do not exhibit basic respect for others, or become violent, but that could
always be the case. The possible increase in violence today (is it only a matter
of increased reporting?) should not be blamed on the decreased power of institutionalised
control of morality or ‘the morals revolution.’ This would be to confuse one
issue with another. What is really new in
‘the moral landscape’ that is trying to establish itself now is equality
between women and men, especially a new sexual identity for women. Women’s
moral-sexual choices have become complex – to have children or use birth
control, to marry or ‘live together’, to make love in a ‘totally free’
context or only when ‘in love’, to make love to another woman or not, to be
a single mother or not, and so on. The increased divorce statistics and
popularity of counselling have exposed unhappiness in many couples, but these
should not be taken out of context to ‘prove’ that couples in the fifties
(often before divorce was even possible) were happier; then, domestic violence
was hushed up, some wives even received lobotomies or shock treatment to
‘quiet their nerves’, reminding us that earlier in the century Freud had
given his wife cocaine for the same reason, ‘to calm her’. Sexually, women are accused
today of being ‘less good mothers’ or ‘less serious mothers’ than
previously (and somehow this is blamed on ‘equality’ making women
‘selfish’) -- while men are urged to ‘be better fathers.’ Yet in the
l8th century, children were regularly sent out to wet nurses until the ages of 3
or 4 when they were considered housebroken…if they survived. Women today are
not ‘less good mothers’ and women deserve 'equal rights' in any case. In
fact, the new moral landscape is an improvement on the old not only because it
contains more diverse ideas of love and relationships, which kinds of behaviours
are ‘moral’, but also because it no longer accepts as ‘moral’ men’s
right to govern the ‘behavior’ of women, or take for granted the sexual (or
reproductive?) use of the female body. How could the previous
moral-social order be considered ‘just’ and good when one group was
automatically treated as second class to another, when women were expected to
provide sexual services to men without question? We no longer believe in slavery
or serfdom; now we realize that women should not be legally or physically owned
by men, either. The changes this is creating inside men and women are fuelling
the re-think of morality and ethics taking place, in both public and private.
The atmosphere now is a little like at the end of apartheid rule in South
Africa: many people no longer believe in the system as it was, or only partially
accept it. I hope in this series to illuminate some of the issues that are
making up the current moral shift, some of the choices we face |
| Copyright 2005,
Hite Research International All rignts reserved. |