Our morals are outdated. No one likes being told that their morals are wrong. What we think is right and wrong defines who we are and how we live our lives. But the fact of the matter is that morals are defined as obligations of personal conduct, and not based on legalities or custom. As such, they need to adjust to the changes in our ever-evolving society.
Personal wealth is one of the goals of our society. I could donate money to PETA, but I want my daily dose of Starbucks espresso instead. A movie ticket costs around $8 dollars. You could send it to the Red Cross. But are you going to do it? Nope. Because you really want to see “Jackass 3D.”
More controversial morals that really need to change are the ones that have been in conflict with religion. Some religious denominations vehemently claim that gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed because the Supreme Ruler decrees that the sanctity of such a union is solely between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation. Yet, divorce rates are more than 50 percent. On the other hand, these same denominations also believe that divorce is a sin and so is pre-marital coitus. It seems that in these denominations, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Then, there’s the conviction about abortion being murder. Some people use fanatical religious faith to justify this. Others use the belief that they think the miracle of life begins at the moment of non-birth control orgasm. These individuals feel that it’s morally wrong to terminate a pregnancy. I hear a ridiculous amount of this.
What I don’t hear about is what these believers plan to do with the outcast children who are born to mothers who never wanted them. Babies tossed in trash cans, infants smothered by blankets. And don’t even get me started about the horror that is the foster care system. Unless these people give me a solution for these rejected children who suffer for sake of fanaticism, I will kick them off that high-horse they rode in on.
Those same people are often fervently involved in protests against stems cell research.
They claim that these bundles of cells are babies. However, these small collections of cells have no heartbeat. They don’t move.
Ironically, stem cells are essentially the Holy Grail of medicine. They may hold the answer to a cure from neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to fatal genetic diseases, such as Tay Sachs and Progeria.
My grandfather died from Parkinson’s and I can attest to how terrible an illness it is. In the same way that I was helpless with my grandfather, parents whose child was born with Tay Sachs, in which the child succumbs an agonizing death before the age of seven, would beg for a cure from stem cells.
Throngs of people vehemently fight for the lives of a group of cells, claiming that it’s a sin to kill those embryos. And let the living suffer. Yet, if those same individuals had loved ones who were dying of illnesses that could be cured by stem cells, many would pray for that help.
Old morals declare that homosexual marriage is wrong, and that abortions and stem cell research is murder. But this breeds hate. And, what does that say about us today? The moral of the story is that we need to update our morals.
