Debate: Is Britain a moral wasteland?

selfish, yes
hedonistic, yes
wasteland, maybe not.

I wouldnt compare us to Saudi or Iran. They're barbaric. We're decadent, at the other extreme. But of the developed word there is a fair amount of evidence that Britain has the most dysfunctional society

The neuropsychologist AR Luria wrote that “words are the basic tools of thought”.If our use of language reflects our thinking, then – remembering Wittgenstein's dictum that “what we cannot say, we cannot think” – then it is certainly noticeable that the words “moral”, “immoral”, “evil”, “ethical”, etc. have all but disappeared from public discourse in this country, even in the last five years.

Britain just doesn't talk about morality; we discuss the cost and practicality of medical situations, the emotional impact, the psychological effect of these things, but not their ethical meaning. We talk about “dignity”, and “rights” and “equality”, not good and bad, right and wrong, ethical and unethical. “Conscience”, too, is unfashionable. Ethics now only comes up in very proscribed areas – in questions of possible medical misconduct, and in matters of ecology, where environmental ethics is a term which still sometimes comes up.

But otherwise, we don't talk about ethics. We talk about impact and effect, cost, rights, and the duties of government. Terms to do with ethics and morality are now perceived as the tools of extreme religious cranks, attempts to excuse the inexcusable and weasel-words for those that have lost the argument.

In Britain, we're more interested in the statistics and the cost to the state. Arguments on issues of public policy are purely pragmatic; the “public good” is a phrase that is almost unknown, and when it is used (or cognates thereof), its definition is in terms of vague terms of personal liberties.

For not only do we not discuss questions of ethics, we do not truly understand them. Public understanding of the meta-ethical and the metaphysical discourse surrounding questions of morality is all but nonexistent, and the concept that there are different value-systems through which morality can be understood is certainly not well-known. Indeed the idea of an ethical system is deeply unpopular; we live in an age of vaguely defined, relativistic Benthamite utilitarianism, an unquestioned adherence to the idea of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” as the summum bonum.

Ed West's comment is indicative of this confusion; he declares that Saudi Arabia is “barbaric”, but doesn't bother to define the meaning of barbarism, or the ethical standard by which he makes this judgement. He assumes it is manifest and universally acceptable that Saudi Arabia deserves the epithet “barbaric”.

Part of the reason for this confusion is the repudiation of intellectualism in British public life; to be seen as a specialist is to be seen as withdrawn from reality, aloof, a waster who sits around fussing over irrelevant details. Just look at the sneering dismissal of scientists and experts by the likes of the Telegraph's James Delingpole.

In our post-Romanticist Britain, we worship the personal, the sentimental, the individual; the logical, the rational and the “cold” is seen as alien and undesirable, even by supposed rationalists, who fall into the same trap of sentimentalist argument. This can again be seen in public discourse and in the newspapers – we obsess over children who are found dead, but the war in Iraq has scarcely gained column-space in the last few years.

This affects legislation, too, of course, with kneejerk responses like the post-Dunblane legislation taking root on the basis of emotion, and not of the balance of argument. Which is not to say that the Dunblane legislation was necessarily wrong; only that the way in which it was brought into force, on the wave of emotion following the Massacre, was wrong.

What is good, according to current British public discourse, is what is emotionally or physically satisfying to me; what is best is what I want, what I like. When we speak of “rights”, we often use the term in a way which seems to mean “fulfilling my desires”.

What is wrong is what we find personally emotionally repulsive. Public discourse on the subject of ethics has been denuded of any positivism and been reduced to that which AJ Ayer might have called “Boo-Hooray ethics”: “Boo to murder!”, “hooray for free love”, coupled with a cold pragmatism about economic and material success.

In this sense, then, Britain is indeed under what Pope Benedict referred to as the “dictatorship of relativism”, bounded as it is by a discourse circumscribed by money and emotion, but into which questions of the spiritual are excluded.

Edmund Adamus aays Britain has become “selfish, hedonistic wasteland” and the “epicentre of the culture of death”. A spokesman for Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster said they did “not reflect the archbishop’s opinions”.

Why not?

That fundamental truth of which John Paul II spoke and for which we must not be afraid to bear witness with others in relation to the ever increasing erroneous misinterpretation of Newman on conscience and sexual ethics is adequately summed up in Veritatis Splendor n103-104:

“Only in the mystery of Christ's Redemption do we discover the “concrete” possibilities of man.” It would be a very serious error to conclude… that the Church's teaching is essentially only an “ideal” which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a “balancing of the goods in question”. But what are the “concrete possibilities of man”? And of which man are we speaking? Of man dominated by lust or of man redeemed by Christ? This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ's redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ's redemptive act, but to man's will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. God's command is of course proportioned to man's capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin, can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit.” In this context, appropriate allowance is made both for God's mercy towards the sinner who converts and for the understanding of human weakness. Such understanding never means compromising and falsifying the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances.”

Being in a quoting mood, I thought I'd add a quote from C.S. Lewis here: ““We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

Because Mr Adamus's views would not get the imprimatur of the BBC

Edmund sounds like a CATHOLIC to me. It is a pity that
Archbishop Vincent Nichols will not speak up like a Catholic.

Surely the question of whether Britain is moral or not depends on how you define the idea of morality? In terms of looking out for your neighbour and upholding a sense of social responsibility I would tend to agree that Britain perhaps scores lower than it once did, although I cannot compare this to other countries around the globe. however on other measures Britain is surely one of the most moral places in the world to live. We accept people into society despite their race, sexual origin, disability etc. We are truly a multi-cultural society and one that I think we should all be proud to live it. The idea of freedom is great in this country, and on that measure of morality, I think we can hold our heads up high. Morality does not have to be defined as following the teachings of the Bible, nor should a definition exclude these things. Surely a debate on this needs a clear understanding of what we are actually discussing?