Morally Normal

Define normal. Is my normal the same as yours? I very much doubt it. Normal is subjective, we each have our own unique perspective of what we think is normal. The word 'normal' is used to mean average far too often. 'My child is behaving normally for his age,' 'why can't I/you be more normal?' This type of 'normal' usually refers to the majority who fit at the top of a Bell curve deviation graph. You could be sat on an outer lip of the same curve and still be perfectly normal, because it is what is usual for you that is real normal.

It seems ethics are very similar to normal. There are differing ethical rights and ethical wrongs depending on who you are and what culture, tradition or religion you subscribe to. Most ethically right things are very similar as are most ethically wrong things. Taking a human life in cold blood (murder) seems to be counted as an ethical wrong across many walks of life, but there seem to be provisos that change as you journey through our differences.

Taking it to even more personal levels, what may be morally acceptable to me may not be morally acceptable to you even within the same culture, tradition or religion. The ability to empathise plays a major role in what we choose as morally right and wrong. A psychopath has an inability to empathise and so their sense of what is morally acceptable is different from a neuro-typical person. A Borderline has an immature form of empathy so is likely to moralise more like an adolescent. Empathy is dependent on our experience of empathy toward us, with everyone having a different experience in life it would be sensible to assume everyone has a different set of moral rules that guide them.

So morals seem to be as unique to each of us as normal is. Our ethical background, our personal schemas, our ideologies all come together to form our personal morals. Our ability to empathise helps us to identify if our morals work in the outside world in a positive or negative way. As we grow and mature our idea of morality changes and adapts to new information that we collect in our minds, new experiences, mixing with other cultures while on holiday, learning of new religions at school, debating with other people on the internet, reading literature and fiction, biographies and autobiographies.

Recently a friend of mine posted on Facebook an article written in one of our country's broadsheet newspapers about an author claiming children should read more contemporary literature and less modern fiction. She reasoned that moral guidance is lacking in modern fantasy like 'Twighlight' and 'The Hunger Games'. To me, reading is only part of the jigsaw of experience that guides our moral compasses. 19th century fiction is all well and good, but it happened over a century ago and ethics were different then to what we see now. Are outdated ethics really a good moral guide for the modern era? A bit like language, morals and ethics should evolve with the generations, what was considered a good moral choice back in 1880 may seem like an awful moral choice today. Choosing to marry a good looking man for his money would have seemed the morally mature choice for a poor working family's daughter back then, but a morally wrong choice today, we'd call that a meal ticket now. 

Our learning media is also changing, television and video games are replacing literature as a form of educational entertainment. More coffee mornings are held on Facebook groups than are held face-to-face. Moral dilemmas are changing constantly, our morals shouldn't be grounded in contemporary literature. Perhaps instead of charging schools with teaching contemporary literature, ethical education should become part of the curriculum. Parents should remain firmly focussed on guiding their children empathetically, encourage them to be empathic people and to form their morals based on their experiences of right and wrong. Otherwise we should be asking schools to teach our children what is normal and that would be ethically wrong.