Things We Take For Granted: Morality

Congratulations to Linnea Sinclair for winning a P.E.A.R.L. award for Shades of Dark!


Margaret's gritty post about Infanticide was like a starter cannon for my thoughts on what we think of as normal and moral, and what shocks us.

I raced off to one of my favorite non-fiction tomes: SEX IN HISTORY by Reay Tannahill.

There's a wonderful quote in the front matter:

i suppose the human race
is doing the best it can
but hells bells thats
only an explanation
its not an excuse

DON MARQUIS
Archy says

[Quoted as published.]

Reay Tannahill has also written FOOD IN HISTORY, and FLESH AND BLOOD: A HISTORY OF THE CANNIBAL COMPLEX.

The cover art is provocative. I'm not sure if the dark-winged goddess's crotch is the cynosure of all the kneeling dudes' eyes --with lines of sight depicted-- or if she is simultaneously blessing six worshippers with accurately directed, individual golden streams of enlightenment.

In the section of the book on "The Second Oldest Profession" (p79) the Greek historian, Herodotus is quoted as observing of the temple prostitutes:

"Every woman who is a native of the country ... must once in her life go and sit in the temple and there give herself to a strange man.... She is not allowed to go home until a man has..." thrown his silver in her lap

Imagine living in that world!
In fact, elements of my own worldbuilding were inspired by this (the "Virgins' Balls at the Imperial Palace) although the custom was only for the benefit and enjoyment of the royal Tiger Princes.

My spymaster, Madam Tarra's courier courtesans were inspired by Austrian Prince Metternich's use of prostitutes as intelligence gatherers.

Back to SEX IN HISTORY.

Later, there is a very frank and amusing transcript of a letter from a material girl of the Athenian hetairai. A courtesan named Philumena reportedly wrote to a lover:

"Why do you boher writing long letters? I want fifty gold pieces, not letters. If you love me, pay up; if you love your money more, then don't bother me..."

Chapter Four (p84) is a vivid and amusing reminder that some ancient Greeks and ancient Japanese societies apparently took male homosexuality and pederasty for granted.


And then, there's socially acceptable killing.

Recently, I read an interview with Marc Hauser, author of "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right And Wrong."

A trolley is coming down a track and it's going to run over and kill five people if it continues. A person standing next to the track can flip a switch and turn the trolley onto a side track where it will only kill one person (instead of five).

Is it right to divert the trolley?

A nurse approaches an ER doctor. "Doctor, we've got five patients in critical care; each needs an organ to survive." (Different organs.) "A healthy person has just walked in... we can (kill him and) take his organs and save the five..."

Is it right to kill the one?

Apparently, most people cannot explain why their answers are different. Yet, the problem is basically similar. The life of one person who would not otherwise be killed is weighed against the lives of five others who are doomed to die unless there is an intervention.

I think I could take a stab at explaining, but that would take the fun out of the puzzle. I'd love to know what you think, though.

Do we learn our morals? Or are we born with a basic moral code? Almost every culture has some kind of "An eye for an eye..."/"Do as you would be done by" code of conduct.

I wouldn't stop there. I believe that quite a few animals have it as well.


Which brings me to "sacred cows" also known as political correctness.

One of the things I love about our genre is that we alien romancers can explore politically incorrect ideas without being uncomfortably offensive.

We are like the "allowed fools" of the European courts of the Dark Ages. Idiots and space aliens have immunity from the reprisals that good citizens face if they want to say something blasphemous, seditious, or iconoclastic.


For example:

Tigron Empire. 58th gestate in the reign of Djerrold Vulcan V Fictitious op ed piece.

I've not yet heard anyone blame affirmative action for the bad decisions made by banks, personal-shuttle companies, brokerage houses, insurance companies, and so forth.

No reasonable, responsible, nice Tigron person would try to blame minorities for the current crisis. That would be like kicking the underdog.

And yet, over the last twenty gestates, Alderboran law and peer pressure has obliged interstellar companies to promote a token number of people whose best qualification for their job may have been their gender, their sexual orientation, their ethnic origins, or some other persuasion.

Not in every case. Of course.

Thus, there is a question. Is the best candidate in the job? Was that hermaphrodite Klargon teenager chosen to be the Babyliger-5 branch bank manager because his/her education and experience qualified him/her to make sensible loans to responsible customers? Wouldn't a sober, fifty-standard-year-old Mumblari who'd worked his way up through the ranks have been a safer hand at the tiller?

Does the Klargon teenager secretly suspect that he/she needs to make daring and heroic business decisions to prove to all and sundry that his/her promotion wasn't affirmative action?

Same goes for the color-blind Beancounter who got to overrule the designers and engineers of a top of the line, zero-gravity toilet system for the way station in the Kuyper Belt.

Rowena Cherry
Space Snark