What's the status of morality in these post-religious days? What is evil? Is it, like darkness or cold, an absence of something (love?), or is it a force in its own right? And how does the notion of "goodness" play out in our lives? Is being good for us these days merely a refraining from acts that we might feel guilt for? Or should it be more than that? How does it relate to happiness? What gives morality (even the word sounds outmoded, up-tight) its force in the modern spiritual vacuum - by which I mean in the absence of an essential Force for Good, a God. Not to presume that there is no God, but where does our sophisticated, quasi-Buddhist, non-fundamentalist, quantum-wave surfing God place us in relation to moral obligation? Do we still have to be good? Or is it all about "self-exploration" and "self development" and self, self, self... Is goodness a spiritual imperative? Or is it just a "healthy choice", like a low-fat TV dinner?
"Being good" has acquired overtones of weakness, inhibition, "boring" self-restraint. Yet surely to be good must have something to do with personal sacrifice. True goodness is closely bound up with courage. It is demanding. Yet everything in our culture tells us: "go for what you want", "you deserve it", "you can have it all", "look after number one" ... and so on. What can give us our moral spine now that we no longer fear hell or the wrath of God? Secular humanism? That pallid philosophy of well-meaningness that does not even acknowledge the animals?
All these questions and more will be resolved over Schöfferhoffer and olives tomorrow night...
