"Things were diffierent then"

[Don Schneider]

"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." John Harington

I watched a rerun of the erstwhile American crime drama series Cold Case a few days ago. In perhaps the series’s most poignant episode, a fictionalized resolution to Philadelphia’s most enduring mystery was rendered. The episode involved “the boy in the box.” In 1957, the battered, naked body of a boy was found in a cardboard box in Philadelphia’s Fox Chase section. Despite years of trying to identify the child, estimated age 4-6, he remains unknown to this day.

During the episode, one of the cold case detectives confronts a nun who forty-five years previously had been stationed at an orphanage. He asks her about tales he had heard of her frequent, perhaps overly zealous administration of corporal punishment upon her young charges. Her response is one that one hears time and again: “Things were different then.” As a graduate (one might add “survivor”) of a Philadelphia parochial school, I can attest to the validity of her assertions. Things were different then, radically so.

It is difficult to resist the temptation to become totally cynical regarding such concepts as religion, morality and virtue. As Harington so saliently pointed out in the above quotation regarding politics, is there any such thing as objective morality apart from societal attitudes? Is right and wrong defined by what people at any given time agree upon? Do such concepts have any real meaning? Are ethics indeed situational? Does mankind have but whatever rights he or she can defend? Is morality, not unlike treason, largely a question of dates?

These are troubling considerations to ponder, I think.

[shunyadragon]

"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." John Harington

I watched a rerun of the erstwhile American crime drama series Cold Case a few days ago. In perhaps the series’s most poignant episode, a fictionalized resolution to Philadelphia’s most enduring mystery was rendered. The episode involved “the boy in the box.” In 1957, the battered, naked body of a boy was found in a cardboard box in Philadelphia’s Fox Chase section. Despite years of trying to identify the child, estimated age 4-6, he remains unknown to this day.

During the episode, one of the cold case detectives confronts a nun who forty-five years previously had been stationed at an orphanage. He asks her about tales he had heard of her frequent, perhaps overly zealous administration of corporal punishment upon her young charges. Her response is one that one hears time and again: “Things were different then.” As a graduate (one might add “survivor”) of a Philadelphia parochial school, I can attest to the validity of her assertions. Things were different then, radically so.

It is difficult to resist the temptation to become totally cynical regarding such concepts as religion, morality and virtue. As Harington so saliently pointed out in the above quotation regarding politics, is there any such thing as objective morality apart from societal attitudes? Is right and wrong defined by what people at any given time agree upon? Do such concepts have any real meaning? Are ethics indeed situational? Does mankind have but whatever rights he or she can defend? Is morality, not unlike treason, largely a question of dates?

These are troubling considerations to ponder, I think.

Welcome to Tweb!

I will give it some thought.

[shunyadragon]

I was hoping for more input, but unfortunately Philosophy 201 is a dead zone somewhere past Hotel California.

'Every refuge has its price'

Lyin' Eyes by the Eagles