[*Written in 2017 and archived for a rainy day when I needed an article to plug in.]
If you have ever had the pleasure of browsing a Facebook feed for any extended length of time, you have likely seen a new, sophisticated moral argument for a variety of issues. Why are women still receiving less pay than men for the same work? Come on, folks, it’s 2017! Why is there still racism? Come on, people, it’s 2017! Why can’t we let any two people who love each other get married? It’s 2017!
If you have ever had the pleasure of browsing a Facebook feed for any extended length of time, you have likely seen a new, sophisticated moral argument for a variety of issues. Why are women still receiving less pay than men for the same work? Come on, folks, it’s 2017! Why is there still racism? Come on, people, it’s 2017! Why can’t we let any two people who love each other get married? It’s 2017!
It is, indeed, 2017. However, I find this fact to be largely irrelevant to my moral ethic. It seems strange to me that women should receive equal pay for the same reason I should not wear socks with sandals – because it’s 2017. Providing the same reason for my moral code that I provide for my dress code waters down the weightiness of morality and injustices. Is the abolition of bell-bottoms really on par with the abolition of sex slavery? When we say that the year has any correspondence to our moral position, what we are really saying is that our morals, like our trends, are really just a matter of wavering preference. That is a very scary thing.
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