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Show the faculty view Youth Seek New Morality by Charles H. Monson, Jr. Ph.D. Many of today's older generation see a substantial number of today's youth as bearded, sandled, and drug addicted, unappreciative and disrespectful dis-respectful toward all that has made America great. They see only hippies among the peace marchers, hear only the wild-eyed in the civil rights movement, and remain convinced con-vinced that the poor lack only will power. Undoubtedly, there is some truth in their view, just as there is truth in the younger generation's rejoinder rejoin-der that their elders have forgotten the equally destructive, if less obvious, ob-vious, rebels of their own youth. But there is more to the present situation than a recycling of life. Today's youth face a unique problem, prob-lem, that of finding a new foundation founda-tion for deciding what is moral behavior, for the morality of today's to-day's elders and even more so of their progenitors is a morality based on authority and fear, and today that morality is crumbling as knowledge, science, and demo- cratic living increasingly affect the human condition. Consider, as an example of the general principle, the prohibitions against pre-marital sexual relations. The eighteenth century argued the prohibitions in sermons, frequently frequent-ly delivered while an expectant unwed un-wed mother was made to stand before be-fore the congregation, which vividly vivid-ly described the torments and eternity of hell. At the end of many meetings the girl's father would arise and publically disown her, sending her out of the community to live with only her shame and her fatherless child. As the fear of damnation receded before man's growing humanism the arguments shifted to prohibitions based on the fear of discovery, the fear of unwanted un-wanted pregnancy, the fear of public pub-lic censure. But more recently each of these arguments has given way as The Pill has removed the fear of pregnancy and a growing democratic demo-cratic tolerance has encouraged people to think of unwed pregnan- (Continued on page 3) f New Morality . . . I truth. The claim that answers can be found in God's commandments, the intent of the nation's founding fathers or even the wishes of one's own father is rejected increasingly by today's youth and some of them, finding no satisfactory prohibitions, nothing to fear, conclude that the standards themselves are without value. And maybe they are maybe. "In some ways today's youth have a much deeper moral sensitivity sensi-tivity than their elders for the moral judgments they must make do not come ready made; they must be chosen by the youth themselves. And not only in the context of moral perplexity, which is universal for all human deliberation, but in the context of moral nihilism, which is the legacy of today's level of knowledge. But moral sensitivity sensitiv-ity is not enough to further moral inquiry. The collective knowledge which has come from mankind's successful survival, the experience which comes with the older generation's gen-eration's age, and the wisdom which results from thoughtful insight are also important. How can we tap those resources, and how can we use a knowledge which is destroying destroy-ing the old morality to build a new one? These are the questions all of us must struggle with, for the answers we do give or do not will determine the quality of our own and the next generation's life nay its very existence. OContinued from page 2) cies as unfortunate mistakes rather than willful immorality. As the arguments have crumbled, so have the prohibitions (although the evidence does not indicate whether the earlier arguments were more effective prohibitions than today's to-day's lack of argument) and so today's to-day's young people ask quite properly, prop-erly, why pre-marital relations should be avoided. Or why one should fight in a nation's wars? Or why a cleanly shaved face is a virtue? Or why one should keep promises, or be honest, or tell the |
