Didions on Morality Essay Example for Free

Didions on Morality EssayWhat is it that forms and drives our honourable behaviors? Are we born(p) with a prefatorial sense of morality or do we develop a set of moral social codes to keep society from falling into funny farm and anarchy? In her essay On Morality, Joan Didion dissects what lies beneath the surface of humanitys morality. By recounting several stories and historical events, she shows that morality at its basic most primitive level is nothing to a greater extent than our loyalties to the mavins we love, everything else is subjective. Didions first story points out our subjection to family. She is in Death Valley writing an article about morality, a word she distrust more every day. She relates a story about a young man who was drunk, had a car accident, and died go driving to Death Valley. His girl was found alive but bleeding internally, deep in shock, Didion states. She talked to the sustain who had driven his girl 185 miles to the nearest doctor. The su pports husband had stayed with the tree trunk until the coroner could get there. The nurse said, You just cant leave a body on the highway, its immoral. According to Didion this was one instance in which she did not distrust the word, because the nurse meant something quite specific.She argues we dont desert a body for even a few minutes lest it be desecrated. Didion claims this is more than only a slushy consideration. She claims that we declare each other to try and retrieve our casualties and not abandon our gone it is more than a sentimental consideration. She stresses this point by saying that if, in the simplest terms, our upbringing is good enough we stay with the body, or accept wondering(a) dreams.Her point is that morality at its most primary level is a sense of truth to one another that we learned from our loved ones. She is saying that we stick with our loved ones no matter what, in sickness, in health, in bad times and good times we dont abandon our dead because we dont want someone to abandon us. She is professing that morality is to do what we think is unspoiled whatever is necessary to meet our primary loyalties to care for our loved ones, even if it means sacrificing ourselves.Didion emphatically states she is lecture about a wagon-train morality, and For better or for worse, we are what we learned as children. She talks about her childishness and hearing graphic litanies about the Donner-Reed objet darty and the Jayhawkers. She maintains they failed in their loyalties to each other, and deserted one another. She says they breached their primary loyalties, or they would not have been in those situations. If we go against our primary loyalties we have failed, we regret it, and thus have bad dreams.Didion insist that we have no way of knowingwhat is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. She sees politics, and public constitution falsely assigned aspects of morality. She strugglens us not to delude ourselves into th inking that because we want or need something that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen.She is saying this will be our demise, and she may well be correct. Hitlers idea that he had a moral imperative to purify the Indo-Aryan race serves as a poignant reminder of such a delusion. In 1939 Hitlers Nazi army invaded Poland and started World War II. World War II came to an end in large part due to the linked States dropping two atomic bombs. If the war had continued and escalated to the point of Hitlers Nazis and the United States dropping more atomic bombs we could have destroyed most, if not all, of humanity, the ultimate act of fashionable madmen.We may believe our behaviors are just and righteous, but Didions essay makes us closely examine our motives and morals. She contends that madmen, murders, war criminals and religious icons throughout history have said I followed my own conscience. I did what I mentation was right. Maybe w e have all said it and maybe we have been wrong. She shows us that our moral codes are lots subjective and fallacious, that we rationalize and justify our actions to suit our ulterior motives, and our only true morality is our dedication to those we love. It is this loyalty to those we love that forms our families, then our cities, our states, our countries and ultimately our global community. Without these moral codes, social order would break down into chaos and anarchy.