My previous post started to delve a little into the idea of morality. It made me think about friendships and how our sense of morality affects them. Let's take this real life scenario: 'A' terminated his long-standing friendship with 'B', after finding out that 'B' is gay. This is because A is very religious and considers homosexuality a sin (or some other ridiculous argument). Now, we know this to an asinine point of view and should chastise 'A' for being bigoted. We can quite happily say that 'A' was not much of a friend to 'B' anyway, as friendships surely involve accepting people for who they are.
However, here is where the small print comes in. Do we all have a limit to our friendships? That limit being dictated by our sense of morals. So we can disagree with A's sense of morality, but at what point would you stop being friends with somebody? We all think of certain things to be 'right' and 'wrong', and what if your friend does the ultimate wrong (in your opinion anyway). Would you be able to look past that and carry on being friends with them?
I can say that my sense of right and wrong mostly revolves around whether someone's actions harm others. If I harm another, then I have done wrong. However, when applied to friendships, this seems arbitrary as well. We mostly carry on as normal if a friend harms another emotionally (say by cheating on a partner), but if the same friend harmed someone physically then we might reassess our friendships. What is the point of all this? Well, maybe I should be more tolerant of people's morality-driven actions, even if those actions themselves are intolerant --- maybe
First of all Omar, I should point out that it hasn't escaped my notice that the colour-scheme and layout of your blog has totally ripped off my own (http://timeforabath.blogspot.com)! Perhaps this is the kind of moral offence that you refer to?
ReplyDeleteThat said, let me take you up on one or two points you make here. First, why do people become our friends in the first place? It's rarely got anything to do with morals. I can think of plenty of people I call very good friends who hold or have held what I regard as the most absurd morals. Secondly, how can you say that hurting someone emotionally is less culpable for a friend than physical hurt? As everyone knows, if a friend gets into a fight in a pub, even if it's his own fault, it's a friend's duty to stand by them no matter what. Sure, it might be stupid and dangerous, but hey, that's friendship.
Well Joseph, I could make some excuses like blogspot only has finite number of templates and this likeness was unintentional, but I'm sure you won't believe me! So maybe I should just say that I never promised anything original ;-)
ReplyDeleteI see the points that you are making. I agree that morality does not really have anything to do with how friendships begin; although some people may find it difficult to be begin a friendship with a completely different sense of morality to their own. However, I was exploring why the friendships end and what influence people's sense of morality has on it. You mention that you have friends with "absurd morals". I am curious how absurd these morals can be, before you would feel uncomfortable in that friendship. What rules of your own, if broken, would make you doubt your friendship with someone (for example, something extreme like murder or rape)?
As for someone inflicting emotional harm being less culpable. Isn't that the kind of judgement we make all the time? Continuing on from the previous extreme, both cheating on your partner and murdering somebody are wrong; but we (as society or individuals) don't think them equally wrong. It seems to me that we draw an arbitrary line, as measured by our sense of morality, when overlooking things that our friends do. I find the arbitrary nature of that line quite interesting. For example, if I said to a long standing religious friend of mine that I don't believe in God and therefore that friend decided to severe their friendship with me, could I blame them for it? That friend's sense of morality may seem absurd to me, but from their point of view I have done the “ultimate wrong”.
Friends,
ReplyDeleteLet me point out that you Joseph, and OJ, both ripped off me, as I am and always be the original blogger. And I am not going to shamelessly promote my own blog, as Joseph did.
Anyway, on to more pressing matters. The question of morality and friendship is an interesting one. I used to consider morality more or less an absolute, and I was concerned every time I thought one of my close friends had seemed to cross this line, and I made them aware of this in no uncertain terms. But I think as I became older, I realised that not only was morality not an absolute, but that friends aren't necessarily reflections of yourself. And when they fracture certain moral codes, that doesn't make them any less of a friend. And in fact, I agree with Joseph, thst it is in these times they need you most, irrelevant of who the wronged party was. I find this is perhaps the most common scenario we may encounter with our friends.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteIndeed you were the first, no denying that. Let's see if Joseph and I can give you some healthy competition!
With regard to your comment, I agree with you that normally we would, and should, stand by our friends --- even when it seems they are doing "wrong" by our standards. My point here has been to explore the limits, however. As you mentioned, morals are not absolute and therefore neither can be this position. Can you truly say that you would stand by your friend no matter what they do? As I said to Joseph, what if they do something truly awful?