If It Feels Right - NYTimes.com - 3 views
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What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.
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you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.
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“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner.
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Goodness, I went through a bit of emotion reading that. Whew. Gotta center. Anyhoo, I feel certainly conflicted over the author's idea of "shallow values." Personally, I don't necessarily see the need to have a shared moral framework to connect to. What is this framework if not a system to instill shame and obligation into its members? While I do think it's important to have an articulate moral opinion on relevant subjects, I also think the world cannot be divided into realms of right or wrong when we can barely see even an infinitely small part of it at one time. What's wrong with open-mindedness?