When do we stop having morals?

This was a question that was posed to me from a friend of mine at coffee this morning as we were discussing the right-wing vs. left-wing aspects of the morality in America. He is a staunch conservative Christian who is anti gay marriage, anti-abortion, etc. who doesn't feel that we should institute the ten commandments at the only laws in the land, but that we should abide by the rules set forth in the Bible. His fear, and rightfully so, is that his children (who are in their teenage years) are becoming more and more cynical due to the overexposure to the immoralities that culture has traditionally shunned. Too much sex, language, violence and slang talk that, in his mind, constitute the embodiment of evil.

I can't really argue with him too much on this point. Cable TV stations that cater to young adults and teenagers (MTV in particular) seem to have degraded themselves into cheap trick entertainment (there is a new show on MTV called "Busted" wherein kids recount their "hilarious" entanglements with the law - which only seem to promote that it's OK to run afoul every now and then). His point was that when is has our society gone "too far" wherein we don't have a moral base to steer people away from bad behaviors and/or evil.

I guess I've always felt that people are accountable for their actions and that if they choose to flush their lives away, then so be it. But then again, having a moral basis is what keeps people working together. If we didn't have moral (or ethics) then what's keeping people accountable to show up for work, hold contracts in place or generally abiding by the unwritten rules that keep society stable? If those weren't in place, then it would seem to me that we're a short step away from an anarchist state where the free-for-all burns out quickly into a disaster.

In that we have to hold certain values dear to our collective hearts or our society just doesn't function - such as men and women who voluntarily serve our country in our military, schools and the myriad of social programs nationwide. That if we did slide too far into individual isolationism, then what happens after that? We are all inextricably linked to one another in that the unwritten social norms act as the glue that keeps us from spinning apart.

But where is the room for tolerances such as gay marriage (or unions) or women's right to equal work for equal pay? Those things weren't even considered 50 years ago and now we're on the verge of changing state constitutions (which, is crazy, since we currently don't define traditional marriage in state constitutions now either!). Is it a sign of true degradation of our social values to consider that it is actually OK for a gay couple to be able to access health insurance or adopt a child or that woman's place isn't just in the home, but on the battlefield or in the board room?

I don't think there actually is a "line in the sand" that we can draw at any point in our history to say that THIS is the baseline for our societal moral structure and never shall we deviate from it. Our human experience is just too fluid and that, over time, things just have a way of working out. Just because a nation allows the creation of laws to protect civil rights of minorities (of color or sexual orientation), doesn't mean that it has now legislated that everyone must now become gay or that it degrades my marriage in any shape or form.

Do I think that some of our entertainment has gone over the top? - yes. Is it necessary to have to air shows like "My Super Sweet Sixteen" or WWF Raw or the other soft porn shows making their way onto national networks? Probably not. I can tell you that I don't want my daughter to be watching any MTV nowadays and I consider myself to be a rather tolerant person. MTV's list of positive virtues (such as getting kids out to vote or have safe sex) versus the long list of negative programming (shows like The Real World or Next) that only appear to foster negativity, cynicism and strife amongst the most fragile and impressionable amongst us. It truly is sad that there are a group of people that are making a mountain of cash off of this very notion at the expense of our youth.

We spend our entire youth trying to ditch our innocence to only spend our entire remaining lifetime to regain it. And as with all truly wonderful gifts, we don't really know what we had until it's gone. A social values structure is something valuable to protect, but with all relationship based notions, it's always best to pick your battles and strive for the ultimate common ground affects us all and relay that social ground work. The conservatives and the liberals need to come a long way to find that common ground and not spend 90% of their time talking about 10% of our common issues.