'Didion’s on Morality Essay\r'

'What is it that forms and drives our â€Å" honourable behaviors”? Are we innate(p) with a introductory sense of clean-livingity or do we develop a set of moral â€Å"social codes” to keep society from falling into snake pit and anarchy? In her essay â€Å"On Morality,” Joan Didion dissects what lies under the surface of humanity’s morality. By inform several stories and historical events, she shows that morality at its basic â€Å" some primitive level” is nonhing to a greater extent than than â€Å"our loyalties to the whizs we love,” everything else is subjective.\r\nDidion’s first story points out our committedness to family. She is in Death Valley writing an name about â€Å"morality,” â€Å"a word [she] distrust more every day.” She relates a story about a young man who was drunk, had a car accident, and died spot driving to Death Valley. â€Å"His girl was found living but bleeding internally, deep in shock,” Didion states. She talked to the harbor who had driven his girl 185 miles to the ne arst doctor. The nourish’s husband had stayed with the frame until the coroner could get there. The nurse give tongue to, â€Å"You just can’t leave a body on the highway, it’s immoral.” According to Didion this â€Å"was one instance in which [she] did not distrust the word, because [the nurse] meant something sooner specific.”\r\nShe argues we don’t desert a body for even a few minutes lest it be desecrated. Didion claims this is more than â€Å"only a mawkish consideration.” She claims that we counter each other to try and retrieve our casualties and not throw overboard our out of work; it is more than a sentimental consideration. She stresses this point by precept that â€Å"if, in the simplest terms, our fosterage is sound enough †we stay with the body, or bring forth dreary dreams.”\r\nHer point is that mor ality at its most â€Å" old” level is a sense of â€Å" commitment” 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 don’t abandon our dead because we don’t want someone to abandon us. She is professing that morality is to do what we think is rectify; whatever is necessary to meet our â€Å"primary loyalties” to billing for our loved ones, even if it means sacrificing ourselves.\r\nDidion emphatically states she is talking about a â€Å"wagon-train morality,” and â€Å"For better or for worse, we are what we learned as children.” She talks about her childhood and hearing â€Å"graphic litanies about the Donner-Reed graphic symboly and the Jayhawkers. She maintains they â€Å"failed in their loyalties to each other,” and â€Å"deserted one another.” She says they â€Å"breached their primary lo yalties,” or they would not have been in those situations. If we go against our â€Å"primary loyalties” we have failed, we regret it, and thus â€Å"have bad dreams.”\r\nDidion insist that â€Å"we have no way of knowing…what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong,’ what is ‘good and what is ‘evil’.” She sees politics, and public polity falsely assigned â€Å"aspects of morality.” She contendns us not to lead astray ourselves into thinking that because we want or need something â€Å"that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we fall in the fashionable madmen.”\r\nShe is saying this will be our demise, and she whitethorn well be correct. Hitler’s idea that he had â€Å"a moral imperative” to â€Å"purify the Aryan race” serves as a poignant monitor of such a delusion. In 1939 Hitler’s Nazi army invaded Poland and started World state of war II. Wor ld War II came to an end in large part due to the get together States dropping two atomic bombs. If the war had continued and escalated to the point of Hitler’s Nazis and the United States dropping more atomic bombs we could have destroyed most, if not all, of humanity, the ultimate act of â€Å"fashionable madmen.”\r\nWe whitethorn believe our behaviors are just and righteous, but Didion’s essay makes us closely examine our motives and morals. She contends that madmen, murders, war criminals and religious icons throughout history have said â€Å"I followed my own conscience.” â€Å"I did what I sight was right.” â€Å"Maybe we have all said it and perhaps we have been wrong.” She shows us that our â€Å"moral codes” are ofttimes subjective and fallacious, that we rationalize and justify our actions to suit our ulterior motives, and our only true morality is â€Å"our subjection to those we love.” It is this â€Å"loyal ty to those we love” that forms our families, then our cities, our states, our countries and ultimately our global community. Without these â€Å"moral codes,” social order would break down into funny farm and anarchy.\r\n'