Yesterday I heard Dave Ross say this: "We have to know how he {Tamerlan Tsarnaev} got radicalized because, since this is something anybody could do, we have to figure out how to make sure nobody wants to."
This could be pretty difficult because we live in a society that seems to be committed to making everyone comfortable with their choices. Let's make alternative lifestyles normal. Let's make pot legal. Let's reward the lazy with a free ride. Let's explain away evil as the result of a bad childhood ...and so on and so on...
A lot of effort has been spent making shame shameful. I don't think it's helping.
At the base of this is the rejection of absolutes...If you reject shame, you reject that there are truths that apply to everyone. How can you make something unattractive without imposing shame on the activity? How can you make sure nobody wants to bomb innocents without imposing your truth on them?
It seems that moral relativism is all well and good -- until somebody you love gets hurt. Then come the demands to impose your particular belief system on everyone.
But you can't have it both ways...There ARE absolute truths -- absolute morals, and shame is appropriate when they are flouted.
Certainly, every culture has misapplied shame, and probably always will to some extent, but we are foolish to attempt to make everyone feel good by eliminating the emotion instead of the action.
A little bit of shame could go a long way, in my opinion.
