"For the good that I wish, I do not; but I practice the very evil I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells within me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (Saint Paul speaking in Romans 7:19-24)

As we have seen, there are challenges a plenty to the man who seeks a moral life. External laws that constrain us and, sometimes, compel us, to do what we might hold, personally, as morally wrong. Religion, usurped from its rightful pinnacle and dragged down from heaven to earth, can be made to justify persecution and murder in "the name of God." Societal pressures, the powerful urge natural to humans to be accepted and praised by peers, can lead to mob violence.

Thus, the question becomes: Whither goes human morality? And, if has taken leave, how might we begin to recover it?

Intellectually confronting what is clearly not an scholarly exercise, there seem to be two major contemporary views of the problem. The "utilitarians" (which can be traced back to Jeremy Bentham) declare that moral correctness is determined by the simple principle that what is "morally correct" is that which brings the greatest good to the greatest number of people. The "transcendentalists" - from Kant forward - hold, conversely, that there exist certain moral principles that, regardless of their perceived effect on society, constitute absolute, inviolable morality. In order to examine how each of these operate, allow me to use a famous moral inquiry: the "trolley dilemma."

And, then, the first corollary: the "passive" action:

And, finally, the second corollary; the "active" intervention:

The first situation - the "basic" intervention - would surely be accepted by both the utilitarians and the transcendentalists. Saving the lives of humans in peril, clearly, is a "moral good."Why is it a moral act? Because one acts on the virtue of compassion toward your fellow man. There is no gray area, no complicated decisions tree of logical choices. There is only a simple action that saves lives.

The first corollary highlights the fundamental distinction between the two schools of thought. Benthamites following their ideology would seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people. They would, without hesitation, sacrifice the unfortunate on the siding in order to save the 5 souls from the trolley. I suspect that the transcendentalists would, as some of those surveyed in modern times (most surveys report about 5% of participants who could not pull the lever and kill one to save 5 lives), would have much more difficulty with this question. The true transcendentalist would not pull the lever. The system of "categorical imperatives" as posited by Kant (and those after him) would deny the right of any human, under any circumstances, to murder another human being. (And, make no mistake, pulling the lever to divert the trolley would be, in their view, an act of murder).

[ Note Bene: Please disregard the obvious and irrefutable fact that surveys - of any type - are, primarily, an exercise in personal ego: of people deciding how they should answer in order to be viewed in the best light by whoever may be totaling the responses. If one were to take a survey which would be identified as your answers and graded, with you present, by an "authority figure," answers would be even more skewed toward acceptance. The approval of peers (even anonymous ones) have little, if anything, to do with what the respondent may actually do if presented with a real life dilemma.]

The real crux of the issue occurs in its "active" corollary: i.e. pushing - with your own hands and by your own free will - an innocent man to his death in order to save the 5 in impending danger. Contemporary surveys reflect this complexity: the split between those who would and would not push the man to his doom is virtually 50-50. The disparity is not significantly affected when one can push a lever to send the man to his death as opposed to physically pushing the man to his death.

Thus, we see a hint of what is involved in moral thinking. We are - both as a group but also as individuals - about fifty-percent "utilitarians" and fifty-percent "transcendentalists", a schizophrenic sense of morality that constantly tugs and pulls at our minds and souls in every day decisions, large and small. It is no wonder, as Paul laments in Romans: [paraphrasing] "The good that I wish to do, I do not do; but I practice the very evil I do not wish to practice."

Around half - those in the utilitarian school - have accepted what is now fashionable on the campuses of the nation, i.e. "situational ethics." Ignoring the existence (or, more likely, abandoning the search for them) of "universal moral principles", we are taught today that human action must be evaluated "in context." With our "schizophrenic morality" firmly entrenched, the dimension of "situational ethics" only adds to and facilitates the dimming of our innate spiritual lights.

For if murder is justifiable in some situations, then why is it wrong at all? If abortion can be rationalized - even horrid "late-term abortions" - since the woman’s body is sacred and "her own," then what (or who) is to say when abortion is absolutely wrong? If lying is "understandable" when it is not malicious or serves some other end ("I told her she looked good in that dress because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings."), then why is it ever necessary to speak only truth. If the "morality" of adultery, child abuse, torture, genocide and other evils man perpetuates on others is a subject to debate, then why do we consider our inner lights at all?

As one author observes: "What awesome hypnotic force of self-deception enables us, compels us, to adopt our moral principles in the belief that we will be able to live them, or even to try to live them in our actual lives? What a monstrous deception of ourselves by ourselves - as individuals and as humanity! Is our morality anything more than organized self-concealment?"

In this age of escalating violence and rampant inhumanity, man against man, it appears self-evident that our existing sense of morality is ripe for reexamination. If there is a wound on the soul of humanity, is it not prudent to bandage the wound? If our sense of human splendor and the Godliness of mankind is incessantly being "bled away" through our ever-deepening laceration, do we not require immediate and emergency care?

Where do we begin? In my opinion, we have a disease, an epidemic of our civilization that is destroying the collective mind, the soul, if you will. Specifically, we are losing our sense of humanity. We grow more ill, day by passing day. And, as in illnesses that affect our bodies, we desperately need to attend to our nutrition. Just as what we take into our bodies as nutrients can improve our physical health and arrest disease, that which we "feed" our minds affects our mental health. Should we not attend, with renewed vigor, to what we allow our eyes and our minds to consume? Would not a first step be to turn away from the "degradation-as-entertainment" that permeates the world of televison? The inexorable debauching of human dignity that is "reality television" tamps down the once-exalted view we held of our fellow man and, with it, the vision of ourselves as part of the community of man.

When we are able to watch - and apparently we do, in great numbers - our fellow humans in the most degrading, vile and dehumanizing situations that can be imagined by the mind of man and label it as "reality," are not our "wounds" opened wider? I cannot help but think they are. If our fellow man will submit to virtually any form of degradation for 15 seconds of fame and a cash prize, what does that tell us about our species? Is our dignity and humanity so lightly cherished that it can be bought at so cheap a price? Are our worst traits - lust for power, blind, insatiable greed, violence, deception and lying, sadism and masochism, herd mentality (rooted, as it is, in peer pressure) and ad infinitum - what we want to play across the theaters of our minds? Personally, I do not wish for this. Our tenuous hold on what little measure of humanness remains among us does not call out for yet more evidence that we are nothing more than broken animals, aimlessly inhabiting this planet and seeking pleasure at any cost. But, then, that is just my opinion.

Just as our bodies are bloated from a lethal diet of cheap, unhealthful foods, our minds are benumbed and distracted from the rightful view of our Divine purpose on earth that was once our birthright. In my view, the time for the unpleasant and, often, painful self-examination of our own individual lives is beckoning to us all.