Breaking moral codes...?

The possibility of establishing moral codes radically differentiates us from the other species that populate the planet. Only humans can create consensus on norms that facilitate coexistence, especially in environments of large human groups such as our cities.

There are those who see moral and ethical norms as mechanisms of repression, as straitjackets to limit the freedom of subjects. And in a certain way this is so. It is true that living according to certain norms forces us to comply with the rules, but I have always thought that these impositions are a lesser evil. I am completely convinced that without those rules we would be condemned to the law of the jungle, where the weakest have no protection and are doomed to disappear in the hands of the strong and powerful.

We cannot forget that we share a biological nature, a part of us is inhabited by natural impulses. Like other animals we have the need to eat and defecate. Like other animals we feel the imperious need for the sexual impulse to maintain the continuity of life. To satisfy all these needs we have created norms over time.

For a moment I invite you to imagine what life would be like if we defecated everywhere, if we threw our food waste in the street, or if we forcibly took the first woman who passed us by in order to satisfy our sexual urges. I think most would agree with me that living that way would be simply terrible.

For this week the challenge proposed by friend @galenkp leaves us with an ethical dilemma: to do it or not. I tell you...

I was about seventeen when I met a slightly older friend, he would be almost thirty, he was a very cultured man, with a great knowledge of literature and cinema. Somehow he saw me as a disciple and I saw him as a kind of teacher. But my friend, as often happens in real life, was not perfect, he had a bit of a bad temper and lost his temper easily.

His wife was a pretty woman, the kind that appears on magazine covers, and she was much younger than him, maybe in her early twenties. Things were not going very well between the two of them, my friend was light-tongued and abused her by word of mouth, somehow he considered her in a lesser position.

I used to visit them frequently and I realized that that lady had a very special way with me. One afternoon she took my hands and gave me a kiss fleeting on the lips. That made me shudder. My friend was not in the house and her intention was for us to go further. But something inside me was paralyzing me, telling me that this was not right. The respect and commitment to my friend was stronger than the hormonal bombardment I felt inside. In the end I was able to get over it and went back home, I was extremely worried about what that lady might think of me. But deep down I felt that I had been true to my principles and that I had acted in accordance with my way of seeing the world.

Later on, when I was less of a boy and more of an adult, with more years of life and more experience, I was presented with similar situations. And in all those cases I managed to overcome the expectation of living a different, very exciting, extremely exciting, and very tempting moment. In all these cases, moral norms were erected as an insurmountable wall.

I must tell you that in each of these cases I decided to cool my friendship with my friends, I preferred to lose those friendships rather than risk disrespecting them. It was something that hurt me a lot because I appreciated all of them, but undoubtedly, to move away was a lesser evil. When a friend's wife falls in love with you, the best alternative is to walk away. The other is to open the door to the possibility of experiencing many conflicts that can have disastrous consequences.

It is likely that some will read this text as old-fashioned, as an expression of a retrograde mentality. I know that we live in a time of great relaxation of moral norms, where it seems that the only important thing is the satisfaction of pleasures. Satisfying pleasures is necessary and healthy. But I think we should beware of being slaves to them.

Values such as respect and loyalty are important to maintain a civilized society. To do without them is to open the gates of chaos...

As I have always enjoyed writing the post, once again I thank friend @galenkp for these thought-provoking initiatives.

Thank you for your time.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

All your comments are welcome on this site. I will read them with pleasure and dedication.

Until the next delivery. Thank you.

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