“Twas brillig” A look at The Moral Thinking of Emerging Adults

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The Jabberwocky by John Tenniel

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”

So begins Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem, “Jabberwocky”, in “Through The Looking Glass”. After Alice had read the entire poem the narrative continues,

It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don’t exactly know what they are!

One has a similar feeling when trying to discern the moral thinking of a group of young adults in sociologist, Christian Smith’s book, “Lost in Transition, The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood”.

Smith began his study in 2001 with a telephone survey of 3,290 13-17 year-olds.  He followed up with a second survey in 2005 and garnered the information for this book with a third interview, “at the third measured point of their life trajectories”, at 18-23 years old.  What he found was inconsistent, and sometimes, incoherent thinking about morality.  Here’s a telling response from a young woman when asked  “if it was okay for a person to break moral rules if they can get away with it, if it works to their advantage:

she replied that if the person did not think it was wrong, then they would by definition not be breaking a moral rule.  ‘it is not really a moral rule then, is it? ‘she reasoned.  ‘because then, yeah, I mean, if you’re okay with it morally, as long as you’re not getting caught, then it’s not really against your morals is it? ‘¹

This idea becomes a theme throughout the interviews, namely that morality is defined by each individual’s personal standard,.This immediately brings the second tenant in Emerging Adults ethos  -the inability to tell someone else what is moral.

‘Oh my goodness, these questions right now, these questions are really difficult!  What makes something right?  I mean for me I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it, but different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and what’s wrong.^‘²

The majority of those interviewed had something of a moral or intellectual brake that kept them from descending immediately down the path into nihilism, but one woman spoke at length when asked about total moral relativism ( no final rights and wrongs) by defending the moral rightness of mass-murdering terrorists:

I don’t know that people like terrorists, what they do?  It’s not wrong to them.  They’re doing the ultimate good.  They’re just like, they’re doing the thing that they think is the best thing they could possibly do and so they’re doing good.  I had this discussion with a friend recently and she ‘s like, ‘But they’re still murdering tons of people, that just has to be wrong’. And I was like, ‘But do we have any idea if it is actually wrong to murder tons of people?  Like what does that even mean?³

It would be incorrect to assume these statements are coming from folks looking to rationalize immoral behavior.  These thoughts are the natural outcome of the examples they have seen and the education they have received.  One young man referred to the former when he responded to a question about the immorality of cheating, Cheating?, “my coach told me if I wasn’t cheating, I wasn’t trying.”

A second observation Smith makes is that “most emerging adults have been poorly educated in how to think about moral issues”.  As a result, there is little emphasis in worrying about them.  When asked to describe a recent moral dilemma he had a man responded that he couldn’t remember ever having had any.

But even if a need arose to discuss moral issue, the nuance in language necessary for it to be meaningful seems to be lacking.  Smith gives two examples.  In the first, he says that the Emerging Adults in his study had a difficult time  discerning the possible differences in the phrase, “an individual has to decide for themselves what is moral”.  The first meaning recognizes the moral choices each must make relative to encountered truth.  The second is more problematic and results in the thought that morality is just made up out of whole cloth.

It supposes and proposes (1) that no objective truths exist (or if they do exist, humans cannot know them well), and (2) that what people take to be moral truths are only socially constructed  But few distinguish between the two meanings.  And so the obvious truth of the first tends to make plausible what is in fact a radical, and we think wrong, view of morality suggested by the second meaning.

A second example of language impairment is found in the ambiguities  in the meaning of the word “judge”.  Nearly all the emerging adults use it as a pejorative, as in Christ’s statement, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” It holds a connotation of self-righteous condemnation.  But it can also mean to “discern”, “evaluate”, weigh”, and “appraise”. Smith notes, however, that this second sense is “almost inconceivable to most emerging adults”.  Thus, any appraisal (judgement in the positive sense) of other person’s ideas must be kept unspoken lest they be perceived as hypercritical, and self-righteous(judgmental in the negative sense).

Finally, the definition of ethics that emerges in Smith’s book examples the weakest of possible definitions for the term.  The emerging adults have opted for a cultural Neutrality Pact.  They are saying, “I will leave you alone, and you leave me alone.”  Which is in itself a negative version of Christ’s Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

But compare the deficiency  of the emerging adult’s philosophy with that of C.S. Lewis, in “Mere Christianity”,who likened morality to ships sailing in formation.  He said a very basic rule for the captains would be, “I won’t sail my ship into you, and you don’t sail your ship into me.”  However, that alone could never be enough.  A second factor, Lewis said, must be the seaworthiness of each ship.  Lastly, of crucial importance was the destination of the ships. If the ships managed not to strike one another, and they stayed afloat, it would matter little if they did not know exactly where they were going.

There is very little disagreement, said Lewis, on the first aspect of morality.   But he said if that is where the thinking stops, we might just as well not thought of it at all. Moral thinking must bring in the soundness of the individual’s mental and spiritual condition.  It must also consider our final destinations.  To do less may fill our heads with ideas, but we won’t be able to know exactly what it all means.

Post Audio, “The Moral Thinking of Emerging Adults”

¹Christian Smith: Lost in Transition, The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood (New York: Oxford, 2011), p29
²Ibid
³Ibid, p35