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     In 1986, a teenager wore a necklace with an encircled gold capital “A.”  She explained it was a symbol for anarchy which was her standard for life and society.  She wanted to do as she pleased and thought everyone had that right.  Implicitly she was advocating that each person is his own god, making his own standards.  Suspecting that she did not really believe in “No Laws,” I proposed an extreme case, asking if it would be all right for her neighbor to rape her.  She retorted “He can’t do that.”  Thus I informed her that she was not a true anarchist, because she believed in having at least one law.  Why did this young woman think there should be no laws, implicitly a morality with no accountability?

     In a 2001 survey, including interviews with Boston high school students about attitudes toward sex, Victoria, a member of the National Honor Society, and a two-sport athlete, stated “It’s not just the trashy girls who are having sex.  A lot of people who are in the top 20 of their class, who are star athletes, and in the National Honor Society... are having sex.”  She went on to say that her father, who talked to her about carrying condoms when she goes to college next year, said “You can do what you want, but do it respectfully.”  Really?  What is her definition of “trashy?”  What does her father consider to be “respectable” sex?  With a condom?  What is the standard of morality these folks live by?
     Interviewing a store clerk applicant, the personnel manager asked if it was ever alright to take anything from the store without paying for it.  When he answered yes, the manager inquired how he concluded that.  He said that a person might need it to live.  Most of us call this stealing!  Yet here is a man whose morality rails against what most of us, at least sense, is not right.  It just doesn’t seem right.

     Yes, all of us have an innate sense of right and wrong, a sense of “oughtness.”  So why do these people have these attitudes, implicitly a morality that tends toward disorder and destabilizing family and society?

     All order in a society starts with a moral code of some sort.  Will any moral code provide the stability of life that all of us long for?  Can each of us make our own moral code?  In this series we will seek to answer these questions.

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