Joan Didion's On Morality, By Joan Didion

Mankind, without fail, has carried with it a common tendency through history. It transcends borders, languages, and self-identities. It’s the anthropocentric claim on the world—that humans are the center of existence—seen through overpopulation, environmental destruction, animal cruelty, etc. Humans are egocentric by nature, and not only in an evolutionary perspective. The human ego feeds off of self-interest, constantly wanting praise and validation. Morals, existent in all humans are a prime target for the ego. Moral superiority satisfies the ego. Joan Didion criticizes the human tendency to disguise their sanctimonious actions as moral imperatives in her essay, “On Morality”. Didion expresses distaste for the ego, describing it as a “monstrous

If you are feeling guilty, you are the one who has committed an offense, and therefore you are not the party who is suffering the most—especially in the case of public causes, such as the one’s discussed by Didion and Berger.

Didion’s has privilege as a white American; she has a western perspective, and so her opinion on morals can only be valid up to a limit. My opinion also can only stretch so far.

“You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing—beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code—what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong,’ what is ‘good’ and what ‘evil.’” Moral absolutism, the belief that certain actions are strictly right or wrong, is supposedly the reason for a tense political climate. Didion argues that a universal moral code does not exist, and therefore her essay is essentially an argument for moral relativism. Moral relativists require people to simply accept others moral beliefs and to not challenge them. An objective truth is nonexistent because everyone has his or her own truth. But if one simply accepts that humans can’t determine a “right” and “wrong” then they are undermining their own