Are you obligated to be moral? What kind of a question is that? This is certainly not an issue that can be addressed in terms of a yes/no question.

Am I obligated to be moral? My initial inclination would be to say yes. Everyone in this world is obligated to be moral. But what does that mean? Everybody in this world is obligated to be moral by my definition of moral? As much as I would like that, it just doesn’t work. Are we going to pick out one person, or one religion, or one belief system and have them write a code of morals that everyone is obligated to follow? How many people have to believe that an act is moral for me to be obligated? 1? 100? 100,000,000?

It appears to me, in my limited time on this earth, that most people, regardless of what they are doing, believe it to be moral.

In light of the recent anniversary of the worst tragedy my great country has ever experienced, I will use this glaring example to make my case:

Take the horrible events that took place that fateful September day six years ago. Every party involved was strictly adhering to what they consider to be moral behavior. Let’s take a look at it for a minute…

Those men who hijacked planes, flying them into buildings, taking the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, taking the families of millions, and taking the heart of a nation, they believed those actions to not only be just, but to be acts of greatness. As sick as it makes me to even try and imagine it, these men felt that they were morally obligated to do what they did. Sure, the majority of the sane world cringes at even the thought of committing such an act, but this is exactly where the problem lies. You can not make everyone follow a set of “morals” based strictly on the fact that the majority sees them as the right thing to do. What will the cut-off number be when we stop accepting an act as moral?

Please understand that in NO WAY am I trying to make a case for the animals that did this to my country, never in my lifetime will I be able to comprehend committing such heinous acts. I am merely making the point that you can not state that everyone is obligated to be “moral” when minds like these can be twisted into believing that such acts are moral.

We absolutely cannot require people to act morally when we cannot define what it means. The argument that there are basic morals which all people must adhere to just doesn’t hold water in the real world. The majority of people in America believed at one point that there were no moral reasons not to own and trade slaves. If people didn’t come along and challenge what the majority saw no problems with, it may still be considered morally acceptable, and we would not have made it as far as we have in terms of equality.

You see, there is no set of standard morals to follow, and we cannot rely on the rationale of the majority to set that standard for us. So if we cannot clearly state what is moral and what is not, we absolutely cannot say that anybody at all is OBLIGATED to be moral. If me being moral involves me killing innocent people and having slaves do my work for me, I would much rather NOT be obligated to be moral.