If you forget to pick up a car pool pass because your husband died, and you were understandably distracted, it is not blameworthy because it is out of your power. If you forget because you are careless, you are blameworthy and irresponsible. Given that you broke a promise, with no sufficient excuse, you behaved immorally.
In your own person, you either uphold the value and dignity of the individual, or you do not. To mock humanity by treating yourself like trash, or treating your life as if it is nothing much, is immoral. More than that, if you cannot be counted on to take care of yourself, which is a sort of least common expectation, you are a person of bad character, or in danger of becoming so, and therefore immoral in that sense: weak, self-indulgent, foolish, unreliable, and so forth.
Of course, there are more trivial ways of being irresponsible, and more sporadic ways, but those are at best indulged as pecadillos, "small sins"....... |
