Takings things in turn:
I am sorry not to have a more forthright response to my moral dilemma: is it better to be commandant or inmate at Auschwitz? That was the meat of my post.
"Mistakes were made": someone has to step up and take the heat sometime, or the whole thing falls apart. Sure, one can be responsible for an accident, considering it your mess to clean up. But plenty of people are just malicious or negligent, and society has to differentiate between morally neutral responsibility, and culpability, to show that it takes seriously moral choice, and will hold one accountable.
If you are talking on the level of which fork to use, it is not a moral matter, but a matter of etiquette. If you are talking about refraining from insulting someone, even though you are in a bad humor, that is a matter of courtesy, and thus of morality.
I have never suggested that you have to live up to any old person's standards, but that you have to deal with the standards you were taught, like dealing the hand you are dealt. I would say that there are a number of variables involved in whether you go to a cousins wedding, but that there is no presumptive obligation, unless it is very easy to do, and the extended family is fairly close. If it were your brother's wedding, and absent a major breach, I would say you are presumptively obligated, assuming you can afford the trip and get away from work, whether you like weddings or not........ |
