Summary
We live in a complex world where it's often hard to know what's the right thing to do - the right thought to think. But there are increasing sectors of our public discourse where any sense of moral ambivalence or doubt will not be tolerated. Race, homosexuality, child abuse are just some of the touchstones where any expression of doubt is often pounced on and hounded out, especially on social media. Our Moral Maze this week isn't about freedom of speech, or political correctness; it's about the moral value of certainty. We prize and reward moral certainty and consistency, especially in politics, but also business and even sport. Any expression of doubt is seen as weakness - even moral turpitude. Is this a good way of binding society with a set of common values? Or is the public shaming that follows the transgression of those boundaries not so much about morality, but ensuring conformity that itself is a kind of prejudice? Do we need a bit more humility about our moral certainties? Or would that mean bowing thoughtlessly to the latest fashionable cause? Bertold Brecht made the point that doubt is a good servant but a bad master. In an uncertain world if we don't stick to our values do we risk indecisive moral paralysis? Chaired by David Aaronovitch with Matthew Taylor, Claire Fox, Michael Portillo and Anne McElvoy. Witnesses are Iain McGilchrist, Katie Hopkins, Professor Andrew Samuels and Ben Harris-Quinnery.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.6 | Good evening. The news this week has been not so much dominated as obliterated by the Syria debate. |
| 0:10.3 | People have been demonstrating about it, MPs have been speechifying about it, |
| 0:14.4 | demands have been made for absolute clarification, for exit strategies, for peace talks, |
| 0:18.9 | for there to be no mission creep, assurances have been made about |
| 0:22.4 | the almost precise nature of the benefits to be expected from action, so as ever the process |
| 0:27.6 | is varnished with a precarious certainty, people expressing or demanding certainty about issues |
| 0:34.0 | and policies that are anything but certain. In that sense, the debate is like so much else in this cacophonous world. |
| 0:41.2 | There is so much going on, so much at stake, so many voices, |
| 0:45.2 | that we increasingly demand moral certainty to guide us through the tangled forest. |
| 0:50.4 | Take the issue of rape, where we have moved from defining rapers someone saying no, to defining it as when someone doesn't clearly say yes. |
| 0:58.0 | There is even consent training at colleges to teach people on how to recognise a yes. |
| 1:04.0 | Or child abuse, where we define anyone who has had or who may be attracted to having sex with anyone under the age of consent as a child abuser, |
| 1:13.2 | or the Islamic hardliner who doesn't believe that Muslims should be allowed to renounce their |
| 1:17.3 | faith, who may now be defined as a proto-jihadi. The value of this blinding clarity is that |
| 1:24.8 | the moral horizon is unclouded. We know where we stand, and knowing that, may protect some from harm and help us make decisions. |
| 1:32.9 | But is the danger that it ignores the essential messiness and ambivalence of being human, |
| 1:38.7 | that it turns clarity into tyranny and makes ordinary people into what they're not, |
| 1:44.7 | that it posits a level of assuredness that is actually dishonest. |
| 1:49.2 | That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:50.8 | Our panel is the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo, |
| 1:54.5 | Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas, |
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