Misinterpretation of Values
Peter Simon
AP English 11
October 18, 2009
In her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Joan Didion claims that “the
center was not holding” (84). Traditional values of early to mid-twentieth century
society were being abandoned by troubled youths in pursuit of true meaning and
purpose. Their parents, who themselves had lost confidence in accepted belief, had
neglected to teach them the “rules” of their society. In Didion’s essay “On Morality,”
she dissects the growing misinterpretation of values resulting from this social
movement. According to Didion, morality has little to do with the “ideal good,” as
many had come to understand it, but rather with the promises that we make to
ourselves and to each other. Following WWII, morality became something that
many fell back on, offered as an explanation to their actions. In reality, people were
deceiving themselves, which hinted to the “mass hysteria” that was already being
heard throughout the land. Didion’s observation that “the center was not holding”
continues to develop in “On Morality,” as she argues that the misinterpretation of
morality led to the gradual abandonment of traditional, accepted values, and
developed into the self-deception of society.
Childhood is the time of development of ideas and values, but Didion found
that parents began to neglect teaching their children the traditional values of
society, resulting in the center not holding. She states: “for better or worse, we are
what we learned as children” (158). Her childhood was, as she explains, outlined by
the traditional values of the WWI and WWII societies, before the social movement of
the 1960s began. She was taught the basis of morality through graphic stories of
those who had failed in their primary loyalties to each other:
Some might say that the Jayhawkers were killed by the desert
summer, and the Donner Party by the mountain winter, by
circumstances beyond their control; we were taught instead that they
had somewhere abdicated their responsibilities, some-how breached
their primary loyalties, or they would not have found themselves
helpless in the mountain winter or the desert summer, would not
have given way to acrimony, would not have deserted one another,
would not have failed. (158-159)
The parents of Didion’s childhood related the understanding of morality to
cautionary tales, prompting their children to recognize the mistake made and
therefore prevent them from repeating that mistake in their own lives. She
proposes that the moral and ethical dimensions of events were best understood
before the 1960s through narrative and experience. “They still suggest,” she
explains, “the only kind of morality that seems to me to have any but the most
potentially mendacious meaning” (159). Yet these stories stopped being told
sometime after WWII, and people never learned the meaning of morality at the time
when they were most impressionable: during childhood. In “Slouching Towards
Bethlehem,” Didion suggests: “at some point between 1945 and 1967 we had
somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be
playing” (123). Parents stopped believing in accepted ideas, and their children were
never told these cautionary tales that would develop an understanding of concepts
such as morality, leading to the growing misinterpretation of established values.
As the traditional definition of morality was abandoned by youths during the
1960s, the word became consistently used, as Didion explains, incorrectly, providing
further evidence that traditional societal values were being lost. Morality is based,
according to Didion, most legitimately on the promises and loyalties that we, as
people, agree upon. To strengthen this idea, Didion follows the roots instilled in her
upbringing, giving an example through story. She recounts an instance in which an
apparently intoxicated young boy wrecked his car, killing himself and injuring his
girlfriend. One man guarded the boy’s body while his wife took the girl to the
hospital, out of moral duty, and Didion comments:
One of the promises we make to one another is that we will try to
retrieve our casualties, try not to abandon our dead to the coyotes. If
we have been taught to keep our promises—if, in the simplest terms,
our upbringing is good enough—we stay with the body, or have bad
dreams. (158)
Didion approves of this morality, as in the instance it is the protection of our own
race, the promise that we would not abandon each other to the coyotes. It is
generally an accepted belief and value that we must stand up for each other in the
face of great danger or peril, the idea that no man should be left behind. Beginning
shortly after WWII, however, the growing consensus was that morality referred to
ideas of right and wrong, instead of this “primitive” reference to human survival, the
“social code.” This misinterpretation of morality led to society’s self-deception as
Didion explains: “‘I followed my own conscience.’ ‘I did what I thought was right.’
How many madmen have said it and meant it?” (161). This “right and wrong”
understanding of morality serves little purpose other than to supply falseexplanation to one’s actions. Didion expresses her disdain for this belief by
comparing those who follow it to “madmen” – she suggests that society’s acceptance
of this false notion of morality lowers us to just one step away from madmen. Not
only is this new idea of morality incorrect, but it is completely paradoxical. Right
and wrong, as Didion claims, are impossible to know beyond the general social code
among humans. The misinterpretation of morality in this light, this self-deception
and confusion of personal actions with moral obligation, reflects the loss of
traditional values in society, and reflects her claim that “the center was not holding.”
Shortly after WWII, “mass hysteria” began being heard throughout the
nation, as the direct result of children’s misinterpretation of morality. Parents lost
confidence in traditional values and ideas, and stopped teaching their children the
correct “rules” of their society. This was definite evidence that societal values were
losing their significance, and as youths left these ideas behind they developed their
own, improper definitions for values. Morality became less of a widely accepted
ethical belief, and more of a personal conception of right and wrong, the “ideal
good.” People began to associate the word incorrectly with their conscience, the
reason behind what they were doing. Yet society was deceiving itself, hinting to this
“hysteria” being heard throughout the land. As Didion explains:
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want
something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for
us to have it, but it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when
we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of
hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
And I suspect we are already there. (163)
It is dangerous to society to equate wants and needs with the moral imperative, and
it puts us in the same position as madmen. We cannot claim the primacy of personal
conscience, because we have no way of truly knowing what is “right” and “wrong”
beyond the social code among humans. These developments, these false definitions
of morality, reflect change in societal values and support Didion’s claim that “the
center was not holding.” As she suggests, society had degraded to the point of
hysteria and self-deception due to the abandonment of traditional values.