Things Are What You Make Them

The Oxford dictionary defines morality as the “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.”  This definition is not completely accurate.  Popular culture, or the culture based on the tastes of ordinary people rather than an educated elite, has a very strong influence on what we as people believe to be moral or not.  This was evident in a recent presidential election.  The average man or woman had to decide what their morals were.  This decision influenced which presidential candidate they voted for.  The winning candidate is the figure who leads the country and sets the priorities and morals of our our nation.  Therefore, the general population is the factor that decides the morals of a society.  In the puritan society, religion was the law of the land, and today, due to large scale media coverage women’s rights and racial profiling take center stage in common morality issues and debates.  Since the time of the puritans, society has not became more or less moral.  People today, like back in the 1600’s, follow the precedent set by popular culture.  This precedent that is set defines the word morality for each and every person in their society.

In the Puritan society, ridiculing a sinner was considered normal.  We see examples of this in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  In one scene, Hester and Pearl are going to the Governor’s house, and proceed to have mud slung at them.  The kids who see them passing by say, “Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and, of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!” (Hawthorne 70).  The kids have seen the example set by their parents that sinners are to be punished for their actions.  This example of public humiliation does not only come from elder figures; their whole town is set up to make sinners feel bad for what they have done.  The scaffold in which Hester appears on three times throughout the story is the center of town, which shows that public humiliation of sinners was an intrical part of their society as a whole.  

Discriminating against a sinner is also seen in the way  Hester is described after she is exiled from society.  The narrator describes it as, “And all her intercourse with the society, however, it was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it.  Every gesture, every word, even the silence of those whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature but other organs and senses then the rest of humankind” (Hawthorne 58).  The way people treat her makes her feel so lonely that she feels like she is an alien from another planet.  The reader sees this in the line ‘and as much alone as she inhabited another sphere.’  This sort of treatment was nothing new in puritan life.  Their whole society was based on religion, so when somebody sinned it was a serious offense.  People made sure that the sinner knew what he or she had done to go against God.  In this case, Hester committed adultery, going against one of the ten commandments, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  We also see the theme of popular culture setting the tone of moral judgement in Puritan society in a play based on a true story, The Crucible by Arthur Miller.  

In the play we see people going along with the trends, most notably when it comes to the witch trials.  In the introduction of the play, Arthur Miller says the witch trials were,  “the result of popular hysterical fear of the devil” (Miller vii).  These witch trials all started from the people.  It was not just a governing figure who started these.  In fact, Miller writes that the children are the driving force of these witch trials.  In act two, John Proctor says, ”but now the crazy little children are jangling the keys to the kingdom, and common vengeance writed the law” (Miller 73).  He is saying that these children completely dictate what happens with these witch trials and their ‘vengeance’ is what drives them to make these trials such a big deal.  The public’s perception of the devil and what could happen if they happened to be “possessed” drove the witch trials to what they became.  In this case, the ‘devil’ was a scapegoat for their vengeance and greed.  Human instincts caused these trials, so when more and more people started becoming more involved, it seemed like a normal thing to be doing.  When the trials started to become out of hand people started to notice the ridiculousness of what had been occurring.  These witch trials took over everyday life of the puritans in Salem.  Miller describes how the trials affected society, “The trials took precedence over all other activities.  They took the farmer from his field and his wife from the milk shed” (Miller xv).  People left their crops unharvested, and there were even orphans who wandered by themselves because the people who were supposed to be taking care of them were more indulged by these trials.  Like the witch trials in puritan times, racial profiling and women’s rights play large roles in morality issues in today’s world.  

There is still strong prejudice in our society today, and racial profiling is a very evident example of this.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote an article about racial profiling, and the numbers they mentioned were astounding:  ”In 2014, blacks were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over in the state of Missouri than whites. Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be searched as a result of such stops, even though whites were more likely to be in possession of illegal contraband, such as drugs or weapons” (Editorial Board 2016).  Stereotypes directed towards African Americans and Hispanics have led to many of these unjust actions and events.  It is the popular perception of this race that makes them more vulnerable to these situations.  Many Mexicans are perceived as drug dealers because of the number of drug lords that come over from Mexico.  Obviously not every Hispanic person is involved with the drug trade, but the popular view makes them seem more likely to be involved with these sorts of things.  The stereotype that black people are all criminals has lead to unjust shootings and arrests.  One example of this came in the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  In 2014, Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot by a white police officer after robbing a convenience store.  The fact that he was not white could have played a role in officer Darren Wilson’s decision to pull the trigger and kill Brown.  In the moment, Wilson’s morals may have seemed right because of what society perceived African Americans to be.

Just like racial profiling, women’s rights, more specifically equal pay for women, is another common subject of morality in the world today.  The precedent that women are less than men has been around for as long as history can tell us.  There is even evidence of this in ancient China thousands of years ago.  Women deserve equal opportunities and pay as men, but that does not always happen.  In an article by Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg, the pay gap between men and women is substantial.  The article reads, “After the research controlled for experience, practice size and practice ownership, the women earned about $32,000 a year less on average, according to the study of more than 500 financial advisers. An advisory panel concluded gender discrimination and bias were among factors dissuading women” (Adamy 2016).  $32,000 is a lot of money, and women earning that much less is not considered moral today.  On the other hand, popular culture drove this notion that women are less than men into people’s heads for centuries.  It was not until just recently that we as a society finally realized that women deserve to be equal that we found our morals were not right and it was time for a change.  This realization marks a change in people’s morals.  After many people realized that women deserve equal pay in the workplace, it became immoral to discriminate against them.  This popular movement was the deciding factor about whether women being paid unequally was moral or not.  

In summary, the influence of popular culture is what drives morality in society today; therefore, society has become neither better nor worse.  Morality does not get its meaning from a dictionary definition.  It is the common man and woman who decide the definition of morality in society.  Our culture is the driving force of our perception on what is right and what is not, and we see examples of this throughout history, specifically during the puritan times and in the modern day as well.  In puritan times, publicly ridiculing a sinner was normal, but now when we look back and it was not always the right thing to do.  Today many racial profiling incidents have led to unjust shootings like the one in Ferguson, Missouri.  A false stereotype may have been the driving force that the officer shot at Michael Brown.  In puritan times, the children who flung mud at Hester and Pearl seemed to be doing nothing wrong.  On the other hand, after decades passed, those actions seemed wrong.  The way Hawthorne describes the actions deems the kids to be the antagonists, not being moral at all.  Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter over 200 years after the time period it is set in.  Will some of our daily actions be deemed immoral in 200 years?  The only way to find out will be to reflect on them when they do not happen anymore, just like the kids who flung mud at sinners.

WORKS CITED
Adamy, Janet, and Paul Overberg. “Pay Gap Widest For Elite Jobs.” Wall Street Journal. 18 May 2016: A.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 08 Nov. 2016.

Board, Editorial. “More Training and Police Consolidation Would Improve Racial….” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 03 Jun. 2015: A.16. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 08 Nov. 2016.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel.  The Scarlet Letter.  

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts. New York: Penguin, 1982. Print