Morality

Emotion is a virtue. Feelings are the only map one has to negotiate some kind of pleasurable and decent life. Our sensitivities regulate our behaviour toward ourselves and other people, and there is nothing worse than the cold, clanging sound of despair. Thoughts are divisive, but intuition is common currency. And

if you stripped all authorities of

their titles, and their rank, and the ideologies of the faithful were made redundant, you would find that compassion, honesty, and instinct are all that is necessary.

Geneticists, the new fortune-tellers, the Mystic Megs of science and medicine, would have us believe that bad behaviour is the result of a hereditary disposition to immoral acts. However, I think we are free agents, and are not at all predisposed or predestined to malice.

The tenets of wisdom expressed during the Renaissance suggested that when unpolluted by the concept of right and wrong, and allowed to return to his natural state, man is inevitably attracted by the good. Rabelais insisted that integrity was innate and evil incidental. The ancient assertion that badness is endemic in human nature is exploited by all

manner of determinists, from religious dogmatists to fans of Freud, and they succeed in imprisoning the human spirit. Simultaneously they insult those inspiring people who have been conditioned by their environment or family to behave dishonourably, but are upstanding citizens.

To quote another female writer, Mary Midgely, in her book Wickedness: ''Species incapable of attack do not ever find the occasion to be friends.'' The opportunity to kill is the opportunity to bond.

Man is, perhaps, relatively good and relatively bad, and at his worst can be either to an emotional extreme. In certain circumstances, morality is aspirational rather than functional. We may think we would stop our car after running someone over, but perhaps the thought of losing our freedom would spur us into driving on. Knowing what is right is not enough; acting on it is.

History shows us that despite the overwhelming evidence

of their insanity, especially twisted men are capable of angelic and heroic deeds. Goebbels was a devoted father. Oskar Schindler was vain and ruthless, bound to the Nazi regime. Yet he saved more than 1000 Jews from death at considerable risk to himself. In the trial of Dr Crippen, witnesses testified to his considerateness, kindness, and unselfishness. Although I've always felt that a career of modesty and manipulation could be the perfect cover for monstrous intentions, Crippen's gentility an apology for his depravity, his outward character a kind of moral alibi. Jeffrey Dahmer, too, was capable of showing enormous charity to the homeless young men he stumbled across in the street, and was credited with saving one man's life.

Sympathy for others is a basic moral awakening. We are individuals, and I feel that a healthy society begins with a healthy heart. Society is not an outward force, but a reflection of everyone's inner life. If each and every person had the courage of their consciences the world would be a

better place. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and man happily ignores the beacon awarded him.

The eminent Harvard Professor Lawrence Kohlberg concluded from research that a worrying 94% of the population do not match their behaviour to a code of ethics. He believes there are six stages of moral development. The most fundamental stage is the avoidance of an action for fear of the punishment it might induce. The second stage recognises reciprocity, that there are the competing needs of other people which should be taken into account. Stage three embraces actions which are likely to earn social approval, and stage four moves on to those which express one's duty toward society. Kohlberg concluded that only 6% of the population ever reached the final level of moral development. Only a pitiful 20% reached stage five, that of respecting the rights of others.

There is further scarier insight into the issue of conscience in the

example of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the two 10-year-olds who murdered two-year-old James Bulger. They were tried as if they had adult perceptions of moral responsibility. There is a confusion of categories between animal and toy, which is why boys pull the wings off flies, or electrocute pets. It is possible to know cruelty yet have no understanding of its import. Sometimes such people never develop into full moral agents and remain child-like in their ownership of aggression well into adulthood. They are usually termed psychopaths and are unresponsive to moral chastisement because they do not understand it. The psychopath has no empathy with other people. He is pathologically egocentric. You see, there is no such thing as evil, there is only goodness and the sad ignorance of what that is.