Lost again in the moral maze
Liverpool v Swansea (BT Sport 1/Sky+)
ALBERT Camus invited us to consider the moral dereliction of the man who is crossing a bridge when he hears the cry of a young woman drowning in the Seine, but does nothing to save her. He walks home, and tells nobody.
Most of us will never find ourselves in such a situation, yet from time to time we are presented with moral dilemmas which are no less challenging in certain ways — I am thinking in particular of a friend of mine who knew the result of Liverpool’s match with Swansea last Saturday, but who did not share this information with me, because he also knew that I was about to watch a recording of the game on Sky Plus.
Indeed not only did he not tell me the result, he didn’t even tell me that he knew the result, just in case his body language would betray some scintilla of the outcome. In this he was upholding one of the highest principles of civil society, the inalienable right of a person to watch a recording of a game of football without someone inadvertently or even malevolently ruining it by revealing the score.
Indeed one of the most celebrated episodes of the great comedy series, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?, was the story of the “lads” (Terry and Bob) trying to avoid hearing the result of an England game, highlights of which they were hoping to watch on Sportsnight.
But life is a lot more complicated now, the technologies are such that it is virtually impossible to protect yourself completely in these situations. And the morality of the matter is now even more complicated.
You see, Liverpool lost that game against Swansea. And my friend knew this. And he knew that I was about to watch this game, at the end of which he knew that I would be profoundly saddened.
So he was faced with this most tormenting of ethical questions: does he observe this highest of all principles, the vow of silence, or does he abandon that fundamental principle in order to save his friend from something that he knows will be a devastating experience?
Of course if he takes the latter course, the delivery of the bad news will also be a most unpleasant experience for the friend, but it won’t last nearly as long as the one he is about to endure when he sits down and switches on his Sky Plus with a light heart, little knowing what monstrosities are about to assail him.
But it is even more complicated than that, because apart from allowing us to decide when we want to watch the game, our TV recording facilities also allow us to decide how much of the game we want to watch. So if things are looking a bit bleak early doors, we don’t necessarily have to sit there for the full 90 minutes and 15 minutes of half-time, we can fast-forward it so that the whole horrible thing can be over in about 10 minutes.
It is a form of pain-relief which was not available in olden days, and we use it when our need is most desperate. But for the moral agonies, there is no cure. My friend still wonders if he did the right thing, when he decided that it was more important to uphold the principle, than to prevent the suffering which he knew was happening, even as he grappled with the enormity of the issues.
And we must also consider the fact that these TV devices which have allowed us to take control of time itself, are also subverting the “long-form” process, so that it is increasingly inconceivable for people to spend nearly two hours engaged with a football match, even when they’re winning – interestingly, viewing figures for the Premier League have been going down.
Meanwhile in America, every day the new President is making it clear that we are living in the time of one of history’s great monsters. And there is a sense that his rise has been facilitated by the fact that we are all so absorbed with our own entertainments, we are no longer capable of recognising that in life sometimes, there are great moral choices to be made.
I hope I’ve knocked that one on the head.
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