The Ninth New Commandment:

Thou Shalt Not Do What is Unhealthy

Well, having solved the world's economic problems, let's forge ahead. A little thought will reveal the basis for this New Commandment, not to do what is unhealthy: We are, of course, nothing but complicated animals, which are complicated machines, and this "spirit" and "immortal soul" stuff is a lot of hocus-pocus; so health is where it's at. You're healthy when you can do what you're genetically (there's the operative word) capable of doing, and you're sick when you can't; and, of course, when you're sick there's something wrong with you. Biology trumps everything in the New Morality.

But the interesting twist here is that, like all moral stances, the New Morality, which doesn't even recognize itself as a morality, can't avoid thinking that what is "the right thing to do" is what is consistent with yourself as human, and "the wrong thing" is what is inconsistent. So if health means that you can do whatever you're genetically capable of doing, then evolutionarily speaking, health is virtue--and conversely, sickness is vice.

But there are two ways of considering each branch of this dichotomy: (1) (a) What is healthy is moral, and (b) what is moral is healthy; and (2) (a) what is unhealthy is evil, and (b) what is evil is unhealthy. And what is the sign of health or unhealth? Why, you feel good or bad, of course! "Oho!" you say. "That's why feelings are so important." You're catching on.

If it's healthy, it's moral.

Obviously, then, when you do what is healthy, you're doing what is good for you--which is, at least for the New Morality, synonymous with doing what is Good with a capital G. And when you do what feels good, then this must be what is healthy, because your body is telling you, "Great! That's it! More! More!" And you know that you have to come to grips with your feelings, and not repress them (which, we all know, is unhealthy), and so the world is just a lovely place. Instead of those crazy monks in their hairshirts beating themselves with their little whips--the perverts!--we've discovered that The Right Thing is actually to do what you felt like doing anyway! No wonder the New Morality took over so fast.

Which, of course, means that President Clinton did what is virtuous when he and Monica--why should I say it? Just think for a minute of what they did. I mean, so she was less than half his age, so he was her boss, so she was an intern, so he was married, so it was in the office of the Chief of Chiefs of Police, what was unhealthy about it? I feel good, you feel good, neither of us gets sick, so that's the only thing that matters. And I can go about my business of running the country much better now that I've had this relief--which proves that it was the right thing to do. Thanks, kid. But don't let people know; the Religious Right just doesn't understand, and they've still got votes.

(Insiders, by the way, say that President Clinton in private is not repentant. He regrets the trouble he has made for his family and entourage, but still claims he did not commit perjury or obstruction of justice. Remember, he wanted the Republicans to apologize to him for impeaching him. What I'm saying here is that this makes sense, according to the New Morality. He can't say that what he did was the right thing, because there are too many traditionalist voters out there, but apparently he honestly believes that he didn't do anything wrong. Now you can understand why. In the eyes of the New Morality, he didn't.)

Anyway, it's not just jogging and working out in Moore's Fitness that's moral in the New Morality. That may be The New Sanctity, because (they say) you feel lots better afterwards, even though it's not all that great going through it; but anything that doesn't make you sick and feels good--especially what feels great--is morally okay, and it's better the better you feel.

This is why health clinics in schools are sex seminaries, because sex is a healthy thing, if you do it right. That is, all forms of sex are healthy in themselves; diseases come from something other than the act. In fact, no less than the former Surgeon General (Joycelyn Elders) advocated that masturbation be taught in school, from kindergarten. And you'll find that if you want to claim that there's something wrong with masturbation, New Moralists look at you and say, "You mean that business that if you keep doing it you'll go blind? Don't make me laugh." If it's not unhealthy, what's wrong with it? And if it does promote physical well-being, the case is closed.

You also hear a lot about how beneficial it is to get rid of pent-up emotions, and to "let it all hang out." It doesn't matter that what you feel about someone or some situation might actually be inconsistent with the actual persons or situation (as was my feeling about Kang at his death); expressing that feeling is "honest" because it's healthy, and "bottling it up" causes you all kinds of emotional and physical problems. So it's good to let the other person know how you feel about him--except that what you're supposed to say is, "What I feel now is..." rather than "You're such a...", because the latter (a) supposes that you know something about the other person, and that's thinking, which is unhealthy, and anyway, (b) we're focusing on you, not the other person.

He, of course, is supposed to be healthy and play the game and not take your expression of your feeling as if it had anything to do with him. If he's a New Moralist, he "feels good about himself," and nothing you can say should put a dent in it. The fact that things don't work out that way, and I might be devastated when I learn that you find me disgusting and repugnant, is just a detail--and I'm the one who's being unhealthy; so it's my problem if it bothers me when you tell me to my face you can't stand being within ten feet of me.

It's a bit hard in the present age to make out a case against adultery, or breaking any promise for that matter, when it turns out that it's healthier to take the other route. If your wife can't or won't satisfy your sexual needs, then you have to take some way out, right? Because it's unhealthy not to satisfy them; and so it's her fault if you look for an outlet. That's not infidelity, just common sense. You still love her; this is just physical. It has nothing to do with your marriage vow; the fact that the vow says that she'll be the only one can't mean that, because that's not healthy. Even "reverend" people like Jesse Jackson apparently subscribe to this.

If it's moral, it's healthy.

And conversely, we find that New Moralists tend to downplay the health risks of what makes you feel good, and especially what makes you feel great; on the grounds that if it feels good, it's moral, and if it's moral, it's healthy. When was the last time you heard about medical side-effects of that powerful hormone that's called The Pill? Even when you hear about them, they're always accompanied by a disclaimer that says, "Of course, if you use it right, there's no problem at all; and anyway, the benefits far outweigh the risks."

Think for just a second. The benefits? What benefits? The only benefit (for a healthy woman) is not getting pregnant. Which implies, of course, that pregnancy is a disease. Well, unwanted pregnancy is. And it's fascinating to see the medical profession, of all things, touting how great pregnancy is if you want it (and telling you all about the progress of "your baby" as you watch the ultrasound), and the next minute sympathizing with the woman behind you about the health problem she has because she's got the same "condition" you have.

A propos of this, in the sex part of an ethics course I was teaching, I mentioned to the class why masturbation was wrong; and a young black girl was talking with me as we left class. "You can't believe this," she said. "Everybody masturbates. Look at the priests; they masturbate all the time." "They don't masturbate!" I said, and she answered, "Of course they do! They'd go crazy if they didn't." So instead of the Old Morality's "If you masturbate, you'll go blind," the New Morality has come up with, "If you don't, you'll go crazy."

Even RU-486, that wonderful pill--actually, combination of pills--that kills your kid before he's had a chance to mess up your life, has perfectly enormous dangers to the woman that you'd never know about to hear the New Moralists in the medical community talk. And have you heard of Post Abortion Syndrome? Bet you haven't. But there is such a thing, and lots of people have it. But abortions are good, and therefore, they're healthy, and don't let the Religious Right fool you.

And have you ever wondered why we're losing the War on Drugs and doing so wonderfully in the War on Smoking? The secret is right here. Drugs make you feel good; they make you feel terrific, while smoking doesn't (it just peps you up a bit). And drugs were discovered in the Sixties at the same time sex was--you'd think for the first time in history. You can't believe that there's anything wrong with this stuff. Why I know three people who have tried practically everything, and they turned out just fine! (Not noticed here are all the other people you know who tried it and are now living on top of subway gratings.)

We're not going to win the drug war, because we surrendered years ago. There isn't any real war at all, just the sham of a war to appease the dinosaurs of the Religious Right. And you can see this, because when the New Moralists start a war, as on smoking, it gets fought. But New Moralists believe in their heart of hearts that marijuana, cocaine, crack, heroin, and acid are good for you, because they make you feel so wonderful. True, they don't think this, because no one in his right mind would try to make out a rational case for it; but they feel it, and so they look on all of the reports of the harmfulness of drugs the way they look at the old movie Reefer Madness, as just propaganda that their own experience tells them is a lot of bunk.

I have had kids tell me seriously that there are no health risks connected with marijuana, and cocaine doesn't do you any harm. When I point out that both of them get you into an unreal world where you seem to be in perfect control and everything feels just peachy, and therefore make it that much harder to deal with the real world where you've got to struggle, that makes no difference, because the stuff doesn't make you sick--except when you try to quit, of course, but why try to quit?

But this is all perfectly consistent. New Moralists live in a dream world, pretending that reality is what they want it to be, in spite of the fact that it's just the opposite.

If it's unhealthy, it's immoral.

On the other side of the coin, we have the War Against Smoking, which makes Carrie Nation look like Kate at the end of The Taming of the Shrew.

No one denies that smoking is unhealthy; no one ever has, in my memory. When we were kids, cigarettes were called "coffin nails." Then why the crusade now? Because now the New Morality is in control, and it's now a moral issue. Smoking is not only bad, it's evil, and therefore it must be stopped. It's not called a moral issue, of course, because then, by the Second New Commandment, you could smoke if you felt like it, just as it's okay to have some pot if you feel like it. No, it's a health issue, ostensibly--which doesn't explain the fervor against it at all.

And there's all the junk science that's trumped up to say that passive smoking is a danger greater than nuclear fallout. Now granted, if you're cooped up all day long in a place that's full of smoke, this can be bad for you--possibly, in the extreme, even seriously bad; but let's face it, before this jihad, there were generations who were born and grew up around smokers, and, while the smokers got sick, the other people did fairly well. I'm not saying it's good for you, or not annoying, to smell another's smoke; just that it's not significantly dangerous, generally speaking.

But, you see, there are actually two commandments that are violated here; this one and the eighth, because tobacco is promoted by Big Business, to further the greed of these corporate giants, who are destroying the population for their own selfish gain. (Note, by the way, that nobody applies this sort of thing to Larry Flint, because he's getting rich promoting what's healthy in his porno shops.)

Tobacco is the prime villain at the moment, but there have been others and there will be more. The Alar scare about the additive that apple-growers used caused enormous damage to the growers (Hurray!) for no reason at all. Saccharine causes cancer in mice if you give them doses equivalent to stuffing yourself with pounds of it for years on end. Fatty foods and movie popcorn must be banned; we're killing ourselves, and rather than just informing us, we've got to be saved from our own folly. In other words, we must be made to conform to the standards of the New Morality, whether we want to or not--because no one in his right mind would harm his health, which is all we've got, after all.

Actually, since smoking is bad for you, the campaign against it made a good deal of headway at first, particularly among the young, because it told you what common sense told you. But now that it's clearly the New Morality zealots who have taken over, kids are seeing through this the way their parents saw through the hysteria about pot. They don't see smokers withering before their eyes, and they know people who have been smoking for decades on end. So, like kids everywhere, they are putting their own experience ahead of what they're being told and showing the finger of rebellion to the New Fanaticism. This is not necessarily grounds for hope, however, because all they're doing is subscribing to the First and Second New Commandments: their truth is the truth for them, and no one should try to force a moral code down their throats; it's just that they instinctively recognize that the war against smoking is an attempt to force a moral code down everyone's throat.

And by the same New Commandment, there's a law that says we not only have to have seat belts in our cars, we can't buy cars that don't have air bags. Why? Because people might not put on the seat belts, and then they'll hurt themselves in a crash. Never mind that the cars with air bags also have to have a warning that you'd better use your seat belt too--and, of course, it's just a minor point that the air bags now make it impossible for little kids to sit in the front seat, and that even adults can get killed with these devices that are supposed to be their salvation.

(And just wait a few years, when the original cars with air bags get to be fifteen or twenty years old, and connections between the sensors and the bags begin to corrode and fray. We'll have reports--quickly suppressed--of air bags deploying for no reason on the expressway and in other convenient places.)

But the legislators care; they're trying; they've done something. They've got the right agenda, promoting the public health; and that's what matters. The fact that the last state is worse than the first is irrelevant.

If it's immoral, it's unhealthy.

And finally, if something goes against the New Morality, it's automatically unhealthy. People who claim that there's such a thing as absolute truth are dangerous mental cases, almost as bad as those who claim that there's such a thing as a moral code that applies to everyone. The intolerant, like the Branch Davidians, are basically crazy; it isn't that they have a theory that they're following; their emotions are screwed up, as are people like Kenneth Starr, who's obviously sex-obsessed because he thinks that President Clinton did something wrong with Monica. Former Cardinal O'Connor of New York, who preached that homosexual sex is sin, is another sex-crazed fanatic. They're all sick. Sick! Of course, contraception and "family planning" is a health issue, isn't it? A world health issue, in fact; and in the name of health, we have to force Catholic and Muslim cultures to give up their unhealthy ways. And how many times have you heard environmental issues promoted in the name of health? We have to clean up the air and water; because you're killing people (Al Gore actually said this) if you don't pass the New Morality environmental legislation.

A propos of this, I mentioned that how "wetland" has a nice ring to it, and "swamp" used to be paired with the adjective "pestilential." The reason, of course, is that swamps are breeding grounds for all kinds of wildlife--like mosquitoes that bring us diseases. One of Julius Caesar's great accomplishments for the health of Rome was the draining of the Pontine Marshes. But now that these same places are wetlands, you can't touch them, and suddenly all those health risks have vanished.

Similarly, in my childhood, where my father would even strop his Gillette razors to make them last, and would scrutinize the water and light bills to see if this month was a penny more than the previous one, we had toilets that flushed eight gallons of water. Why? Because the people who made them knew that with less, you couldn't guarantee that the bowl would flush clean. But now water conservation is part of the New Moral Code, and so it's now illegal to buy a toilet that will flush more than two gallons of water. I recently stayed in a hotel equipped with these lovely devices, and I had to flush three times to make it even look clean. So we now have a nation full of toilets with only part of the waste flushed out of them. We don't need Saddam Hussein bringing biological weapons over in suitcases; every new house is already a bacteria factory.

Of course, it's Big Business that's the real culprit in ruining public health, because Big Business doesn't care and will produce anything that sells, irrespective of its health risks. So Big Government must step in and save us from this menace--producing effects like the ones I just mentioned. But the difference, of course, is that the agenda of Big Business is profit, and the agenda of Big Government is--to make the bureaucrats feel good because they're trying, they care, they're doing something.

Being healthy and feeling good.

But in all of this, the New Morality is schizophrenic, because it equates being healthy with feeling good, while in fact there are all kinds of things that feel just fine and do enormous damage to a person; and the New Morality doesn't really know how to deal with this. I mean, it stands to reason that if something feels good, your instinct is telling you that this is something you ought to have; and since reason is just searching around for strategies that "satisfy the strongest epigenetic rules," then reason's job is to come up with sophisms that promote it. But reason persists in saying that there's something wrong here. And so the New Morality is caught on the horns of a dilemma.

So, for instance, it's obvious that suicide is a bad thing (and therefore unhealthy. What could be unhealthier?). Well no, it isn't, not always, because if you feel really rotten, what's the problem with killing yourself? It's obvious that murder is a bad thing. Well, no, not in all cases, because sometimes the person wants to die and you're just helping him; and sometimes you're faced with tough choices, like killing an old man who's life is just a misery for himself and everyone around him--even if, in his insane perversity, he wants to live--or, of course, that "healthy" act of dismembering the kid inside you. Killing is a health issue nowadays; it's healthy to kill yourself or someone else to make people feel good instead of feeling awful.

Now the interesting thing here is that in fact, pain and emotions in general report the relationship between the body and the environment, according to the program that was genetically laid down when we were living in caves. But the emotions are automatic responses to the environment and the state of the body, and don't know that changing conditions call for different responses from the ones that were initially beneficial. Further, human emotions tend to be concerned with the benefit of only one part of the organism, not necessarily the organism as a whole--at least as they now express themselves; and so if we listen to them blindly, we'll harm and even kill ourselves. Follow the hunger drive wherever it leads, and you'll become obese and die; follow the sex drive at every prompting, and it will become more insistent, and you'll ruin your life; follow fear, and you won't be able to do anything at all; follow self-confidence and you'll get yourself into idiotic risks. And so on. We all know this, even in spite of the propaganda against it. So we know we have to use reason to assess what the emotions are telling us, and base our lives on the reality of the situation as known, not the way we feel.

We know this. We can't escape knowing it. But the evolutionary basis of the New Morality says that it has to be false; reason must follow instinct, not direct it. And so the New Morality prescribes all kinds of things that are bound to be disasters, and pretends that it isn't the prescriptions but extrinsic circumstances that cause the disasters. And in the last analysis--

A little pill shall heal them.

The New Morality, with its reliance on instinct and emotions, still has a pathetic trust in science and technology, even while it rails against it. Somewhere there is a cure for AIDS which will make it possible for us not to change our behavior. Somewhere there is a cure for depression, even when we are doing things that would depress Pangloss.

So if things don't go right; if you're unhealthy (or if you feel bad, which is the same thing), then you're a victim of something greater than yourself. You may be an "addict" (like a drug addict or a sex addict or a computer addict--addictions are legion), which means that you aren't to blame; it's up to science to find a cure, and Government to provide the funds. It's not that you're immoral, you're unhealthy, and so you have to be cured.

No, in the New Morality, it's institutions that are immoral; people are just victims of one institution or another, from smokers (Big Tobacco), serial killers (Big Business in general), drug addicts (discrimination and bad parents), and so on. It's basically the Religious Right, however, which is the real villain here; because it (and especially the Catholic Church) is the institution which is impeding the progress toward a really healthy society, in which everyone can do everything that he feels like doing, and all the side-effects will be technologically taken care of, and every tear will be wiped away. There's the healthy society, and if we can just get rid of the Religious Right, we have a chance to achieve it.

Which leads us to the final New Commandment.