Dessert Island Discs- My Choice

If you were stranded, alone and on a dessert island with little to no hope of rescue, would you be concerned with questions of what is moral, and what not?

More pertinent to the question that I want to bring to your attention, "if you had never known the society of men, would you ever have the capacity to know what is moral and what is not?"

Succinctly, "Is morality a social construct?"

In the first case having known the society of men, you would have been versed in that type of morality which is a social construct and could therefore choose to ignore it, by virtue of your having known it. So your choice of ignoring it, is part answer to the question that I posed above. For choosing to ignore it, is proof enough that you had, even if ever so remotely, considered it.

In the second case, each person is born to this World, weak, vulnerable and alone, without exception. And if it is not the society of men that is to raise them to maturity then it must be another society or agency that must perform the same duty. And all societies, and agencies, harbour within them order, and order is maintained by rules of acceptable behaviour and sanction for breaches. It is these rules of behaviour that many consider to be moral.

But what is most tantalising in the whole deliberation is the persistence of the question of morality. That it is the kernel about which so much turns. 

That people in general want to lead a moral life, and by this they do not understand that which is socially acceptable, but that which is virtuous.

So many treatises have been written about this from Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" to the famous Greek Philosophers and their works, and indeed it the central theme of the whole of Philosophy- "what is the best way to live life?"

And it is God's speech which, first off, directly answers this defining, very human, need and dilemma with in the first instance a method that points to each our aspiritations-

“For this is the book. Without doubt a guide to the Muttaqqun.”

Before following it with a sure method. 

We do not get to the defining verses of who the Muttaqun are until much later at verse 177:

It is not righteousness the you turn your (plural) faces to the East and the West. 

Is this not a clear indictment of socially constructed morality?

Notice the plural possessive form of “your”, which symbolises a collective decision. 

And then the conjunction between East and West, here it is not said East or West. East and West looks again like a procedural form without any basis, that you cannot choose or have no compass through which to choose your direction. 

So it is as if here the one being addressed is the one seeking a virtuous, moral and upright life and they are being told that do not follow these man made conventions that will have you turning this way and then that way, rather …

The virtuous one is the one who believes in Allah, in the Day to come, in the Angels and the verse continues and ends with 

These are the Muttaqun. 

Belief is first profession and then action. 

And the Quran is our guide. 

Knowledge is sought through study and contemplation. Not lectures, nor this above.