Free When I Say No, I Feel Guilty by Manuel J. Smith

people adopt to use in judging their own and other people’s behavior. The way we adopt and use moral systems is very much like the way we would behave backpacking in the Sierras after our surefooted guide tripped over a log and broke his neck. Each of us is then faced with the difficult task of finding our way home and the frightening possibility that we may not know enough to survive. As each of us finds a trail, we tell ourselves and the others: “This is the right way.” Our fear of being lost in the wilds and not knowing what to do is relieved by finding any sign of civilization, even though it may lead us farther into the forest. We refuse to worry about coping again by considering the possibility that there may be other trails out of the forest, some better than the one we choose. By rigidly declaring our trail as the right way, we dump the responsibility for getting home off our own shoulders and onto the arbitrary path we choose. If this trail doesn’t get us home, we can always blame the dumb people who made it instead of ourselves! This allegory is used to point out that there is no absolute “right or wrong” moral way to behave; there isn’t even any technically correct way to behave. There are only the personal ways each of us chooses to behave, which enrich or befoul our lives. For example, the assertive backpacker in the Sierras might choose to follow none of the paths found by the rest of his group, but instead to follow his own nose, using any information available; the path of the sun and stars, the position of light-sensitive plant growth, landmarks he remembers, and also his best guess on where highway 99 is from looking at his Standard Oil map.
    Legal systems are arbitrary rules society has adopted to provide negative consequences for behavior that society wishes to suppress. Just as with moral systems, laws have nothing to do with absolute “right and wrong.” Systems of right and wrong are used to psychologicallymanipulate people’s feelings and behavior. Legal codes ate set up to limit behavior and to settle disputes between people. But you always have the assertive judgment to break a law and face the consequences. How many of us can say that we have never chosen to break driving and parking ordinances and pay the fine if we were caught? We take the responsibility for the choice and for its consequences. Many of us, however, confuse systems of right and wrong with legal codes. Most legislators, judges, and law officers get as confused about right and wrong as the rest of us. Legal and judicial problems in controlling right and wrong courses of behavior demonstrate this confusion. The coupling of legal codes with systems of right and wrong turns laws into instruments of manipulative emotional control. A right-and-wrong system can be incorporated within the body of law as in the case of the United States Supreme Court’s mind-bending phraseology, “socially redeeming” pornography. Does the Supreme Court mean that you can read pornography that has socially redeeming value and not feel guilty because of your prurient interest? If a book’s characters who participate in a literary sex orgy do not later suffer the fires of hell or, even worse, repent and become social workers, does that mean you “should” feel guilty reading it?
    The concepts of right and wrong may also be wrapped around a law and used in an attempt to punish “wrong” behavior in the streets by police officers. “Legal” manipulation of this sort was attempted on me recently by a traffic officer of a Los Angeles area police department. After being stopped and ticketed for going 63 mph in a 65 mph zone on the freeway by this middle-aged, mustachioed, pot-bellied centurion in baggy khakis, I was then supposed to feel guilty too: “If you want to be a putz (Yiddish for male genitals) in the slow lane, that’s okay. But if you are a putz in the fast lane, that’s wrong so don’t do it again!” Not only did he want me