Jennifer Graham at Deseret News uses the college admissions scandal to highlight moral impoverishment among our cultural elites.
Her article is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.
For those unfamiliar with the scandal, wealthy parents paid up to half a million dollars to get their children admitted into prestigious universities. The strategies employed by William “Rick” Singer, the California consultant who ran the college admissions scheme through a fraudulent charity included doctoring photos, cheating on admissions tests and paying athletic coaches to add the student to their teams even though the student wasn't an athlete.
Some 50 people, including 33 parents and 13 coaches are involved in the scheme, and Graham notes that at least some of the parents were indifferent to the moral issues involved. “To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue here,” said one Connecticut parent, co-chairman of a global law firm, according to court documents.
He had no "moral issue" with having his daughter fraudulently diagnosed as learning disabled so she could get extra time taking a college placement test, or with having another person take online courses on her behalf.
Graham's article contains a lot of moral hand-wringing by various ethicists, but no one in the article seems to recognize the fundamental reason for the ethical indifference of parents like those quoted above.
For instance, Graham asks, "If moral standards are encoded in our DNA, as many theologians and philosophers have taught, how can people go so wildly off course? And when our moral compass malfunctions, how can we recalibrate?"
Her first question answers itself. If morality is simply a feeling imposed on us by our genes then why should anyone think themselves obligated to heed it? After all, feelings of selfishness, lust, greed, ethnocentrism, etc. are also generated by our genes and most people think these inclinations should be repressed or ignored. How do we differentiate between genetically-derived impulses which should be followed and those which should not unless we're tacitly adverting to a higher standard which transcends DNA?
Moreover, if genes are the arbiters of moral right and wrong then if some people's genes make them psychopaths why is psychopathic behavior morally wrong?
If moral standards are encoded in our genes then what does it mean to say that it's wrong to commit fraud? At most it can only mean that we've acted in defiance of our genetic programming, but why is that wrong? What law says that we must always act in accord with what our genes dictate?
In other words it's precisely because society has bought into the notion that right and wrong are simply epiphenomenal expressions of the chemicals in our DNA that people have concluded that there's nothing wrong with cheating to get one's child into a prestigious university.
Morality has to be hung from a transcendent support or else it's like skyhooks hanging on nothing at all.
I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, meanwhile you might check out Mike Mitchell's fine piece on this scandal at his blog Thought Sifter.