Page 4 - 2015 On The Path

4 – Sunday, October 25, 2015 – El Dorado NEWS-TIMES
PATH
Continued from Page 3
To consider whether society’s mor- al compass needs adjusting, consid- er data that might be surprising.
For the past 30 years, violent crime trends have pointed downward. Abortions have dropped. Even illicit drug use has somewhat fallen.
But those facts fly in the face of our feeling, right? We’re not heading in the correct, virtuous direction, are we? Sure doesn’t feel that way.
And, besides, to the data point, we’re not invested in what’s going on in New York City or Los Angeles. We care about right here, right now.
So, let’s talk about right here, right now.
Looking at the cold, hard facts, shows that perhaps we should con- sider what might happen here, what does happen here. Statistics com- piled by El Dorado Police Depart- ment show that over the past five years, someone commits an aggra- vated assault in the city about every three days. Someone gets arrested for a drug offense at about that same rate. Murders don’t occur often, but most every type of crime imagin- able, from counterfeiting to rape, happens within the city limits now and then.
Our quiet little area was the scene of unconscionable violence earlier this year — three murders with- in days of each other. One victim, a child, Comesico Pumphrey, 11, was simply collateral damage in a drive-by shooting, the type of thing we read about but never consider a
threat to our way of life.
Fact is, though our society doesn’t
end at the county border. Show of hands: How many were born here? How many have all their immediate family living here? How many have all their friends here?
Not many hands still in the air. No, what happens elsewhere not only affects us here, it might also directly influence events closer to home.
The causality of declining morals on a local level might not follow the butterfly effect directly, but indi- rectly there is little doubt that what happens in Las Vegas or Dallas or Little Rock doesn’t necessarily stay there. For better or worse.
And so we are left to discern whether the moral fabric of our community has frayed and, if so,
what is causing the deterioration and, further, what can we do to stop it?
Unfortunately, the answers to these questions aren’t black and white, literally or figuratively. Sel- dom do real life decisions come into stark relief. No, most of the time, the details are fuzzy, the al- ternatives not clear, the potential outcomes unknown. If the choice is to kill the toddler for crying or not killing the toddler, that’s an easy call for most of us (though not all). If the options are having the affair or throwing a co-worker under the bus or fudging a little on the tax re- turn, well, who’s to judge?
We are. Ourselves. The person in the mirror. Ultimately, there is no society without its individu- al members, and a community of weak moral links has little chance of withstanding the good times, let alone the bad.
In the following pages, a num- ber of area religious leaders and thoughtful commentators share their thoughts on the concept of an off-pointing moral compass and potential ways to correct that fail- ing. Their ideas range across a spec- trum, and their suggestions almost universally involve a self-aware- ness that is the building block upon which a moral society begins.
Strong people do not put others down. They lift them up.
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We are left to discern whether the moral fabric of our community has frayed and, if so, what is causing the deterioration and, further, what can we do to stop it?
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