You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing - beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code - what is "right" and what is "wrong," what is "good" and what "evil." I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of "morality" seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power {or survival} politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self-indulgence at work.
( Joan Didion )
[ Collected Essays: Slouching ]
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