Tonight, I was home after 8 and there wasn’t a Cubs ballgame on for me to watch. It was just house and clutter and two limp cats trying to ignore the heat.

I went to the doctor this morning to get an opinion on a chain of blotchy red spots ringing my ankle and sitting on the top of my right foot. Last week, it was a strained back muscle, this week it is a foot. I will give blood tomorrow to have tests done. We’ll see what we shall see.

The house is quiet now, though you hear a persistent drip of water moving somewhere in the lines between the kitchen sink and the refrigerator. Outside, you can also hear the sprinkler spritzing the front yard, since my front door is open to let air blow through.

It’s not the best night to have air blow through, though. A fire in the East Monzano Mountains, down between Tajique and Chilili- the Dog Head Fire- has tossed a long swath of smoke over the range and onto the city. You smell the smoke here and there when you move around. A breeze off and on sweeps it away momentarily though.

I take time to reflect on two articles I came across in recent weeks. The first, “The Death of Moral Relativism” by Jonathon Merritt in The Atlantic, says that the culture of relativism that grew out of the 60’s and 70’s, that way of viewing morality that sprung up as a challenge to traditional values in which “What’s good for me is good for me”, is giving way to a new ethical posture. Moral relativism has given way to a more monolithic view of morality, but it is not a return to the values of the 50’s. Modern morality is guided by what will not shame someone- unless you violate the politically correct rule that no one or nothing should be discriminated against, in which case, you are worthy of shaming. It’s an interesting take on modern morality, because it is not a morality based on objective principles. It is based on not bringing dishonor to the tribe.

The second article actually inspired thoughts in the first. David Brooks wrote a piece in the New York Times called “The Shame Culture”, in which he points at an article in Christianity Today that distinguishes between guilt cultures and shame cultures. And Brooks points out that, where Allan Bloom in his book “Closing of the American Mind” said American universities in the 80s ad 90s were totally overran by moral relativism and the mantra “nothing is right or wrong”, this is not so today. “College campuses are today awash in moral judgment.” In short, with social media putting every life under public scrutiny, “[m]oral life is not built on the continuum of right and wrong; it’s built on the continuum of inclusion and exclusion.”

Tribalism, and being individually accepted, drives the new moral order.

The oddity of this public mandate for inclusionism and nonjudgmentalism is that for those who do deem to judge, in any objective facet, they are greeted with shame. “Be politically correct, or else…”

I am fascinated by the foibles and failings of the human heart. And troubled by the impact shame has on individuals.