It was unusual that tonight's discussion focused almost exclusively on a single theme: morality vs. pleasure. The theme showed up in five different questions, #1, 2, 7, 8 and 9. Questions 1 and 2 talk about the morality, judgmental quality and rigidness that sometimes keeps us stuck and unable to grow, and questions 7, 8 and 9 talk about allowing the more spontaneous, unfettered, unregulated parts of ourselves to get expressed. Not surprisingly, religion also came into the discussion, because religion seems to provide the initial moral guidelines that many of us grow up with.
Someone said that he prefers the idea of ethics to morality, because it seems like morality is externally imposed, and ethics are more likely to be decisions that we make for ourselves. Someone else said that they like the idea of a moral compass, because it implies that there are certain things that we are almost magnetically attracted to, maybe even from birth, and that's why we attract the people we do and why we are drawn to certain situations and people.
Another person said that he decided that instead of all the morality of the church he grew up in, where there was a lot of hypocrisy, he would rather just try to love everyone unconditionally. He feels that attitude, in itself, encompasses all the best aspects of morality without the hypocrisy. Someone said that reminded them of Jesus's comment that all the Law and the Prophets could be summed up by simply "loving the lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself."
(This video was reviewed by Bob McGarey)
Feel free to come and share your own personal insights sometime; the Saturday Night Video and Discussions here in Austin, Texas are a lot of fun and fascinating. (They're free, too.) Here are the questions the group came up with, based on the personal growth themes in the movie: