Cinemorphosis

Tag: morality

  • The Missing Demon in Elizabeth Anderson’s Morality: A College Essay Prompt

    The Missing Demon in Elizabeth Anderson’s Morality: A College Essay Prompt

    In her essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?,” Elizabeth Anderson challenges the belief that morality is grounded in religion. She argues instead that morality emerges from evolution and learned cooperation. As she explains:

    “It follows that we cannot appeal to God to underwrite the authority of morality. How, then, can I answer the moralistic challenge to atheism, that without God moral rules lack any authority? I say: the authority of moral rules lies not with God, but with each of us. We each have moral authority with respect to one another. This authority is, of course, not absolute. No one has the authority to order anyone else to blind obedience. Rather, each of us has the authority to make claims on others, to call upon people to heed our interests and concerns. Whenever we lodge a complaint, or otherwise lay a claim on others’ attention and conduct, we presuppose our own authority to give others reasons for action that are not dependent on appealing to the desires and preferences they already have. But whatever grounds we have for assuming our own authority to make claims is equally well possessed by anyone who we expect to heed our own claims. For, in addressing others as people to whom our claims are justified, we acknowledge them as judges of claims, and hence as moral authorities. Moral rules spring from our practices of reciprocal claim making, in which we work out together the kinds of considerations that count as reasons that all of us must heed, and thereby devise rules for living together peacefully and cooperatively, on a basis of mutual accountability.”

    Anderson asserts that morality can and does exist without religion, assuming that people are rational enough to sustain moral authority within society. Yet there appears to be a missing element in her account: the demonic. Even without religious belief, it is difficult to deny the presence of a destructive force within human nature. Steven Pressfield, in The War of Art, names this force “the Resistance”—an inner demon that tempts us to waste our lives. Phil Stutz expands on this idea, calling it Part X in his therapy practice, a concept further explored in the Netflix documentary Stutz.

    For your essay (approximately 1,700 words), respond to the claim that Anderson’s essay, by omitting the demonic dimension of human behavior, does not provide a complete or persuasive account of morality. Argue instead that Phil Stutz’s therapeutic framework—especially as presented in Stutz—functions as a kind of substitute for religion. His system offers a narrative of human struggle: being trapped in immediate gratification (a life of the flesh), striving for Higher Powers (a life of the spirit), and acknowledging sin or innate depravity (Part X).

    To support your argument, draw on the work of Phil Stutz, his co-writer Barry Michels, and Steven Pressfield. Be sure to include a counterargument with rebuttal and a Works Cited page with at least four sources in MLA format.

  • Bloodlust or Civic Ritual? The Moral Dilemma of Watching Football

    Bloodlust or Civic Ritual? The Moral Dilemma of Watching Football

    In his Guardian column, “American football is too dangerous, and it should be abolished,” David Bry doesn’t just critique the sport—he indicts its audience. Football, he argues, is not merely unsafe; it’s immoral. He anticipates the backlash to this charge and admits, with self-deprecating honesty, that he’s no moral saint himself—he still eats foie gras, knowingly prioritizing his pleasure over a duck’s suffering. But to him, there’s a moral line between indulging in ethically murky cuisine and consuming a sport that rewards the destruction of human bodies for mass entertainment. If he values human life more than duck life, he cannot, in good conscience, support a game that feeds off head trauma and early death.

    Bry insists the game can’t be meaningfully reformed. The violence is not incidental—it’s structural. Helmets and rule changes may offer cosmetic fixes, but the fundamental problem lies in the collisions themselves: the brain, he writes, “sloshes around and smashes against its bone casing.” No amount of tweaking can erase that brutal fact. While his friend Todd defends the freedom of adults to play if they choose, Bry shifts the focus from the players to the fans. The deeper immorality, he claims, lies not on the field but in the stands and living rooms, where audiences cheer and fund the spectacle that maims its participants.

    This position challenges evolutionary theorists like Jonathan Gottschall, who argue that violent sports are hardwired into us. From his view, sports like football are not moral failures, but social adaptations—ritualized combat that establishes hierarchies and offers a controlled outlet for natural male aggression. If we don’t have football, we’ll invent some other surrogate for the same primal thrill.

    And here lies the moral paradox: If we are biologically inclined to enjoy violence in symbolic form, can we still be held ethically accountable for watching it? Or does evolutionary determinism become a convenient alibi that masks complicity? Is football a barbaric indulgence we should outgrow—or a necessary safety valve that prevents worse outcomes?

    This tension gets at the philosophical core of the football debate. Are we morally responsible for what we watch, or are we acting out ancient instincts that override reason and empathy? If Bry is right, we’re sanitized Romans in bleachers, watching men destroy themselves for our pleasure. If Gottschall is right, those same bleachers might be the only thing keeping us from something darker, something more chaotic, something even harder to justify.

    Ultimately, the question is not whether football is violent—we know it is—but whether our appetite for it can be governed by ethics or will simply reinvent itself in another uniform, another arena, another “acceptable” outlet. Are we spectators or just better-dressed predators?