The Morality of the Camera (Daymakers 47)

This week, the Daymakers continue discussing Ted Hughes’s essay “Myth & Education,” specifically focusing on the trouble with objectivity when it is not balanced with considerations of the inner world, the psychological dimensions of our lives. The morality of the camera leads to a form of brutality, but how? Isn’t being objective a way of bringing order to our relationships? Why does a rejection of religion and a turn to pure objectivity turn us into lunatics? Contrary to the dominant values of present times, the Daymakers explain how the stories and myths conveyed by religion helped civilise us. Whether one believes in a God or not, surely we can all agree that the chief danger of godlessness is a hubristic belief in one’s own supernal powers, one’s own (or the government’s) ability to establish a perfect and safe society by policing thought, speech and all human activity.