Response: Types of Guilt

In response to Andrew Bagley's post "Tension in Life" (March 8, 2012):

The examples of tension in this post were interesting to me, because they were all subjective in nature.  Knowing that exercise is 'good' and playing video games is 'bad' is not in fact knowledge, but opinion.  There are people in existence who believe that the only point of life is to have fun, and as such would say that playing video games is in fact the 'better' option.  In short, if one fails to exercise or do some other 'good' thing, then they have not really failed in an objective sense.

There are, however, examples of tension between objectively good and objectively bad things as well.  For example, the tension between choosing to punch someone with whom one is angry and choosing not to punch them is composed of choices with objective moral value.  A more severe one, which is the cause of a great deal of debate, is the choice between vegetarianism and meat consumption.  While few if any people can formulate a watertight argument for meat consumption, many people place their personal preferences above their moral obligations.

Such morally loaded tension is often found in literature, often in the choice between resisting an evil, oppressive force and taking the risk to stand up against it.  While tension without moral value can of course still add interest to a narrative, tension with moral value tends to create more intense conflict.