EDITORIAL - The biases that define morals

Gone viral on the Internet these past several weeks are two video clips of very small children. One is of a child who breaks into infectious laughter each time someone tears up a piece of paper. The other shows two toddlers “da-da-da-ing” in animated baby talk.

No one is complaining about the videos because, despite their age, the children do not seem to be under any form of stress. In fact the children in these videos seem to be in a high state of happiness and contentment.

Nevertheless, despite their positive emotional disposition, the incontrovertible fact remains that these very small children are still being exploited by the adults who uploaded the videos for the whole world to see.

These children, in effect, are still being made to perform in public, and thus being made spectacles before every sort of audience the world over. That no one is complaining is because the funny nature of the videos have successfully obscured the fact that they are still exploited.

This is not an attempt to be finicky about an issue that is not there. Rather, this is an attempt to bring into focus the selective righteousness of people. Morals and ethics, it seems, are but the products of people’s biases.

So much controversy has been generated by a recent incident in which a popular television game show host made a six-year-old boy do a sexy dance in exchange for money. Moral standards both tested by time and conveniently just made up flew thick and fast, obscuring reason.

Yet, stripped of all the nasty comments and self-righteousness, the bottomline is that there is really not much difference between the game show flap and the viral videos on the Internet.

Both still exploited children, although in vastly different ways. And because they differed vastly, people were led to believe they were indeed different. But were they really? Did they not involve public exposure of children too young to decide for their own selves?