After reading about those hero kids in an earlier post tonight, why would anyone even want to debate the value of being a moral person?

Immoral people — even though they get all the great lines in plays — cannot look back on anything they’ve done with pride and satisfaction: they may revel in their pleasures, but take no pleasure in their revels. That’s not always the case, but it sounds nice.

On their deathbeds, they seem to wallow in their crapulence as much as those who never heard of The Simpsons. And that burns the rest of us up. Is there no price to pay in this world for immorality?

No, not really. Not necessarily, and certainly not proportionately. We (the moral folks) try to comfort ourselves with thoughts of a comeuppance in an afterlife, but that is cold comfort. Suffice it to say that cold comfort does not always suffice.

So I hope you can bear the whips and scorns of outrageous fortune, because that is the only kind you are going to get. The moral person sometimes does manage to shuffle off this mor[t]al coil with head held high, though, which sounds complicated but isn’t. And that’s reason enough to want to be a moral person. Oh, and I’ll bet the founder of your religion said it’s worth an awful lot, too, so you can bet He’s looking out for those hero kids and others like them.

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Do you have something you’d like to share? A link? A joke? Some words of wisdom? A topic to discuss? It’s our nightly Open Thread, and you have the floor.