On Chickens and Moral Ambiguity

Long have the greatest minds of our generation been plagued with the question: "why did the chicken cross the road?"

Aminata, protagonist of The Book of Negroes, asks a much more insightful question - why on Earth would someone value little bits of metal over a chicken. This is only a small scene in the book, but one that carries a lot of weight when fully explored. Aminata does not get a satisfying answer in the scene, so while discussing this in "class", we attempted to come up with one of our own and perhaps determine if this reason could tie into a larger message about our society.

A chicken has inherent value. It can lay eggs, be eaten, or become a close friend if you happen to be deserted on an island together. It is sensible to trade other goods of similar usefulness for this object. Money, on the other hand, is only small bits of metal, or paper, or plastic, or even just digital records transferred to one another. Most people cannot eat money, money does not lay eggs, and though I've tried to befriend a ten-dollar bill, it did not reply to me with clucking, and was a stale conversational partner.

So, why does money have value? Why would someone trade a valuable chicken in exchange for a useless piece of metal?

The simple answer is this: currency has value because one day all of us suddenly decided that it has value. As long as we keep believing that it has value, it will be valuable. If we all decide that we'd rather take our chickens instead, it becomes worthless again.

This is an admittedly absurd concept, but why not take it a step further than money, into the realm of ideas? The Book of Negroes deals with the horrors of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. At the time where the book is set, just as society has collectively decided that they prefer metal bits to chickens, they've also decided that owning another human being is acceptable. Since the majority (and more importantly, those in power) hold this belief, slavery is considered acceptable.

Yet, this has broader implications. Do we have a such thing as a moral compass, or are our views of right and wrong simply a byproduct of our social surroundings?

My "classmates" and I went even deeper. Let's take an action we all know to be wrong: murder. Now, is this action inherently wrong, or have humans been conditioned to classify it as wrong because it is detrimental to the community? Civilization depends on us adhering to a set of basic rules and practices, so it follows that these rules, after generations of living with others, have become ingrained in us. Perhaps, we even gave them a fancier name: morals.

Now, this isn't an encouragement to go cause harm, but rather a caution. If we are the ones who choose what is right and what is wrong, then we have an enormous responsibility on our shoulders. We, as a society, can deem a horrific action acceptable, or an innocent one condemnable. We have and we doubtlessly will again. Perhaps, though, we can change. If we allow discussion and diversity of opinion to lead our social climate, we may be able to make unprecedented progress in creating a more universally agreed upon definition of right and wrong. Not just those in power, or the majority, or the person who shouts the loudest, but all of us. That is the closest we can come to truly inventing a right and a wrong.

All this from a chicken. I guess you could call this an egg-sistential debate.

- A.M. Ham