[Lalwendë]

Course, the more I read that morality is based upon what society you live in and what age you live in, the more it sounds like morality is indeed relative! That's on both a global and a temporal basis. But even within one nation 'morality' can be very different. To me, it's instinctively abhorrent that a woman should feel she ought to go around with her face covered, but to the woman living just a few houses away, it's the correct moral thing to do. And that's where the bind lies.

I do my best not to judge (though I acknowledge that it is pretty much inevitable that I will judge people - as a human I am constantly comparing people to find out "Are they like me? Are they not?" - something which stems from our basic survival instinct). In a society, especially a modern society, a multi-cultural society, sometimes it's the only way that you can get along with your neighbours and colleagues, to accept that you will never agree, and that their morality is very different to your own. That's why morality is relative in the modern world. If we all conform to one 'norm' then everyone in a multi-cultural society must behave in the same way, including women all either wearing or not wearing the hijab; the fact that women do not tells us morality is not at all 'fixed' but that it fluctuates.

And that's why I say it is extremely rude to place the highly emotive and loaded term 'immoral' on someone for who they like and do not like in a piece of fiction. We have no knowledge whatsoever of that person, their background (cultural, religious, political, economic, temporal, geographical etc), their intentions, their other likes/dislikes (if they generally like evil characters or good ones, and if this is just one instance of liking a bad guy or one in a long sequence) - so we cannot simply say He or She is immoral based on whether they like an Orc or an Elf.

That is what is commonly known as Judging A Book By It's Cover.

Something we should all avoid. Me too. I tend to react when I see a chav (holding on to my handbag and wondering where the car is etc), but I find that if I actually speak to said chav, he's usually perfectly ordinary and up to no harm at all (and often quite pleased to be finally spoken to like a human being!). Basing your moral judgement of someone based on something as purely surface as which characters they like or do not like without knowing much, much more about that person is at the root of prejudice.

"You do not like the same thing as I do, therefore I do not think you are as moral as I am" is not far from "You do not follow the same faith/politics/football team as I do, therefore you are not as good as I am". We all do it, we should perhaps try to avoid doing it and confront our prejudices - it's a lifelong struggle, constantly challenged when someone of the opposite view confronts us, but one we have to deal with or we may as well drop the civilised front and all pick up our bone axes and go for it.