Making a choice - a ritual of the present liberal democracy

Abstract

Does morality have an effect on politics? Does politics influence morality? Asks the author and answers: moral values stimulate political solutions and political solutions create morality. The relation between morality and politics is interesting due to the fact that both spheres make a cultural phenomenon and both can be read parallely. Culture is a set of opinions common for members of a given social group. It is a mental reality that is common. These opinions are expressed by symbols. Both politics and morality expect to make choices from us. We cannot base on a ready-made way of activity. The world does not give us ready for use solutions - it gives us lots of proposals and a multitude of goods. Affirmation of this state of affairs makes us feel lost. In the author’s opinion, choices made by contemporary man submit to the twofold processes: economization and esthetization. Since there are many goods, I behave like in a store: I simply „take a product from a shelf’. Nowadays such products became: identity, tradition, religion, love, a body, clothes, and even death. Economic calculations and attractiveness of the product decide about my choice. These processes apply to both political and moral choices.