ABSTRACT
In every stratified society the locus of morality is at the apex of the pyramids of power, wealth, and social honor. As those structures become more stratified with more and more layers of bureaucratic offices between the apex and the effector apparatus, morality becomes diluted at each echelon; dissociated from the individual. While many disagree about the structure of mass society, the referent is to a society in which a large-scale organization is the typical unit of social involvement for most of people through the daily routines. Tactics of morality that assign moral authority, moral action, and moral onus to the boss, the owner, the manager, the professor, or the general—mystify and misdirect moralists. They measure the moral development of individuals rather than examine the social location of moral action. The effort to measure self-esteem or to scale social honor becomes an exercise in futility.
