The conflicting nature of moralism and morality
An exploration of the confounding relationship between moralistic accusations and the pursuit of a true path of virtuosity
Part 2 of the series: Impulsive Reasoning — Late-Night Musings from a Rumbling Mind
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. — John 8:7, King James Bible
Context
Moral accusations seem to be inherent to or a consequence of our relationship with social norms. I want to break down how they work, why they are so prevalent, and how they paint an inaccurate representation of reality.
How I Understand Morality
Having been raised by Western and Judeo-Christian values, morality for most of my young life has followed a binary model. Actions are judged to be either good or bad.
Following this model, every single decision one makes has to be in following a path of righteousness or a path of wrong-doing.
As I grew older and independently investigated how other cultures of the world judge actions and beliefs, they seem to follow the same model. It is clear in all religious dogma, in all folklore stories, in all nationalist myths; there is a constant struggle between what is determined to be right and wrong.
I infer, given these circumstances, that classifying and judging between the good and the bad is a functional and convenient way to understand the world around us and survive in it. Red and crunchy apple, safe to eat — good. Dark and mushy apple, not safe — bad.
In fact, the ability to judge is already present in small children. They don’t really understand why things are right or wrong, but they can recognize an action as being bad and can even point out wrong behavior (accusations) and feel guilt.
This early manifestation of judgement in human beings leads me to deduce that this binary judgmental system is quite primitive, and I believe it is safe to assume that the instinctive ability to perceive right from wrong precedes the cognitive ability that later attached a logical explanation to our judgement.
Judgement is a part of a more complex mechanism for basic survival.
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Moral teachings tend to have stories attached to them.
My favorite psychologist, Carl Jung, defined a series of archetypes that reside in our collective consciousness; a term he coined and that refers to a set of shared beliefs, morals, and ideas that unite a society. Each of these archetypes, be it the King or the Warrior, have both a virtuous and a shadow version of themselves — the King is just, generous, and magnanimous, whereas the Shadow King is tyrannical and despotic. Anyways, he argues that these archetypical characters show up repeatedly throughout history in our stories . In consequence, our collective consciousness gets passed on to succeeding generations. It’s a convincing argument and may explain how morality survives from generation to generation.
Looking at real-world examples, stories in the form of religious texts, myths attached to history — founding fathers of a nation, for example —, and other narratives are perpetrated on and on from father to son.
The need for the story is probably explained that as we developed greater cognitive abilities, we started seeking for the why’s of life and the world around us. It is from these stories that we find instruction, inspiration, and an explanation to why we must behave in a certain way.
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I want to break down morality into two parts:
- The judgmental aspect: a heirloom from a distant past. We instinctively look to classify things in a binary way, as it affects our chances of survival.
- The narrative aspect: Each moral value is sustained by a story. This is a fabrication of more sophisticated cognitive abilities developed further in our evolutionary trail.
Morality is, then, a complex set of stories that is passed-down to enshrine and sacralize a culture’s definition of righteousness and virtue, built-upon a primitive urge to discern situations in order to behave in an advantageous manner for our survival.
Can human beings be moral?
Morals seem to be in direct conflict with our true selves.
In the narratives of moral teachings, virtuous and righteous characters tend to overcome their inner impulses and emotions to become a higher version of themselves; they suppress their humanity. They are driven by or reach a point to be driven by the principles that are being promoted in the story.
If these characters have to overcome their own humanity, then being human and being moral seem to be at odds with each other.
This impulsive and “human” side is also widely explored in philosophy and science. Nietzsche defined our impulsive and sinful selves as our Dionysian side — also the side that loved and laughed. Freud separated our consciousness into three layers, with the Id being the one governed by the primitive aspects of our emotions (hunger, rage, lust, and fear). Modern anthropologists and neuroscientists refer to the limbic system in our brains, which are the most ancient components in our head — presumably shared with other, less-cognitively developed species hence, colloquially referred to as the “reptilian brain” —, as the ignitor of a large share of our decisions and reactions (I personally believe it to be the spark that flames all of our decisions and reactions).
I could make an entire essay on this topic, but, in principle, with all of this stacked against us, we seem engineered in a way that makes it impossible to reach the moral ideals that we set out for ourselves.
How morality can descend into moralism
Descends. Yes, I mean that. I believe moralism can become a degeneration of morality. If I’m to be inspired by Jungian dualism, moralism can act as a shadow morality.
Modern moralism presents itself as righteous and virtuous, but quickly becomes judgmental, short-sided, and impulsive.
I’m convinced moralizing is one of the most dangerous forms of discourse. It is also addicting. Twitter-philes, journalists, bloggers, gossipers, priests, political authorities, academics, and, more recently, celebrities, are all eager to pass moral judgement. The act of moralizing becomes a short-cut to a false sense of moral virtue.
Moralism can be used and frequently has been an inhibitor of free-speech and intellectual discourse. Far from the moral virtues it claims to uphold, it can fall into the darkness of self-interest and rage, feeds the mob, and condemns those who dissent to silence.
The moralistic machine
In making sense about all of this it became clear that moralism leans heavily in the judgement aspect of morality. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
If we refer back to the Plane of Belief Systems (pictured above), we can observe that moral virtues fall on the far-end of the idealist axis. This makes fitting moral teachings into the real world very difficult.
To explain this, I drew a moralistic machine. This machine takes an input (a real-world situation) and outputs a judgement on it. How the function works is unclear, but it usually takes in very few variables into consideration, leading to a reduction in the complexity of the situation being judged.
Reducing real-life situations into very simple stories is very inaccurate because the world is, in fact, a messy result of a multitude of factors. Hence, when attempting to judge a situation according to moral standards, it is almost unavoidable to reduce and obviate the subject’s complexity and context to fit it into an overly simplistic model.
How I make sense of all of this
We’ve explored the idealistic nature of moralism and how improbable it is for us to uphold these ideals. Also, we’ve condemned moralism and explained why it can be so inherently inappropriate and inaccurate — and dangerous.
In order to close this topic, I also want to bring awareness to the dangers of fitting complex situations into simplistic models.
The truth is, things are not simple. And we should all make an effort to increase empathy, our understanding of situations, and most importantly, eliminate our self-concession of moral authority before passing judgement.
In Easter Sunday, regardless of religious affiliation, I invite you to reflect on one of the greatest teachings of Jesus, where he speaks about this very matter. He condemns moral accusations: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” — John 8:7, King James Bible.
— This is part of a series of reflexions that come from the heart, so they don’t follow any particular order. I just like to have discussions (sometimes with my own mind) and am partaking in this beautiful journey of writing in an effort to crystalize a few things that I think about. They are not exhaustive in their investigative nature and exclusively reflect my point of view. To my readers, I invite you to embrace this as a simple interpretation of reality and, if you wish, use the comment section as a forum. —
