There is nothing wrong or right until you define it

Image Courtesy: Natalie Rhea Riggs, Unsplash.com

I don’t always think in binary.

Human nature has always tried to reduce the world to binary states – good and evil, friend or foe. Politicians argue their policies are the “right thing to do”, that their opponents have the “wrong” ideas. We worry about which food are “good” or “bad”; lawyers demand yes or no answers. Yet few situations are black or white. Medicines do “good” and “harm”, simultaneously; wars do not just involve “good guys” and “bad guys”.

The problem with binary thinking is that it draws us into reductive “if this, then that” reasoning. If my neighbor parties every night then he isn’t a responsible person or exploring sexual fantasies makes one an "immoral" person. Putting people on a black/white scale of good/bad is problematic for me. It creates a world where something or someone is good or bad. One is either liberal or conservative, patriot or traitor, ambitious or lazy.

Some things in life are indeed black and white and are indeed absolutely right or wrong. To say that there is no right or wrong shows a lack of integrity. But any authority figure, divine or otherwise that tells you what we should think is right or wrong is at best some petty human’s attempt to control its peers. At worst, an oppressive mentality and a penchant for judgments. I guess you could call me a freethinker to the extent of questioning established beliefs and forming my opinion on the basis of reason, independent of authority or tradition.

But can something like morality, which is by nature not empirical, be distilled down to a binary choice between correct and incorrect? Is morality absolute or relative?

Moral relativism is the theory that moral judgments and not absolute but rather, relative to the specific norms, culture, history and standard of an individual or group of people. Early discussions of moral relativism are first found in ancient Greece, five centuries BC. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, narrated the Persian king Darius asking Greeks in his court whether they would ever consider eating their dead fathers’ bodies, as was the custom of another tribe, the Indian Callatiae. They recoiled in horror and there was nothing that could ever convince them to do so. Darius then turned to the Callatiae and asked them if they would consider cremating their fathers’ bodies, as was the Greek custom. They too, were horrified at the idea. Here, Herodotus quotes the port Pindar, who famously said; “custom is lord of all”; people’s beliefs and practices, and by extension, their idea of morality, is shaped by custom.

Finnish philosopher Edvard Westermarck famously said: “I am not aware of any moral principle that could be said to be truly self evident.” He argued that there was no “absolute standard” in morality, and if people could accept this, then they would “perhaps be…more tolerant in their judgments, and more apt to listen to the voice of reason.”

However, advocating moral relativism means that we cannot ever really condemn an action or position, because we admit that relative to the actor, it may well be morally correct. The British philosopher Walter Terence argued; “We shall tolerate widow-burning, human sacrifice, slavery and thousand of abominations which are, from time approved by moral code or another. But this is not the kind of toleration that we want.”

Richard Rorty, the late American philosopher, agrees that no moralities can be conclusively proved to be true or false, but he points out that this does not mean that relativists cannot prefer some moralities over others. This preference is likely to be based on the norms and values of one’s own society, otherwise known as an ethnocentric approach.

There are strong arguments for and against moral relativism and we continue to be morally divided because a lot of things in life are gray.

The most profound being; “is man/woman basically good or evil?”

My answer would be that a good person like you and me has her faults. And the so-called bad person has her positive traits. By this idea, I believe that just because my neighbor parties every night or displays promiscuity doesn't qualify to brand them "irresponsible" or "immoral", thereby, shunning them based on ones moral view. I believe we all know deep in our soul right from wrong. We each have our own moral compass that guides us. It doesn’t mean we have to, or even should, run around town, spouting our convictions like they are a set of fiery commandments. Your morality is yours.

So my golden mantra is “don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want someone to do to you.” That doesn’t mean its wrong or right - that is determined by each person, their experience, and their perspective.

In the words of researcher, Everett, “flexible morality may be a better guide to making difficult decisions in a complex world. But if you want people to trust and cooperate with you, its better to let them know your moral values are absolute”.