PoAC: Morality questions, via stress_kitten

The following question(s) about morality come from essay topics that stress_kitten posted in her journal. I'm not writing essays, mind; I don't have that much energy at the moment. But I will tackle them in the form of a PoAC.


1. Why should we care about morality at all? What is morality for? How would you persuade people to care about being moral?

I'm going to tackle the second part of that first.

The purpose of morality in modern terms is to provide some way of judging and choosing one's actions, and to a lesser extent the actions of others. (A great number of people get these backwards, btw.) This is important because certain actions lead to serious consequences for ourselves and others. Without some way of defining what is right and wrong, we are left to sort things out based on what feels good at the time. Often, what feels good at the time is not the action which will lead to the best consequence. For example, if one chooses to take every nice Friday afternoon to go golfing, and uses sick time to do so, one is likely to: a) get behind in one's work; b) be discovered; c) lose their job; d) result in more stringent controls of sick time even for people who are not abusing it. By doing what felt good at the time instead of what was right, the golfer has created some possibly serious consequences for many people around him.

Now, why should we care about being moral? Morality provides a benchmark for behaviour. Difficult decisions need to be made regularly. Moral people look at their choices and ask themselves which is the right thing to do - in other words, which will have the best short- and long-term consequences? Sometimes these choices are at an individual level - should I have another piece of cake tonight? - and sometimes they are at a societal level - should I engage in civil disobedience against this unjust law? - and sometimes they are somewhere in between, as with the golfer. But wherever they lie, the existence of an objective (or mostly objective) code of behaviour gives us a way of choosing a course that is not dependent on emotion, or possibly of judging our actions for the purpose of self-education later.

How would I persuade people to care about being moral?

There are two ways. The first is the social conditioning method: if you are mostly polite, friendly and helpful, and if you do not steal or lie to people or destroy things randomly, society will usually return the favour. That is, the chances of being treated well increase dramatically when you habitually treat others well. This is, basically, the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The problem is, it doesn't always work. Plenty of people do not behave this way, and sometimes people who are trying to act well get treated poorly as a result of other people's lack of moral behaviour. When this happens, moral people have a choice to make: do they continue to act well because it's the right thing to do, or do they give into temptation and lash out? A great deal of the trouble in our society is caused by people who have been treated poorly for so long and so consistently that they decide moral behaviour is no longer working, and they might as well give as good as they've been getting for so long. This is the seedy underbelly of the Golden Rule: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

So, on to the second: consistency.

A person who operates by some kind of moral code has a consistency to conscious decisions that is lacking in amoral people. Consistency has many, many benefits in the long-term. It gives a person a work ethic that makes him more likely to be able to hold down a job. It results in a way of treating people that is more likely to make for good long-term relationships of all kinds. Moral consistency increases one's chances of being successful in life.

Again, this is not a sure thing, because not everyone does it, and also because even moral people make bad choices on a fairly regular basis. So there is an element to morality which is often overlooked, but keeps it from being a burden too heavy to carry: forgiveness.

A truly moral person is one who knows that not everyone will live up to their own code, and that holding grudges is not worth the effort. True morality requires an ability to forgive those who fall short of that goal, both for their sake and for one's own. Perfect morality is impossible for imperfect humans. We need to be able to forgive mistakes, so as to continue to grow as polite, helpful, friendly people.



As an essay, this lacks a lot. It's not very coherent. But it's a start.

Comments, anyone?