What Is Moral, And What Is Immoral?
Exploring ethics in a world full of malevolence.
What is morality and immorality?
morality
noun
principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
the extent to which an action is right or wrong.
Also, the plural of morality, “moralities” can signal a set of moralities which is essentially a set of beliefs about what is right or wrong.
Immorality, of course, is the opposite of morality.
Now, we could easily also go into ethics here, because they are similar - but not identical - topics.
Morals usually differ from person to person, being either based on an ideology, religion, or other sets of beliefs which encourage a certain way of thinking. Additionally, morals rarely changed, since people are very keen on protecting their all-good moralities - but also because some people form subjective morals through personal experience, which is very hard to over-look, especially as an overly-emotional individual.
Ethics are more of a public consensus, yet still, they change depending on the place and people living there. Ethics are mostly socially incentivized, and appeal to broader questions or dilemmas.
Sets of ethics most commonly appear as laws. Different societies have different ethics, and therefore it gets harder to pin-point an objective answer on what is ethical or moral, since it is now tied to around three things: the laws in your area, public’s general consensus, especially of those closer to you, and your own personal experience.
Exploring morality and ethics further
Metaethics
This method of studying ethics is one which analyzes the language we use. First, we must understand what we are even talking about in order to come to a conclusion.
What is “good” and “bad”? In ethics, what is “good” is therefore ethical, and what is “bad” is unethical, obviously. So, being good should have something to do with doing the right things, and making the just decisions in battles of ethics. What does “right” mean? Objectively, it means that it is correct. Having a well-written set of rules for society would make this easier, as in laws, but then again, they vary, and every system has loop-holes. Our society should focus a lot more on making the environment we live in more certain of its right and wrong-doings. So, an action is good when people mostly agree on the conclusion that the action is right, or when it does not inherently cause any harm or disrupt the functionality of our society. Freedom insinuates that one can do as he pleases, as long as he is not affecting anything or anyone.
But, would affecting himself still be ethical? Self-harm is anything but moral. It does not directly disrupt life on our planet, but it causes pain; direct physical pain to the person committing this atrocity, but also indirect psychological pain to those close to that person. Affecting those people mentally might disrupt the normal completion of their daily tasks, and therefore affecting society. So, a chain reaction can form from these sorts of self-inflicted immoral actions.
( On the topic of self-harm, I want to point out that the act of self-harm ruins any opportunity for self-respect. You must be your number one biggest supporter, because life is so short, and rendering it worthless is not the solutions. If your actions led you to such misery, because they did, at least let your well-being in the hands of fate and your welfare in the hands of other people’s souls, for you do not know what is right for you. )
Now, what is “bad” or “wrong”? Something bad or wrong - which is immoral or unethical - is simply the opposite of what is good, but when is something “bad”? Once again, when the public agrees that it is wrong, then it is generally accepted as being so, but this whole human deduction is flawed. Humans do not always act in the same way, some acting for their own good, some for the good of others, so if 51% of the population labelled something as bad, it is not necessarily so. Yet, we can measure the wrongness of a situation, by taking into consideration if the actions happening in front of us approach a form of psychopathy, or perhaps they take advantage of scarce products or attributes of people. So, taking advantage of one’s goodness, basically draining and using a lot of rightness - when rejected from that right yourself - is bad or unethical. So, taking more than giving is immoral in most situations.
Again, if people are acting out of the boundaries of normal mental function, they are still likely committing immoral or unethical action, but can they be reprimanded for it? In our legal system, mentally ill people are not held accountable, rightfully-so in most cases, since that human nature or personality fades into their illness, only living a morally-unconscious piece of meat. Yet, some cases involve liars, bad actors, and conmen. They are not just committing immoral crimes for ending up in a situation where they most be judged by our legal system, but they are also trying to avoid rightful punishment by lying. Therefore, from this we can extract that people not getting what they deserve is an ethical conundrum, which is often battled by so-called “karma.” Whether you believe in karma or not, even if people “get away” with acting immorally, some form of disaster will hit their life at one point, and we can always associate that with them getting what they deserved in the first place. Also, from our original hypothetical situation, we can observe that lying is commonly a part of being immoral. Lying is obviously a form of obstructing the truth, and sometimes even placing the blame on others to alleviate your personal responsibility from your actions. A situation like this includes multiple wrong-doings, not only you avoid what you rightfully deserve, for the time being, but someone else gets wrongfully persecuted. Not getting what you deserve is bad, but others getting what they do not deserve is worse. It is an unethical mistake committed by our society.
Prescriptive ethics
For this part, we must understand how people act, through psychologically analyzing some actions.
People can act from three points of viewing the world:
Through egoism
Which is a way of thinking which caters strictly to one’s self-interest. This is how most people act, and rightfully so, because you have a deeper understanding of yourself than you have of anyone else, and you have more interest in yourself than you could have in any other person. This is a basic part of human nature, therefore it should not be morally reprimanded. There are billions of people on this planet, and out of those you can only know yourself well enough to act with such vigor for your well-being.
( On the topic of knowing yourself better than you do anyone else, this means understanding the darkness inside of yourself, which might heavily demoralize some people into truly believing they are worse than anyone else on this planet. If you have such intrinsic hate for yourself, it is most likely due to a lack of basic understanding of our world. There is always someone worse than you out there, because it would be astronomically improbable for you to be the one worst person out of billions, when you have not even committed heinous crimes, hopefully. It is all about perspective when you know everything, and you do, you do know everything about yourself, so the only difference is what you personally want to see in yourself. )
Through altruism
Which is a way of thinking which caters strictly to the interest of others, with common disregard for your own well-being. This, on the other hand, I believe, is impossible, because no one is 100% selfless. Whatever completely selfless action you believe you are partaking in, you are not really. You are deluding yourself into appearing as the most morally-righteous person on our planet, usually to cover some internal guild about past immoral actions. Even donating to charity, which entirely revolves around helping others, creating a proportion of 100% giving and 0% taking. You might not be taking anything from others, but you gain psychological power and confidence, which can alternatively turn into wanting to always appear on a moral high ground to everyone.
As discussed before, it is not immoral to donate to charity or generally do good for your self-interest as well, since you are ultimately doing good and committing very morally praisable actions, but while also gaining a feeling of fulfillment or self-love for all of the lives you might be changing. It is a situation in which everyone wins, yet it becomes problematic, and therefore somewhat immoral, when the so-called selfless, charitable person starts desiring moral advantages from these acts based on helping others. So, doing good could lead to wanting more, which is greed, which is somewhat immoral in some cases.
Through utilitarianism
Which is a way of thinking which takes into consideration the interest of those who are involved in a specific situation. This, ultimately, is logically the ideal way of thinking in situations base on morality, yet it has some flaws, because human opinion cannot be restricted. Judging is normal and I would even go as far to say necessary to have a prospering society, where people are tied down to reality by others. Giving the final word to those involved sounds like a good idea on paper, but how do you know that they are acting 100% on logic and reason, also without affecting other people. Additionally, you cannot totally tell who is part of a situation since some people might deny their involvement or swear that they are a crucial part in the respective matter, because as said before, people act our of self-interest, so they will choose the option which suits themselves.
One of the most discussed ethical dilemmas which is heavily reliant on utilitarianism is the controversial topic of “abortion.” I will thoroughly analyze this dilemma right here, right now, because I am not scared of controversy. I will try to go entirely by facts, logic, and reason.
Abortion has two sides: those who believe it is moral, and those who believe it is immoral. The main question which needs to be addressed is when life begins, and if mothers should thus have special murder rights or simple control over their body. in our time, this question has been answered already, in a very simple manner:
“Life Begins at Fertilization with the Embryo's Conception, when fertilization of the egg is successful. 96% of biologists (5337 out of 5577) affirmed the fertilization view.”
So, now that we know the answer to the most crucial question of this dilemma, we can analyze the ethics of it: Taking the life of another living human being is murder, and it is immoral. Thus, abortion is immoral, if you believe that a child is an independent being. One other common argument is that the child is part of the mother, which if it is, it is still immoral to kill a part of you. It’s effectively self-harm since you are hurting what is part of your body. However you put the issue, it still comes out as immoral, simply because it is not a natural option that humans have. Abortion is not a common practice part of human nature that has simply been modernized by our contemporary society. It was never meant to be a thing.
This example should only serve as an example of how to decide the morality of an action. I am not taking a stance on whether it should be legal or illegal, since that is strictly a political problem, which does not trouble my mind at all. This is the problem with ethics: they are mixed with politics.
“Could” does not mean “should”
This is the essence of ethics, if we were to summarize the nature of every ethical dilemma. Humans, of course, are able to commit unthinkable crimes, and cause mass destruction, but that does not mean that we should.
This concept sounds like common sense when I put it like that, but some people use it as valid reasoning for doing something: “Oh, but I can, so why not, haha?” or “I only live once, so might as well take drugs, and eat junk food, and be immoral, right?” Even in these situations, they sound so stupid, but some people completely disregard their future self because they could enjoy their life as much as possible now, in the present moment.
Effectively, it is immoral to alter the quality your body, purposefully or nothing, because it might not affect you right now, so the chain reaction might not form now, but the future is still an existing concept, so it will hurt your future self.
What influences people to prescribe something as being moral or immoral?
This topic is important in this chapter because your beliefs are the ones that take an action from “could” to “should.” Believe it or not, you can do whatever you put your mind to, but most of the time you just have to be incentivized externally to think that you “should” do something.
Ideologies -
Doctrines, or sets of beliefs are the codes that you live by in life. These are frames that dictate your decisions and thoughts, so they are of very high import. Most of the time, your morals are not yours, because someone else projected them onto you. That, of course, is problematic, because it is how you lose your individuality and become just another person in a world full of immorality.
The most influential ideologies in our current society are those which are closely tied to political issues, because people love to take strong, radical stances on matters, because it makes it easy to rationalize and makes sense of our world: “Whoever thinks differently is simply an immoral wrong-doer.” But also, people feel a strong sense of community when they partake in adopting these common societal political beliefs.
Religion -
The belief in God, in any of its many forms is a set of beliefs which should not be politicized, because it is not trying to attend to any current matters in our world, but simply provide an easily understandable set of values and ethics for people to follow.
Whether people like it or not, religion is not a subjective belief, or it should not be at least. Subjectivizing it would render its attempts at telling us what we should do ineffective, because everyone can interpret them however they want. That is absurd, since a set of rules and ethics should be objective. Example: “Murder is wrong.” You can’t just interpret it as being said in whatever context you can imagine and justify murder in other cases.
We can also touch on the subject of:
Objective and subjective morality (discussed in one of my other posts)
(…) There are two types of morality: objective and subjective.
Objective morality is a consensus of our society that is often based on common sense.
Subjective morality is heavily based on personal experience and it usually deviates from the public's opinions.
Which is better?
Well, objective morality is the only one which is accepted in debates.
As humans, it's our nature to decide if things are right or wrong,
But realistically, we can never have the full context of a situation,
Even if we are part of it, because we can't read the minds of others.
So, it'd be impossible to increase the accuracy of our objective morality,
Since humans have wired sensors for these kinds of situations.
Murder will always be immoral, regardless of this fact's presence in writing.
Ironically, only subjective morality can skew common sense.
Though, subjective morality can quickly turn into an ethics battle.
Subjectivism is the belief that one's mental activity is the only relevant factor of experience.
So, there's no point in arguing with a subjectivist,
Even if they claim to be moral, since that's a mere label.
With subjective morality, the discussion can deviate from morality altogether,
Since situations can be wrong for different people for countless different reasons.
Sometimes, people don't even know their beliefs on subjects,
Because they haven't consulted objectivity enough.
Consulting some moral dilemmas
Moral dilemmas form when one’s moral code is being challenged through usually uncommon but also slightly paradoxical situations. They are very helpful for understanding what you personally think about situations, and how you think, but also for broadening the possibilities which your mind can comprehend.
Examples:
1. Assume your wife is extremely ill, but you have no money with which to buy her medicine. She is extremely uncomfortable, and may die if you don’t get her the medicine she needs. Is it acceptable for you to break into the pharmacy and steal the medicine? This dilemma forces you to consider moral laws versus written laws.
2. You are in a boat with five other people, one of whom is extremely overweight, during a storm, the low-lying boat starts taking on water. If things stay the way they are, everyone is going to drown. However, if you throw the heavy person overboard the remaining five people will live. Do you throw him over for the sake of the greater good, or do you let everyone die?
These questions usually study one’s dedication to his moral code by providing a paradoxical situation in which sticking to their morality would be immoral in another situation. So, it offers a situation where you are moral and immoral whatever you do, therefore you must choose whether you want to server the greater good or stick to your word.
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