Morality : 1

Today's argument is going to stretch the limits quite a bit. I will attempt to uncover the meaning of morality and what it entails in the society we live today.

Let us approach with a slight philosophical approach. There is a schism of views amongst philosophers regarding morality. Some claimed that there is the existence of a universal, objective truth that is independant of all changes, circumstances and influence. Later on, it was to be disputed by certain renowned philosophers, who argued that morality can never be divorced from the context in which it is construed or interpreted. Basically, the latter, unlike the former, believed that morality is permutated by forces of changes and is contingent on the surrounding circumstances.

Let us start with the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant. A French utilitarian (Benjamin Constant) asks Kant to consider whether, in Kant's mind, it would not be right to lie to a murderer who asks whether our friend, who he means to kill, is hiding in our house. Kant sticks with his opinion and responds that "To be truthful (honest) in all declarations, therefore, is a sacred and absolutely commanding decree of reason, limited by no expediency," including human life.

To the absolute moralist, there are no grey spots, no overlapping regions, no ambiguity regarding what is considered moral or immoral. Referring to the aforesaid quote, it is quite certain that Kant believed lying to be inveteratively wrong, or immoral, nonwithstanding the circumstances. However, Kant seemed to have forgotten that he is conceding to a murderer's request, and has implicitly became the accomplice of crime. He may well have abstained from the immoral act of lying, but he has contributed to an act of great evil, or immorality, by aiding in the murder. For one can certainly claim that if Kant had chosen to lie, it is highly probable that a murder would have been thwarted, and a life saved. So is the context truly irrelevant when it comes to morality?

Absolute morality, as it is defined, carries an extremely vague undertone. Retrospective look at past events immediately indicates how much intepretations or definitions of morality has changed over time. In the past abortion was considered extremely immoral in all forms -including rape victims. In present days, more leeway has been granted in the definition of morality regarding abortion. Should a victim of rape be made to bear, conceive and care for a child that is not borned out of love or wedlock, but out of a event of brutality, malignance, and opprobrium? Should the victim be reminded constantly by her child of the odious act commited on her many years back? How about the children? By default, these children are already denied of proper parents, and the spectre of rape might linger in the mothers heart. This undeniably might led to uncontrollable vent of outburst of rage on the poor child. Who is the victim and who is not?

I have high skepticism and repulsion towards morality embraced by people, which at no cost to themselves, results in impugnation, violation and denigration of other individuals' lives. Such as the controversial case of a doctor who refused adamantly to treat a rape victim, claiming that his religion does not permit the execution of abortion. People like him who expounds on such morality, do not bat any eyelid or care two hoots on events such as this, which quite evidently warrants more judgement than simply what one religion preaches. Is it moral then to preserve a human life, oblivious and disregardful to plight of the victim? I leave it to you to decide.

Can morality ever be absolute? There are certain behaviours, or actions, such as rape and murder, which i can consider immoral and many others, if not all, i believe, would easily concur with. First of all, how do we actually interpret such actions as grossly immoral? Are we congenital moralist, bornt with a set of inexorable moral values? From what source do we derive our intepretations and knowledge of morality and how do we subsequently construct our own values of morality? Note the line in bold. By this, I am going to push the argument abit by putting forth a rather intrepid, audacious point of view. We grow up each in a different environment, and we are subjected constantly to influences from our heritage, from the media, from our parents, from our friends, from the books that we read and the pictures that we see. This will result in very personalised, very arbitary internalisation of what is considered moral and what is not. Some people consider simple acts of smoking or littering to be acts of immorality, while some do not. In a more extreme view, there are recidivious murders or rapist who clearly do not view their acts as immoral or evil. Why so? I can only surmise that our morality is constructed based on our environment. This is only a hypothetical view, but I suspect I might not be too far off. Delving into the circumstances of their childhoold would most likely review one that is devoid of proper parental teaching, excessive exposure to graphic violent images, to convoluted tainted materials, to a socially introverted, misanthropic teenage or adult life. I will be careful not to paint a extremely sleazy generalisation, but in a broader sense statistics and studies have shown it to be manifestly true. When any of the important elements are missing in the equation, the end result would be people like them. People will see little or nothing immoral about killing raping or stealing. To re emphasized my point of view, people are not bornt with a set of moral values. Nor are we in possession of some kind of Bible of morality. Morality, or moral values, if something we derive, construe, construct and intepret based on our environment and the influences it asserts on us.

Some people have pointed out that there has to be a universal absolute form of morality because the recognition that killing is irredeemably immoral is overwhelming and almost unequivocally endorsed by people across the world. Killing is a nefarious act no doubt, and definitely any brutal act of rape will chafe the choler of any sympathetic, righteous individual. But referring to my previous point, it can never be proven that everyone views murder in the same light. For the most extreme example, perpetrators themselves do not even recognize the immorality of the act itself, with the most notorious of criminals, such as the recently indicted criminal who went on a killing spree on prostitutes, elicit a form of joy or stabilising pleasure from the very act of crimes they commit. Perversity aside, it debunks the belief that everyone will inherenly believe that murder is immoral and wrong. Even amongst those who denounce murder, there is a vascillation of views from the more hardline, more unforgiving to the more compassionate. This plurality of views hardly gives evidence that morality itself is an absolute definite notion in the world as we know of today.

No doubt morality itself ought to acknowledge the monstrosity and vileness of certain acts, such as rape. However, what ought to be and what actually is, are two distinct seperate matters really. In the normative sense, most of the people i can assume, are on a consensus when it comes to believing that morality ought to encompass such acknowledgement. But the truth is morality can never be uniform across all individuals. True enough, there are overlapping ambits between individuals who have very subjective, personal codes of morality. One must note that even with 2 people who concur with each other on the immorality of killing or raping, they might also disagree on alcholism, gambling, smoking. I believed, very personally, that our moral views are founded upon both influence, and a sense of intuition and self preservation. We are appalled at the sight of gruesome murderous persecutions or bloodshed, because we instinctively, and subconsciously relate it to our own lives. We begin to cringe because we might just be one of those we see, or our family members might be one of those that we see being culled or exterminated, as in the pogroms or the holocaust against jews. We are also bornt in the world where living, or the struggle for survival, and the continual effort to strive towards prolongment of life itself, or the quality of life (through medical advances and research), is the norm, the order of nature, the status quo of mankind. Henceforth we tend to systematically reject such scenes because it goes against the environment we live in, the thoughts that are imbibed into us. We grow up watching tv shows where the bad guys are apprehended and punished, and where our parents or pastors preached on the sins of murder. The almagamation of both external influence, societal norms and inherent intuitions, compel us to denouce such acts. We are live for the want for survival, and indeed seeing acts of destruction of mutilation, of intrusion, goes against the intrinisic notion of survivability. We recognise such acts of destruction that pose tangible fear, harm and threat to our livelihoods, and we connect with the victims of such immoral acts because we unknowingly place ourselves in their shoes.

Regrettably, absolute moralist has in one fell swipe plainly divided the world into one that is moral or immoral. Truth be told, according to such antes of morality one would be hard pressed to find one single individual that is truly definitve of or adherent to such a construement of morality. The point is ,many people have defined things such as "homosexuality, incest, adultery, pornography and taking drugs" as sinful.How did they construe such a moral view? Morality views are imbibed into people as mentioned through various external sources. So how do we define such objective morality based on subjective influences by their environment in their personal life?

Of course i would like to end it off on a rather controversial note, " One man's morality is another man's immorality." As much as there are tangential overlapping moral values evocated by most individuals, there are also the ambiguous areas where disagreements are prevalent. Many conservatives view homosexuality, or even pornography immoral, while others view it as a right of choice in privacy. So who is right? Is there ever a thing as divinely ordained morality? Are we to decide what kind of acts if worth performing ,what kinds of lives are worth living, or what kind of a person worth being?