DECIPHERING MORALITY

I was at home for the winter break and like almost every time, I was bored and didn’t know what to do. While watching TV, I was so bored that I started watching a cartoon like a 10-year-old. Amidst the chaos, I came across this one scene in a cartoon which triggered a series of thoughts in my mind.

In the scene, a tiger was crawling through the bushes looking for a meal. It was trying to get hold of a rabbit. That’s when the main guy appears out of nowhere, punches the tiger in the face and saves the rabbit. Everyone was happy and that’s what one would call a happy ending. His actions were driven by a sense of justice. The guy saving the rabbit was an example of bravery and good will, but what amazed me though was the source for his sense of justice (or the cartoonist’s). What gives us our morality and how valid are those principles that we have? Is morality absolutely necessary for survival? Why do moral values even exist?

In the scene, he saves the rabbit and gets back to his daily chores as usual, but think from the tiger’s perspective. The tiger needs to survive and is a carnivore, sooner or later it’s going to kill another animal to feed upon and stay alive. Is the tiger doing something wrong by taking the lives of other animals to survive? If not, who gets to decide that taking a life is wrong or right and under what circumstances is it justifiable. If you intervene in the tiger’s hunting sessions rendering it foodless, it will die and then you would have become a murderer yourself.

The fact that morality is portrayed in such a manner to children is bothersome to me because it only increases their confusion. While their parents read out these kinds of fairytales with their one hand while at the same time feeding them chicken with their other hand, which if the children spend time contemplating, they are going to find it paradoxical in nature. I am not saying killing animals for food is wrong, just pointing out the irony in the whole scenario.

I am a nihilist myself, which makes morality to me more or less comparable to cell phones. The fact that we have lived without cell phones and morals for quite a while before we invented those, shows that they are not objectively necessary for survival. But certainly cell phones and morals both make life much less complicated. Still, it cannot be ignored that ethical behavior is not something inherent in nature.

Moral values are not intrinsic, they are merely a set of rules that a species develops over time (some never even get there) because that’s what minimizes unfair behavior. It’s true that we have biologically evolved to feel empathy. It still does not justify the credibility of moral values as evolution itself is subjective in nature. Most of our morals are obtained by subconsciously conducting thought experiments in various scenarios. All we do is imagine ourselves in the victim’s place and evaluate the situation. If the act is beneficial for the victim then it’s a good thing and a bad thing otherwise.

Here’s a small trick I use to evaluate the credibility of any given topic. I imagine the universe without a part of it and reflect whether the topic under discussion still holds its significance. If you consider morality, here’s what I do, I imagine the universe without life. If there is no life, then anything that happens is just a cosmic reaction. If there is no one to pass judgment saying it’s bad or good, it’s like good or bad do not exist at all and hence morality is something contingent to life. 

This whole thing raises an interesting question to ponder about. If good or bad is something relative and is not objective in nature, how valid are religious beliefs? Which are based on these morals, which themselves are questionable. Religion teaches us to be morally good and the holy books urge us to act ethically (that worked out well !) but if moral values are not inherent in nature, rather more like social norms then it’s evident that the holy books themselves are human-made and hence lose their credibility as absolute truth. 

If good and bad don’t exist how can hell and heaven exist? How can a just GOD exist because the word “just” loses its meaning without objective morality? Who has the final authority? Nevertheless, morality is an important part of a successful civilization and we must preserve this trait.

This article does not intend to imply to lose moral values, in fact, I recommend quite the opposite. It merely scrutinizes the nature of the theme.

Thoughts are better served when they are shared. so comment your thoughts.

- Ajet