July 31, 2005
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Moral Requirement is Dangerous
Moral Requirement is Dangerous. The idea that you must do X in
order be a good person has lead many down the road to amongst the
greatest evils the world has ever seen. So why then are we so keen on
‘duty’ or ‘obligation’ ethics?I am not a cosmopolitan. I don’t believe that I have a moral obligation
to help those who I have never known and never seen and never met and
yet supposedly ‘know’ are starving somewhere in another nation that I
could easily save with you a miniscule irrelevant contribution that
will barely put a dent on my current state of comfort. Indeed i’m a lot
worse than that. I don’t believe I have a moral obligation to help the
starving in this country, or in this state, or even in this
neighborhood in which I live mearly because I am aware that they
probably exist and I can help them without hardly trying.To put it another way, I don’t believe that I have a moral obligation
to help the guy I see drowning in a pool nearby when the only hardship
it would cause me is that I would get my shoes wet. I don’t feel that I
am obligated to do so that I should be condemned for not doing so and
possibly locked up for reckless indifference.You see I don’t believe in moral obligation. I don’t believe in
‘duties’ and I don’t believe in the utter evil of ‘indifference’.
These are all relatively modern ideas and I feel they are not just
flawed but extremely dangerous ideas. They are largely highly regarded
now because we are still riding the coattails of some devastating moral
disasters namely the holocaust and we are also re-examining our outlook
on life having realized that whole societies have engaged in activities
for thousands of years that now seem clearly to be amongst the most
evil things that human beings can do, namely keep slaves. The current
belief is that the way to prevent such moral flaws in the future is to
have a kind of constant vigilance against evil, a determination to
always do good no matter what and at all costs.But you see, all of this ends of cheapening the good. Actions that are
righteous. A choice to do something good because it is required,
because you are obligated doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment.
At best you’ve avoided being evil yet again.I think a moral philosophy should be grounded on the perception of a
good act as being laudable, valueable, praise-worthy, glorious and
amazing. If you save the life of the drowning person not caring about
whether you got your shoes wet, you haven’t just done what you’re
supposed to, you’ve done something GOOD, something that matters. You’ve
risen above and beyond what was required of you to save a life that
would otherwise have simply been lost. That’s what you’ve done. That’s
good! And if you go beyond that and save people all over the world who
are utter strangers to you, that’s even better! What makes it good is
largely that you don’t have to do it, that it isn’t required of you in
order for you to be considered a decent person. Rather it is through
doing the better thing regardless of the consequence you show yourself
to be a better person, a more virtuous person. And it is you whom
others should emulate.But if you never help anyone or hurt anyone your entire life that
doesn’t mean you are the scum of the Earth. It means you’re just an
normal human being neither good nor bad, just a person leading his or
her life nothing more nor less. And that’s true whetehr during the
course of your life some evil people turn the world upside down into a
universe of darkness, or likewise good people bring about a heaven on
Earth. The circumstnaces don’t make your decisions good or bad, they
are that inherently. Whether you are a good person or not is entirely
determined by your tendency to act toward the better more praise-worthy
actions even when you don’t have to.
