You and I have morals. We have a moral compass. Everybody has morals.
As Allyson likes to say, “My morals haven’t changed.” She is the same person today as she was last year. Morals are consistent.
According to Denise Prager, “Thou shalt not murder.” This was mis-translated to “Thou shalt not kill” much later.
I have no problems with “Thou shalt not murder” being a part of my moral code. “Thou shalt not kill” is not a part of my moral code.
I eat meat, this means that an animal was killed by me or for me. I have no issues looking evil in the face and deciding that my life is worth more than his life.
I do not believe I would ever commit murder.
“Thou shalt not steal” is another one. For me, this has turned out to be situational. Have I taken things that do not belong to me? Yes. That’s stealing.
Did I have good cause to do so? At the time I thought I did.
Regardless, not stealing is part of my moral code. I strive to maintain my moral code. Not for the love of God above or the fear of hell below, it is because I believe my moral code is the right thing to do.
I was taught my moral code by my parents and the environment which I grew up in.
When I was at University, we used to play poker. One of the players was very lucky. Not good play, but too many good cards. So I learned how to manipulate cards. Yes, he was cheating. I caught him out. Once I did, the game was played more fairly.
But that ability to manipulate cards fascinated me. I did a lot of practice and was ok at it. Not good. I knew enough to be a little dangerous.
At one of the local bars, I was playing with a deck of cards, it was a bar where you could request many sorts of games, such as Acey-Deucey.
The waitress was interested, so I bet her, cut for high card. If you cut high, I’ll pay double, if I cut high, I get the drink for free.
Four rounds and I won each round. With the ace of spades if I needed high and the 2 of diamonds if I needed to go low. That deck was cold
This was cheating. It was stealing. It was and is against my morals. When I left, I left a tip to cover the cost of my drinks plus another 50%. She didn’t get the double she was hoping for, but she didn’t lose money either.
Note, at the time the standard tip on a $2 drink was $0.25. She got $12 for my 4 drinks, not the $9 if she had not played.
This is morals in action.
The left has a set of morals that appears to be very situational.
J6 is a riot, an insurrection, an armed coup attempt. People running around burning cities is a protest.
They approve of the people doing the burning; thus the situation says that it is a moral protest. They disapprove of the right gathering to protest, that means it is an evil insurrection.
Judge Dugan is an example of that. Their moral compass has spun because they approve of what she did. Because they approved of what she did, the arrest warrant was “fake”, all she did was misdirect the agents, people exit through that door all the time.
Their moral compass shifts depending on “who”. Their moral compass shifts depending on the “intentions” of the person acting.
Comments
9 responses to “Situational Morals”
I’m not quite sure I agree.
I see the left’s morals changing because of political power more than anything else. For whatever reason, they believe they should be in charge, and they will either:
1. Ignore their morals and the law for someone on their side of the aisle, and…
2. Take the strictest view of actions taken be those on the other side.
I need look no further than Elon Musk and Tesla to demonstrate that point. No Teslas would have been vandalized if Musk had supported Harris, you can bet on that.
adult-sized toddlers have not been taught right from wrong.
thinking about things is not what they do
thou shalt not kill unless its a baby in the womb, then its a “choice”
I do not engage adult-sized toddlers, ever
One of the things I’ve learned in my adult life is, pretty much all morals are situational.
Lemme explain:
One way to look at this is the “lesser of evils” dilemma; when one has only bad options, one does his/her best to choose the least-bad option. That doesn’t mean it’s not wrong, but at that time, in that situation, everything else was worse.
The “thou shalt not murder” vs “thou shalt not kill” is an example. In an ideal world, you’d never have to take another human life, but we live in a broken, fallen world, and sometimes — thankfully rarely — intentionally ending a human life is the least-bad choice. That’s one reason why “murder” has a specific definition, with exceptions for situations in which the slaying should not be considered murder (defense of self or others, as a prime example), and why “thou shalt not kill” is likely the more correct translation.
(As an aside, for the believers in the audience, the Old Testament chapters following the Ten Commandments list a bunch of situations in which a person who kills another person is not guilty of murder; “thou shalt not kill” negates all of that Scripture, which is a clear sign of a mis-translation — Scripture does not contradict itself.)
The way I visualize it, one’s actions fall along a spectrum, and are morally measured along that spectrum.
You’ve probably heard some people described as having a moral compass that doesn’t exactly point North (or something similar)? That’s kind of where this visualization of mine comes from. A solid, reliable compass always points the same direction — a line toward the (Magnetic) North Pole — unless affected by significant interference (such as holding a strong magnet under or near it). A crappy, unreliable compass could point any direction based on the slightest interference or circumstance (based on the situation, you might say), including pointing any which-way off the north-south line.
If one has a strong moral compass, that spectrum is linear — like the north-south line, with “good” on one end, “evil” on the other — and his/her actions will always (or at least, most of the time) correlate with whichever choice is furthest from the “evil” end.
But for those with weak moral compasses, their spectrum is two-, three-, or four-dimensional (or more). Instead of a compass that solidly points north-south, it shifts with the wind and contains quantum physics, string theory, black holes, and Einstein-Rosen bridges; the calculus to come up with the “best” choice is so convoluted that anything can mean anything — or nothing, as the case may be in any given moment or situation — and often boils down to, “What’s in it for me?”
For Leftists in The Party[TM], it often focuses on power and control, and sometimes money. For non-Party Leftists, it could be anything: money, or “free stuff”, or — in the absence of any tangible benefit — hurting people they don’t like or just rebelling against their parents’ and/or society’s expectations (which is kind of the same thing), and if all options look roughly equal, it’s “whatever I feel like”.
I had a few additional thoughts after writing this comment that I believe are worth sharing:
First, regarding moral compasses: Think of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise. Cmdr Harrington’s compass points North. Jack Sparrow’s does not … and is later revealed to point toward whatever the person holding it wants most in the world. This is an excellent take on strong and weak moral compasses.
Second, regarding “interference”: For a literal compass, as mentioned, that could be a local magnetic field that overpowers the Earth’s and makes the compass point the wrong way. For moral compasses, it could be a significant “world-rocking” psychological or emotional experience or trauma … the kind which tends to alter one’s core personality traits, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. A person with a strong moral compass might still have a strong compass, but their world is rocked such that the location of their personal “magnetic north” shifts. (Needless to say, a person with a weak moral compass doesn’t need to undergo a significant experience to change directions because their compass never reliably pointed North to begin with.)
On that note, it’s also important to recognize that not everyone’s “magnetic north pole” is in exactly the same place — though most of us are fairly close. The trait of a strong moral compass isn’t that a person’s figurative magnetic poles align with our own; it’s that they act and measure their actions along that linear north-south spectrum, wherever theirs happens to be. Thus, a person can commit evil acts but nevertheless have a strong moral compass — their North just doesn’t align with ours, and in extreme cases may even point to our South.
Anyway, just a few observations, worth every penny you’re paying for them. 😀
Archer:
Correct on all points.
Morals must be situational because the world is imperfect. However, as to say, a spectrum is one thing. Wildly swinging about a the wind blows is another.
Folks on the right trend to track in the same general direction. Right is right, wrong is wrong. The left… not so much.
I will admit, I am not exactly 100% perfect, but what are the details?
A sitting helps a violent criminal evade the police? Not OK.
A judge is lenient on a poverty stricken shoplifter? Maybe
The issue isn’t the grey areas we all have. It’s the obviously OK versus obviously contrary to civilized behavior. To often the left chooses the contrary route for unsupportable reasons.
To often the left chooses the contrary route for unsupportable reasons.
Or chooses to be OK with it when someone on their side does it, but howls and riots when someone on our side does it.
If a conservative judge had helped a gun owner evade BATFE agents who held an arrest warrant for owning “a collection of parts that could be assembled into an unregistered silencer” (a.k.a. a soup can and a Brillo pad, in the same room), by sneaking him out the jury door, the Left would be foaming at the mouth and calling for that judge’s head.
But when a Leftist judge helps an illegal alien — charged with actual violent crimes (read: not paperwork errors) and facing deportation — evade ICE agents, it’s fine, nothing to see here. She’s doing the “right thing”.
If a member of the Trump family were accused of similar crimes as Hunter Biden and Trump had pardoned them, it would be “the height of nepotism” and “proof this country is elitist” and “extremely dangerous to our democracy”.
Joe pardons Hunter and it’s fine, he’s just being a good father for his troubled son.
And perhaps that’s what Chris meant by “situational morals” in the OP: the morality of an action is measured not by the action itself, but by who took it and who benefits from it and a host of other tangential or unrelated things. And in my comment, the “who” is one of those 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. dimensions the Left includes in their moral calculus, but the Right does not because the “who” simply should not matter.
One trouble with evaluating moral consistency of groups like the media is that they’re generally making a case to try to convince people of a certain position on an issue, and as such they adopt whatever framework they deem expedient to their argument.
If I’m arguing with a six year old who wants more candy I might make some argument to them about how we only have a limited supply, and so he shouldn’t have more right now. Really I just want him to learn some restraint, or not get fat, and for practical purposes candy is cheap enough I could give him all he ever wanted but I’m not going to tell him that.
The media makes these arguments about constitutionality not because they believe in the constitution but because they think their audience is susceptible to that line of reasoning. I don’t think its a sign of inconsistent morality on the part of the journalists, rather a sign of their not exactly honest nature. What the morals behind their actions are is something many others have speculated on and I have little to add.
We have the same problem with anti-gun people and groups.
All their arguments are couched in “saving lives” and “improving safety” and “stopping school shootings”, which are all laudable goals. Who could be against that?
And then they say they want to find “common-sense” and “reasonable” solutions that are “consistent with the 2nd Amendment”. Sounds great, right?
But then all their proposals not only contradict and undermine 2A protections, on a whole they’re more likely make society less safe by empowering criminals, and none of them — not a single one — would prevent the mass shootings the anti-gun proponents say they want to stop. And when offered evidence that their desired laws don’t have the effects they claim, they ignore it and double down.
Eventually you conclude that since none of the anti-gun folks’ proposals will result in their stated goals, they must not be telling the truth on their stated goals.
And since “increasing safety” and “saving lives” are clearly not their goals, all that talk is just a mask that they believe will be amenable to the voting public. They don’t care about safety or saving lives, they just need to convince people to support their agenda.
As you say, it’s not that their morality is inconsistent; it’s that their moral compass doesn’t align with ours, but they need to present themselves as if it does. And that requires dishonesty.
Miguel had a good point on his substack
The left’s morals are based on outcome. If it’s not the outcome they want outage! It’s an affront to the very moral fiber of the nation. If they like the outcome, it’s the moral thing to do.