The Question of the Conflicting Moralities

In my years, I've spent a lot of time mulling over the finer points of this thing called 'morality'.  I asked myself the age old questions: "What is good?", "What is bad or evil?", "What is right?", and "What is wrong?". It's easy to sit in our corner offices or our cubicles as, perhaps, I'm doing right now and and pull half-assed resolutions out of our rear center pockets to sate our philosophical and emotional desires of how we want the world and the universe to be. But that wouldn't be a good thing in the long run. It would just set us up for disappointment, and the inevitability for struggling against an unyielding universe, as it would be.

So, I set on this philosophical (perhaps even existential to some degree) journey that took several years to come to fruition. I was fraught with confusion over how one could argue in favor of moral circumstances or constructs against another with the same conclusion, but with different results. I found myself nearly incapable, at times, to articulate what I thought I knew. After all, people should be kind and compassionate towards other people. That's the moral thing, right? (See the previous article: The Morality of the Two Wrongs) It was simply confounding how one moral construct could possibly conflict with another. Sure, I fully understood that the world isn't black and white. Life and interactions can be complicated as well as complex. That's no surprise and not unknown to me at this point. But since whether or not something is difficult has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not something is moral, I had to abandon the notion of whether or not that was the correct way to approach this question.

So, I was stuck again. Here I was, confronted with the conundrum of moral conflict. I tried to break it down and simplify things in an attempt to find some sort of explanation using Occam's Razor. But that was just a cop-out as I quickly realized that I was trying to make things easier in order to erect a substitute that satisfied my desires rather than striking at the heart of the matter, the resolution to this quandary. I decided that I had to take it on the knife's edge rather than glancing off the blunt side of the blade. Why could this contradiction exist? How is it that these universal constructs, found from one corner of the earth to the other, in all walks of life and cultures, could possibly find themselves at odds with one another? It didn't make any sense whatsoever to me.

I was ready to pull my hair out by the roots. I wanted to take a sledgehammer to anything that would shatter into a thousand pieces simply to relieve the stress this caused me every so often. Was it simply because I wanted to be right? Well, that's a silly question; of course I want to be right. But I wanted to be right for the right reasons, and that meant that I wanted to get it right - even at the expense of my own complacency or notions of comfort. Then I started taking a look at other people at their ideas of morality, and how sometimes they deviated from the universal moralities as discovered by Jonathan Haidt. Across the board, it appeared as if  varying degrees of interpretation existed, whether individually or from doctrine to doctrine. From culture to culture and society to society there were even a few extras thrown into the mix. But neither of those circumstances seemed to be immune to the overlapping inevitability of the moral conflict. Eventually, someone would make the case that they were being wronged using a moral argument where in return the "wrongdoer" would accuse the "complainer" of violating some moral tenet. It would not be enough to simply "win" the argument, but rather it would only be enough if a.) it could be articulated, b.) it could be understood relatively easily, and c.) it could be practiced with relative ease. Yet, before all of that, it had to be deciphered across cultures and societies. It had to be broken down into some universal medium and translated for the masses.

Then I had an epiphany.

In the blink of an eye, the clouds parted. I had been looking at the problem in the wrong way, from the wrong angle. I was attempting resolve what I have come to call the opposing arguments of conflicting moralities from the wrong angle, the entirely incorrect perspective. This stroke of lightning that would alter my perspective on the problem would become my gateway to resolution. The conflict didn't lie in the moralities, but rather in the argumentative constructs themselves, in the very assumptions about what is universally true versus what is personally understood. In other words, there was a direct conflict between an individual concept (personal) and group concepts (universal). This was a fallacy of division (combination depending n which side you're coming from). Indeed, the universal constructs are more than what it is that the personal constructs are because they are observed by multiple groups of peoples whereas the individual constructs are based upon individual, societal, or otherwise cultural idiosyncrasies. This is where the logic was broken and why it didn't make any sense that one moral construct could conflict with another one. My mind had been telling me something was wrong with that, it just didn't know how to articulate what it knew. (Eat your heart out, Einstein!)

Now comes the simple explanation:

(Looking at you, again, Einstein.)

1.) The world's peoples and societies have agreed on a basic set of moral constructs. This has been observed all over the earth in numerous cultures and societies, and are the same everywhere. These simple constructs are the Universal Moral Constructs (UMC), and they are absolute. UMCs are top-level constructs and cannot be compared to constructs below this tp level . They are constant, unwavering, and persist as moral constructs and symbols of morality itself under any and all situations and contexts. These are the constructs by which members of a culture or society judge other members of that same society or culture.

2.) Each person interprets and incorporates belief systems and behavior patterns inherent of their environment and of the individuals with whom they interact. This includes themselves and others as well as physical presences or not (i.e. on TV, radio, pictures, movies, etc.) These may or may not include ideas borrowed from the UMCs. This can collectively be called a moral perspective or otherwise a collection of Individual or Personal Moral Constructs (PMC). Unlike UMCs, PMCs may waiver, disappear, or otherwise change over time or all at once. This is why PMCs are relative as they relate to individuals and single cultures or societies rather than to UMCs. (People, societies, or cultures may adopt UMCs into their repertoire, but because they relate to the whole of the peoples of the earth, they are disregarded as PMCs and defined as UMCs.)

3.) Because of their relationships to individual cultures, societies, and persons, PMCs are not comparable to UMCs which relate to all the peoples of the world as a whole. To do so is unsound; they are logical in-equivalents and are therefore not comparable nor relatable to one another.

OK, so how does this help us when confronted or otherwise involved with this sort of argument? Well, the simple answer is also the easy answer at this point. For one, we can't expect other people to hold the same PMCs as ourselves because they only really relate to ourselves, and therefore, there is no argument to be had. Anyone who argues this is automatically discredited. While two people can certainly hold the same PMCs dear, any variances in those interpretations result in clear differences and therefore are not comparable. In a nutshell, we can view the different argument types like so:

1.) UMC vs PMC Arguments: The PMC is automatically discredited because UMCs are absolute, and PMCs only relate to the individual and/or culture or society.

2.) UMC vs UMC Arguments: Two wrongs don't make a right. Both parties lose out in this one assuming that each party is guilty of the claims by the other.

3.) PMC vs PMC Arguments: Neither one should expect the other to follow moral constructs that are purely individualistic and only relatable to themselves. Should this happen, then they are both discredited.

In the end, if it's a personal moralistic philosophy, then its simply just not reasonable or justifiable to tell people how they should live. On the other hand, if it's something that is universally understood to be a moral construct, then it's not so unreasonable to expect everyone to behave in accordance with those standards. So, the next time you run into a conversational bully who wants to go toe-to-toe with you on all the horrible moral violations you've committed, know that now you can tussle with the best of them in a battle of wits. (Besides, on a personal note, I don't think too many people have thought this through anyways, and won't know what to say other than blatantly deny it without evidence to the contrary. The standard knee-jerk seems to be that two wrongs make them right. )

(Go figure.)

Invino Veritas
10/6/15
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