‘MORALIZING’
CAERS SUBSTACK ARTICLE #8
There are a number of topics that many people avoid speaking of publicly, either because they are uncomfortable speaking about them at all, or they feel that they are private matters to be shared with only those closest to them. Death is often in the former group, and politics, sex, personal finances, and religion are often among the latter group. And there are some topics that are uncomfortable for both reasons, morality being a good example.
I suspect that with rare exceptions, each one of us has an internal moral compass. Many feel that this is part and parcel to being human. Others may feel that this is a gift bestowed on us by our Creator. Still others might argue that we gradually acquire this by exposure to the moral compasses of others or simply from our own life experiences. Regardless, many of us sense that it is something deeply personal and sometimes difficult to express, and perhaps for these reasons something uncomfortable to share with others. In fact, we may even feel uncomfortable having other people share their thoughts on such matters; we not infrequently recoil when others ‘moralize’. Why is that? When we raise something of such profound importance as morality, which we all possess to some degree, something which we would almost all agree should guide us in all of our interactions with others, why is it not uncommon for us to cringe rather than welcome the opportunity for dialogue and potential growth?
Perhaps it is the passion of the person moralizing? Or their intense self-confidence? Or that we disagree with their perspectives? These are all likely part of the explanation; but there may be something deeper going on.
Every creature on the planet is insecure, including each one of us, because we know how fragile life can be in such a complex environment where fortunes can change instantly. We don’t want to be the ‘weakest deer in the herd’, because we know what happens to them. We want to be accepted within our tribe where we will be safe. Revealing our innermost thoughts for public scrutiny and potential rejection is risky. What advantage is there to ‘rocking the boat’? Best to keep our head down and only share our most intimate beliefs with those we trust completely. Besides, if we start to speak about the right and wrong of someone else’s behaviour, then they might do the same to us, as equally imperfect humans, and then where will we be?
The problem is that our inescapable vulnerability generates so much fear when dealing with fundamental moral issues that it prevents us from being able to differentiate between the action and the human doing the action. We confuse stating that an action is morally unjustifiable as an indictment of that person as being fundamentally, and perhaps irreversibly, ‘bad’. That in turn triggers an instantaneous and powerful defense mechanism in any of us who have been so identified. Being judged as a person is isolating and painful. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Christian New Testament story of the woman caught in adultery. When she is at risk of being stoned to death by her own people for her sin, Jesus suggests that only those
without sin should throw stones. As all of her accusers depart, Jesus does not judge her as a person, but instead compassionately guides her to ‘go and sin no more’.
How much would such humility and love help to guide us in being constructively critical and helpful when we ‘moralize’, as opposed to being seen as threatening? Perhaps our biggest objection to moralizing is that too often it seems that those doing so are not sufficiently humble to admit their own transgressions, and seem unwilling to forgive others for theirs.
Perhaps it is our clumsiness in this regard that makes us hesitant to examine ethics, especially during the pandemic. If we had considered doing this very early in the pandemic, we would have noted that many of the measures being instituted did not have sufficient ethical justification or were not being implemented within a solid ethical framework. There would have been no need, as there still is no need, to automatically impugn the character of those making decisions simply because we judged their actions as being difficult to justify. It may have been the conflation of unacceptable ‘actions’ with unacceptable ‘people’ that hindered us in examining the situation more closely. Had we done so, we could have spoken up to suggest a pause in order to reconsider strategies without resorting first to morally judging the authorities.
It is not too late for us to do so. If we could learn to separate the ‘sin’ from the ‘sinner’, we might find that ethical discussions would be more inviting and productive. Almost all of us attest to the reality of fundamental human rights. If we are basing that on a firm belief in the worthiness to exist because we are all made fundamentally good, then perhaps we could start by accepting that although we can all engage in morally unacceptable acts, that does not imply that we are unacceptable as people. Recognition of that might be a very good way to nurture us into becoming even better people, and behaving better as well.
And we have never needed that more than we do now.
J. Barry Engelhardt MD (retired) MHSc (bioethics)
CAERS Health Intake Facilitator