When the day comes !!

 

I used to be idealistic, perhaps more than I ought to be, perhaps I was misguided. I do find that I am still fighting that battle for no reason. In search for  that holy grail, in order to bring some order from chaos. I suppose it came from a belief hidden somewhere deep within me,  a feeling that I might not even have acknowledged. Feeling that if I was righteous or tried my best to be, so would the world. May be it was young man's naivete or may be I was just scared of being reprimanded by powers to be, ever so conscious of crossing an imaginary moral line or having being perceived of doing incorrect thing, I opted almost always for inaction over action, because how would one be blamed for inaction. We let people die of inaction every day, If we are to be condemned for not caring enough through inaction, there is no end to it. However, my probably misguided notion of morality caused me to lead a life which possible could've gone in other direction. I don't know how that life would've been different than this one if I had opted for action over inaction. 

Who is to say, it did not work. May be it did work, for I have had low points and times I might consider extreme low points but truth is they were of my doing. It was brought on by my expectation of what life should give me or how things should turn out. I was angry over losing thing I did not have, I wanted control over situation which could no be controlled. May be much hasn't changed, I am still same in many ways and perhaps I might go down same rabbit hole again. Perhaps some mistakes are to be repeated even if you know they are mistakes and would break you. 

However, what will happen when the day comes when I will truly lose something I have had my entire or my entire life or when I lose control of something which I should not have. What happens if and when my world will be less idyllic than now. I feel, I will not escape the dreaded pain when life demands more of me than I am capable of handling. What then ? Would my past just be the trailer to the entire movie ? Would I have learned from it ? Would I be more balanced now. What happens if I let go of everything for worse, how would I behave or live with myself. 

I know now, that I cannot escape the incoming pain, what then should I ask of life. Answer is probably nothing. For I know it's better to try and rise up to the occasion which life demands of you rather than to ask life to spare you pain. My hope is when such pain comes I should be able to take pride in what I have suffered and swallow the group without dereliction of my remaining duties. That I believe should be the appropriate response whether I am capable of giving such or not I do not know. But I hope in spite of my suffering , I do not inflict  pain on others who do not deserve it. I hope when such time comes, I may stay solemn and may or may not change but my duties and obligation to myself and my loved ones do not get affected. I hope I can still walk with my head held up high, that I did what I could and everything expected of me. 

Outsourcing Morality

 People often under estimate the challenge it is to identify a right action from a wrong action. Sure, many of us don't have to make that choice often consciously. But it's fun to think it out, and even understand so that few decisions we take sub consciously, we can start understanding them better. 

To start with, you may think it's not really difficult but the more you think about it the more you would come to same conclusion that it is not in fact that easy.  

Sure, killing someone is largely bad and charity is largely good but those are the extreme ends and many of us live our lives in the center. 

Though there are several examples we can go into it, from deontological ethics to consequentialism to understand the depth and nuances of understanding right and wrong but that's for another day.

One of the problems I have noticed when it comes to community is that sometimes a community or a culture would outsource part of the morality. Outsourcing can be too a book, to a place, to an institution, or just sometimes to people in general. But anytime you do that you risk being a immoral in your own eyes. Sometimes society might ignore it on the surface but underneath the surface is where the hatred boils. 

When Nazi soldiers put their morality and trust in the Nazi institution they ended up being considered one of the worst in humanity. Yet, we continue doing that, instead of questioning every act of violence we outsource our morality to someone else, for a soldier it is his country, he can do no wrong in killing enemy because his country and politician determined what was moral act. For a religious person it might be his/her religion. For an employee it might be his/her employer. This could have things which you don't agree to rationally but since you have outsourced your morality to it, you can do really terrible things and not repent it. It takes away Human's ability to empathize and puts that creative mind to torture more of it's kind.

Now, different people living in same place getting morality from different places are bound to have certain issues, because both consider certain things to be right and others not. Now comes the tricky part, if you wanted to inoculate yourself from this immorality one easy but not necessarily the best way to do it is take your morality from general prevailing notion and law of the land, in many cases this would be wrong but looking at different societies we might largely be able to be on right side of the line.  

This does not however eliminate the problem, this just converges many different moral leanings into fewer ones. But we need to be aware of this bias that these are generally accepted moral rights and wrongs because they were common denominators and not because of any debated or accepted moral leaning. 

May be it is true, there is no absolute morality only accepted morality.