True North

Everyone has an independent view on morality it seems. Often, we break it down with such detail that we break it down to nothing. We think of morality as subjective or based on the culture— the values of the men and women who subscribe to Sharia Law will be different than the values of a gay atheist living in Portland, OR. We think of morality as scriptural— we get our values based on religious doctrines and we let them be the compass for how we perceive a “good” life to be in ourselves, and where we draw boundaries within our own culture or personal relationships. And many of us, including myself at one time in my life, believe morality to be essentially an illusion— a complete fabrication constructed by early humans to maintain order in a normally barbaric and inhumane early society.

In life you may find yourself directionless from time to time. You will without any uncertainty find yourself in circumstances that present themselves to you unexpectedly that you have not had adequate time to evaluate. Therefore, you may find yourself going through with unexpected and highly impactful decisions based on erraticism or instinct. In each of these situations our personal set of morals and values collide with our innate reactionary instincts, and we make our decisions either within our personal definitions of right and wrong, or we make decisions with our animal instincts— our ‘fight or flight’ reflex.

It’s important for us to know that when we view morals or personal values, they are not dependent on circumstance. If we allow circumstance to be a deciding factor in how we define morality than the boundaries of morality are in a constant state of fluctuation and redefinition. If, for example, we use the well-regarded value of commitment— we can agree commitment is either existent or it is not. You are not half-committed to something. You may make the claim that you are, but on a moment-to-moment basis you are either committed or you aren’t. If an alcoholic is committed to no longer drinking, he wouldn’t then only drink on Friday nights. He doesn’t leave himself a place for his commitment to sobriety to be on hold until the next day. That would be an example of being committed Saturday through Thursday, failing in your commitment on Friday, and recommitting on Saturday once again. If you are committed to getting in shape and you decide you are going to take a week off training and eating healthy, you are foregoing your commitment that week.

Commitment to yourself is an easy step to take. I can discipline myself for eating a piece of cake when I’m on a no-sugar diet and move on easily. The problem presents itself when we add extreme circumstance to the scenario—'I made a commitment to my wife when we were married that we would be together, as one body, through sickness and through health, until death do us part. I then found out she was cheating on me with a close friend of mine, so we were divorced.’ It’s easy to say that a man or woman who was wronged in a marital situation with something such as infidelity or abuse should feel no guilt to leave the relationship, and in many cases that is the best option or them at the time. But does that mean the value of commitment suddenly isn’t important? The circumstance doesn’t devalue commitment, the vow of commitment is broken due to the circumstance. In other words, the choice to cheat or the choice to divorce doesn’t make the value of commitment cease to exist because of the circumstances, it is simply disregarded. In this case, it may be best for the spouse who was wronged to get themselves out of the situation and recommit to themselves, maybe giving an opportunity to someone else who values commitment as much as they do. But it doesn’t excuse a situation in which two people disregarded their supposed valuing of commitment.

This particular value (commitment), even with its circumstantial contradictions, is an easy target to exemplify because most people and most cultures can agree upon its importance. And even when it comes to the example of divorce, some people may disagree with me, but most would be able to easily see how I or someone else could cling to that principle. You see, however, as you dig into more controversial examples that hit closer to home in modern day Western culture (homosexuality, wartime murder, abortion… etc.), how the topic can provide a very hard and slow-moving conversation with little give on either side. The reason, once again, is that we cloud our definitions of right and wrong with circumstance and emotion.

It especially becomes challenging when we enter ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ into the equation, because we often think to love or feel compassion for someone is to condone their actions. But does a parent who loves their child condone their child disobeying them? To punish your child, or even to allow your child to receive the natural punishments issued as a result of their actions, does not mean you don’t have love or have compassion for your child. It means quite the opposite. Your understanding of the consequence of their actions is superior to theirs, so it becomes your responsibility to present (or allow it to be presented) that which they do not know or understand.

 At first glance when you see the word ‘condone’ you might think just because you allow something, it doesn’t mean you condone it. “I don’t condone a woman’s choice to abort their child, I just believe it’s her body and her right.” The fact of the matter is, by definition, to condone is not only to allow but to also approve of. If you think that a child in the womb that is in its earliest stages of development, it does not have a pulse, and likely has yet to develop an affinity for ‘love’ and ‘compassion’, is not by your meaning ‘living’ enough for you to condone its preservation, then by all means, condone abortion. But if anything in you believes that even at the earliest stages of its development it is ‘alive’, then you are condoning the taking of a life due to circumstance. And we should all agree, taking a human life is not worth condoning.

You can go on endlessly with different circumstances and excuses for right and wrong, and an intelligent person will be able to refute the idea of its existence fairly easily. But I would be remised if I did not acknowledge a great possibility and likelihood that our conscience is not merely shaped situationally, but something much deeper than physical circumstance. It would be shortsighted in my belief to assume that something as serious as the taking of a life, or even something as basic as not being true to your word, would be a value that could vary if I were to travel to a part of the world where it was not common. If that were the case, then any set of even the most unimaginable wrongs (rape or molestation, mass murder… etc.) could be circumstantial and left up to interpretation. If that were the case than we are no different than our barbarian ancestors who more resembled beasts than the inventive, creative, compassionate, and unselfish homo sapiens we imagine ourselves to be now.

The idea that morality is not a victim of circumstance is not a new idea. All of the world’s major religions subscribe in some way to a belief that morality is endowed spiritually rather than physically developed. However, we often couple our disregard of their respective doctrines with a disregard of their moral teachings because they are outdated. “To implement the Old Testaments book of Deuteronomy into modern society would move morality backwards.”  To the naked eye, I can completely understand that. And I could write another two-thousand words in defense of Old Testament teachings as they relate to New Testament in the Christian Bible. I could write another about the immoral implications of religion coinciding with government and limiting freedom of choice.  To elaborate on either would distract from the overall point:

Morality is concrete. Just as a compass will direct us to the gravitational North of the earth, the magnetic pole of the earth will always change, but the northernmost axis will always occupy the same spot in relation to the sun, despite what a compass tells us. Our relationship with our moral guidelines do not deviate from their truth because of circumstance and it is our job as citizens to reinforce our inner morality. In a perfect world we could point to others and say “that is wrong!” and in some cases that is necessary, but it must first take place on an individual level. We must first recognize we as individuals are not bigger than the morals that guide us. We change, the world around us changes, the circumstances we come up against evolve as our species evolves—but that does not mean the value of community, love, charity, discipline, forgiveness, honor, truth, and the scariest of all, accountability, are to evolve as well. It is our moral ‘true north’ that elevates our being to a level not shared by any other living organism discovered up to this point. If morals are to evolve, than we have lost what got us to this point in the first place.