What if everything is allowed?

As an empathetic person, I am always nudged to look at things from the subject’s perspective even if it comes off as bad behavior on the outside. Infidelity for instance. When I read about people cheating on their partners, I do want to understand their reason but them hurting another person always overpowers it. And I end up losing respect for the cheater. 

Morality is a relative term. Like they say, to a mouse, even a cat is a monster. I understand that my idea of right can be so different from yours based on my upbringing, experiences, trauma etc. Adding on to that, there’s consequentialism (my action is justified if it benefits most of the people), cultural relativism (my action might be right at my home but not somewhere else), social constructivism (my action is neutral since it has different historical, cultural, social connotations) and such. Not to mention the role of religion.

In today’s day and age, I believe that anything and everything is okay and is “accepted” and while that is appreciated, there is a line. It makes me wonder if one day a really brutal crime will be justified as a result. Not that it isn't already, but I'm afraid it will be romanticized. This poses a challenge to most evolved individuals who might understand why someone did what they did but also feel empathy for the one suffering the consequences of the wrong-doer. How do they choose between the two? 

Forget law, we ourselves justify our own wrong-doings so many times. Because let’s face it, most of us are narcissists and have this attachment to being the victim. It’s called “moral licensing”. It’s where you justify your wrongs by the rights of the past. Personal vendettas could come under this. Sometimes you do feel like someone deserves a hard fall and you instigate it, but no matter how justified our revenge tactics might seem, are they truly moral? Are we then pretending to be moral just so it could benefit us?

I once faced a moral conflict myself. There was this colleague at work who was supposed to host a very important meeting and he came in late. Obviously everybody was pissed off but he had just heard that his close friend passed away that morning. Other colleagues offered their condolences but most of them agreed that he could’ve dropped a message. That is true, he could have taken 2 minutes to drop a message but in that mental state who would think straight? There was no accountability. I really didn’t know what to say and stayed silent for the rest of the day. I had it in me to choose to either side with the other colleagues or to side with him. But moral ambiguity is a hard place to be in. 

Then there are times when you do have an obvious choice, the more instantly gratifying, the more exciting one. But when you choose the less obvious choice at that moment, that is a sign of pure humility. There’s a beautiful dialogue from one of my favorite movies, Bruce Almighty that I keep quoting quite often - “Parting your soup is not a miracle, Bruce. It’s a magic trick. A single mom working two jobs and still finding time to take her son to soccer practice, that’s a miracle. A teenager saying ‘no’ to drugs and ‘yes’ to an education, that’s a miracle. People want me to do everything for them, but what they don’t realize is they have the power.”

Power is a strange thing. We all have it in some form or another. What makes us different is whether or not we show it. I read somewhere that a common human emotion like pinching the cheeks of babies or wanting to bite them because they are too cute shows how much we are physically and emotionally capable of bringing destruction to others. That our primal urges can take over in a moment of heat and enable us to do the unbelievable. 

But the real ones go against the current. Mind you, it is not always rewarding. All the more reason to choose the easier path. Choosing the less obvious choice can be hard and might demand so much from you. Morality is not, I cheated but I’m being honest with you, coming and telling you that. It’s, I could have cheated but I chose not to because I respect your feelings as much as I respect my urges. And restraint to me will always be the real power. The real morality. After all, we are all hungry animals in front of a docile deer.