The Moral Conundrum

When it all comes down to morality, most of us believe that there are only two kinds of people - the moral ones and the immoral ones. "Why not?" you may ask. Everything in this universe is made up of poles - the positive and the negative, the masculine and the feminine, the matter and the antimatter. I did talk about the two poles of everything in my post titled 'The Two Faces'.

And this human trait is no different. There are murderers, there are psychopaths, there are sociopaths and there are rapists - there are thieves, burglars and robbers... They are branded as 'immoral'.

But let me ask you a question I often ponder upon - is the degree of their immorality same?

Is a murderer as equally immoral as a robber? Is a robber as equally immoral as a rapist? Is a rapist as equally immoral as a kidnapper?

The crux of my question is - 'Is morality analog or digital?' Does it have to be characterized by a degree? Or does it have only two states - morality and immorality? This is an interesting question. We know all immoral people are not equally immoral. Yet, we still brand them as 'immoral'. And why is that? Why do our minds classify something that is not meant to be classified in the first place?

Because morality is not a 'trait'; it is rather a 'state'. A person is neither purely moral, nor purely immoral. But what about the poles then - the positive and the negative? As I mentioned once, R.L. Stevenson said in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, "Man is not truly one, but truly two." Every single person on this planet has both moral and immoral sides. It is what is in excess that gives him the title... Consider a simple example. If there are 5 electrons and 2 protons in an atom, what would you call it? A negative atom. Is it because the atom only has negative charge? No. It does have some positive charge. The problem is that all the effects that you see as just 'negative', hence the name.

But then, is the concept of morality as easy as simple Mathematics?

Here's where things become tricky - no matter what we do, how much we try; we cannot stop being immoral. Ever. The only moral life is that of a fetus inside its mother's womb. Right from the time we are born, we have been killing - we have taken the lives of millions of plants (living beings) to satisfy our needs... We have killed millions of tiny insects and creatures while walking, and without even being aware of the same. In a way, we have killed, and there is no way out. Because, to survive, we need to do it. So, right from our birth, we have been immoral. The negativity grows, until we do something to balance this.

Say, for example, there is a person in your class who is always bullying others. He would be termed as a 'bad guy'. His impression of a bad person grows as he bullies more people. Other students in the class will keep on getting a stronger impression about this character of his. But what can change that? If that guy stops bullying other people and starts helping them instead, there would be a change in people's perceptions. He will stop being the 'bad guy', and he will turn into a 'good guy'. That is the point. Until we do something 'moral' to balance all the 'immoral' things we have been doing since we were born, we would be nothing more than a pile of increasing negativity.

But then, who decides what is moral? And what immoral? Some say, pure morality is a state when you 'do not cause any harm to anyone'. But, what exactly is 'harm'? How do you define 'harm'? Isn't it relative?

Suppose you testify against someone who is accused of bribery. Your act will be termed 'moral'. Because, you put away an immoral person. But hasn't it caused 'harm' to the accused person? Then, isn't it immoral?

For centuries, humans have experienced arduous situations, and then established a set of rules for defining 'morality'. But sometimes, situations are not so easy... Here is one such interesting case. Choose for yourself:

Consider a hypothetical situation where a giant ball is rolling towards five people sitting on a bench. The ball is going to crush them all, and no one can do anything about it. Except you. 'You' can change the course of the ball to only one direction, where a person is walking down the road. So should you save the five people and kill the one who was never even going to be killed? Or should you let them die, so as to not kill that one person?

This is a situation where both choices are equally moral, and, equally immoral. So, in such a situation, choosing any one of them should not have any 'net' effect on you. But, someone is getting killed. And you are the reason for that. Would your mind be at peace after such an event, even though there is no 'net' change in your moral and immoral sides? In such situations, is there a way to define 'immorality'?

Consider another situation. The ones who are 'immoral', i.e. who have greater negativity, can do almost anything - they can kill, rob, rape - anything, because, well, they are immoral. And the ones with the morals have all the restrictions. In such a case, it is natural that there might be greater number of immoral people than the moral ones. But doesn't it violate the very balance of universe? Would you, in such a case, believe in the 'balance of the world' and the 'neutrality' of the poles or the 'Second Law of Thermodynamics' which says, 'The entropy (randomness) of the universe is constantly increasing'?

The choice is up to you...

I will leave you pondering. Ultimately, it is all about our minds. The mind is a tool which can cause revolutions. It can change the course of actions. And surely, it can cause conundrums...

The Two Faces

Look around yourself, and you'll see the world filled up with poles - opposite poles. You'll see the sky and the earth, you'll see the high and the low, and you'll see the rich and the poor... Wherever you'll glance, you'll see opposites - someone is tall, while someone is short; someone is fair, while someone else is dark... And you very well know why I'm pointing these things out. Our world is made up of poles - the positive and the negative, we say. And in a way, everything has two sides, everything has two faces...

Every coin has two sides - you can simply not have a coin with just one face. Even the Roman God Janus has two faces - he literally has two faces. You may read the name and discard it as 'never heard before', but there is something interesting about him. In Roman Mythology, Janus is the god of transitions. He is the god of gates, of doorways and passages. His two faces look into the past and the future. And he actually symbolises what I am writing about here - poles.

To transit from one phase to another, you need to walk through a doorway - and Janus is the one who stands at this doorway. Every door has a speciality. And I'm not talking about the color,  although 'Asian Paints' may easily make this as their tagline. I'm talking about the symbolism. At every door, one path ends and another begins. Every door is a symbol of beginning and end. When new doors in the form of new opportunities enter our lives, we transit through those doors - we end something and begin something new. And because Janus stands at the doors between almost everything, that's why when a year ends in the our calender and a new year begins, Janus makes the transition - yes, the month of January is named after this god of the beginnings and the endings...

We leave our past and enter the present, which was once our future. And that's how we make our transitions. We enter and we leave. We come and we go. We get born and we die.

But that is not all.

I am always so intrigued by 'duality'. But the mere presence of two entities cannot sustain this universe. When two entities of a similar nature add, they strengthen the effect. But when two entities of opposite nature add, they balance the effect. And harmony can only be achieved by two, opposite forces. Without the poor, there would be no rich people. Without days, there would be no nights. Without summers, there would be no winters. If everything in this world were singular, this world wouldn't have lasted even a day. If there were no nights, we would have viewed the world as consisting of only days. And we would have lived by it forever. Every day, when we wake up in the morning, we see the sun rise, we get a pleasant feeling. Imagine if this sun were never to set. We would miss the nights in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.

Because everyone likes change. No one likes a stable life. While all we try to do in life is 'settle down', we can't live our lives without change. That explains why some people, despite being loyal to the core, have extra-marital affairs - because they are fed up of a monotonous life; because they want 'change'. And then, soon enough, their one life would end and another one would begin. (Yeah, I didn't mean murder.) 

Enough about change. When we in general, think about 'two faces', we don't normally talk about change. We talk about 'actual' two faces. And again, as I said before - everyone has two faces. All humans have two faces - a person may shower praises full of candied words when he talks to his boss; but let him come out in the lobby, and he is no less than a werewolf  in broad daylight. And I am not blaming him, or anybody for that matter. This is human nature. We want to please people, because we are social animals. And because we may not find everyone pleasing, we try to behave differently in front of them. Take the case of a police officer. While a criminal might think he is a 'bad cop' - stern and strict; his friend would have a very different opinion of him. He might even think of him as an idiot. The same police officer, who is so firm and cold and detached in appearance, might be afraid of cockroaches. (Don't judge him, he is not real.)

And just like that, we all have two faces. But most importantly, we are all addicts.

We all have different addictions - some people are addicts in a more obvious way - they are addicted to smoking or to drugs; some people are addicted to caffeine; some are addicted to pornography. And we judge them openly. What we don't know is that we are addicts too, maybe to things less visible. And there are some addictions you wouldn't have even thought about, like an  addiction to one's breasts (not in case of men!), or an addiction to pull out hair from drains, or an addiction to talk to dolls, and many, many more. We may be addicted to the Internet (although being addicted to my blog will be considered positive behaviour), we may be addicted to Television, hell, we can even be addicted to pull out our hair, or scratch our skin. And then we judge others, while being in the same pool.

And you might be wondering why I am talking about addictions in a post about 'Two Faces'. But at this point, let me highlight an interesting piece of literature. You might have heard of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' by R.L. Stevenson. I don't know how many people actually like the book, but there is something in this book that is worth thinking about. In this book, Stevenson says, "Man is not truly one, but truly two." 

We divide people into 'moral' and 'immoral'. But is it really just a simple division? Is a rapist as equally immoral as a murderer? On the lines of how we classify people, it sure seems that way... But you know it's not correct. Because even though both are immoral, their 'degrees' of immorality are different. (I will talk more about morality in a future post.)

No one on earth can say that they are completely moral, because no one actually is. Everyone has a moral side and an immoral side, a positive side and a negative side - and that is what I meant when I said that everyone has two faces. That is what Stevenson meant when he said that man is truly two.

Addictions change us. When we are addicted to something, we have basically split into two. There is one side of us, which tries to control us. But there is one side of us that drives us to the object of our addiction. This has been talked about for centuries now, you know, the angel and the devil in our minds... When we have an urge, we transform into someone else, we transform into the devil - we turn into Mr. Hyde. And we suppress our Dr. Jekyll, we suppress our angel. That's why addictions ruin us - Mr. Hyde tries to destroy Dr. Jekyll. One part of us tries to collapse the other. And we may be no less than vampires - they may be a little bit  more visual, but essentially, everyone of us is a creature who transforms into someone else. 

Like poles repel. Unlike attract. And that is no different in our lives. In astrology, opposite signs are said to form the best matches. Why? Simply because when opposites team up, they increase the power. One fills in the weaknesses of the other. Day brings light, while night brings darkness. Most of us often try to find partners which are similar to us in as many ways as possible. But people who are almost same will soon get bored of each other. But it doesn't mean that they should be completely opposite to each other. Club such people together, and they'll fight all day long... Opposite forces complete each other, and they must complete each other - then only can they achieve harmony. Matter cannot pair with darkness. (Weird, right? Exactly what I'm talking about). Matter pairs with antimatter, and light pairs with darkness. The only reason being that they complete each other.

And that's why everything is important; everyone is important. The wealthy would not be rich without the poor, the fair-complexioned wouldn't be fair without the dark-complexioned people, and moral wouldn't be moral without the immoral people. What we need to understand is that every one is essential. Nature is perfect in the way it is. And only by the complementary existence of opposites can we have things we wish to have - Balance. Harmony. Unison.