Morality: What if I told you that the whole world got it wrong?

Morality is such a big word. And all my life it has fascinated me. I don't know why but I've always felt like my ideas and opinions about morality seemed so much different from what others around me, including people of my own age group, seemed to think was the norm. Well, at least from the limited number of discussions I've had with a handful of people patient enough to hear me rant about the complex nuances of the perceptions of morality and the very obvious(to me at least) hypocrisies associated with it. Now here, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that this post, from this point on, might seem like it has been written by the most narcissistic person on the planet. But I just want to make it clear that is not my intention. My goal with this post is to show the raw and unadulterated thoughts and opinions I have about morality and hopefully, get to know what you think about the same. 

Coming back to the point, as I said, I have many times been on the other side of the grass and have held dramatically different viewpoints when it comes to what the norm is, with morality. And this has always made me feel like maybe something was wrong with me. Why else, when everyone else around me thought one thing was so horrendously wrong did I think it was not so? And why when everyone else seemed to be okay with something, I so often thought and felt the opposite?  At this point, I'm guessing you'd be scratching your head wondering what exactly I believe is right or wrong. It would practically be impossible for me to type out every single minutiae of my moral compass, partly because it is too vast to be captured in a 500 words something blog post and partly because it is many ways still evolving and growing, and I am nowhere near having an ideal level of clarity on these subjects(to my satisfaction at least). But I will give you a few major moral situations that are pretty universal to everyone. And we'll start with the biggest, most universally accepted moral clause of all time, murder is bad. Murder is an evil act, I in no way deny that. But when a 15-year-old me proposed to my friends that even murderers deserve sympathy, needed to be given a second chance, and that the current form of dealing with murder did not make any sense, I did not get the reaction I was hoping I would get. The thing is, it is impossible to look at the whole thing with a black-and-white lens and anybody who tries to do so is embarking on a doomed journey. 

There are various different things that come into play when a person judges an act to be good or bad. And while I cannot list all the factors that influence mine(cuz I honestly don't know what they are), I think one major idea I have, and other people might not agree with, is that I don't believe we have free will. Yes, there, I said it. I don't think we have free will. At least in the traditional sense. And I get why it is scary. Our whole lives have been built around the idea that we get to choose what our actions would be. And suddenly thinking about the fact that our whole lives were built around a lie is pretty scary. Think about it, right from school to judiciary systems, and even most of our religions are based on the groundwork of free will to explain morality. 

It has been increasingly clear that at least in modern times, determinism is slowly taking center stage when it comes to free will. Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher argues that even you deciding what you'll have for breakfast isn't actually your choice. It has been scientifically proven that your brain has made a decision even before you are consciously aware of it. Yes, awesome isn't it? So then what does this mean for morality? I am a person of science but I am well aware of the fact that science has its own shortcomings. For topics as complex as morality, I cannot go by the book or just blindly follow what one person says. My understanding of it arises from deep within me and is a combination of all that I am as a person. See what I did there? I had the illusion that I create my own morality but when in fact, it is actually the sum of all my experiences, my learnings, and something called my nature which is basically my genetic composition predetermining how I will learn, think, feel what and why.

Ok, so then what does it mean for morality? Why bother doing good things? Why talk about ideals and good or bad? If we live in a world with no choice, what weight do words like that hold? Well, we might not technically have free will. But our illusion of it is the engine that moves society forward. I might have made up my mind to write this post, but the illusion that I want to write this post probably made it better than what it would have been if I had taken a fatalist worldview(not to be confused with determinism). So then, am I proposing that the whole world is living under a blanket of denial, constantly arguing about free will by thinking they have a choice in choosing which one they wanna root for while in fact, they don't have any? Maybe. I don't know. As I said before. I am far from reaching the ideal level of clarity on morality I would like to have. Until then, I will continue being astonished, amused, and just basically lost when it comes to discussions of morality. Kudos!