Exploring the Grey Areas of Morality

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Often times, we find ourselves in situations where our actions are contrary to our core beliefs or the things we advocate for. As if that is not enough, we also make excuses as to why we did what we did. We go soft on ourselves and forgive ourselves for whatever it is, but hold others accountable and dismiss their reasons when we find them in similar situations—where their actions do not correspond to their ideals. In another instance, we call out people that go against what we stand for, but when some close to us like a family or friend does the same thing, we turn our faces in the opposite direction and feign blindness to their acts—possessing a certain bias.

Situations like this give us a better understanding of human nature and what drives our judgement and decision making. The concept of morality is one that has long been debated because according to the circumstance and point in time, humans hold unto different set of beliefs, systems or values to guide their actions. We as humans are paradoxical beings, constantly adopting and adapting to ideologies which best serve us at any point in time. It is common knowledge that a very large percentage of humans are driven by self interest and act in manners(which may or may not be inclined with our core values)that show that what we stand to gain in any situation is our motivation.

At this point, we may ask ourselves “what is good?” “what is bad?” “what is acceptable?”. The ideal answer to this would be; good is anything that enhances your personal experience in life and bad is anything that diminishes it. However, we should take into account the fact that things that we say are good contain some bad components, and things we say are bad may also contain some acceptable components. This leads to another question; “where do we draw the line?” “if it makes me feel good, but makes another suffer or feel bad, is it good or just good for me?”

Moral relativism opens our eyes to the fact that for most of us, morality is based on our perception of the situation and as such, it is not morality that rules the situation, but the situation that rules morality. It makes us aware of the ugly truth that when it comes to morality, grey areas exist and there are really no absolutes. It proves that there are times where whites are not good enough and other times where blacks become acceptable.

Contrary to moral relativism, is moral absolutism or binary thinking(thinking in terms of either–or, this or that, true or false, black or/and white, good or/and evil, moral or immoral) which over simplifies ideas, concepts, and information that in turn limit our evaluation of some situations. There are a few cases where binary thinking actually works—like making simple arithmetic operations e.g we know that the operation; 2 + 2 = 4(true) while 2 + 2 = >4(false)—but when we look at the bigger picture, human behaviour or action is too complex to be confined to binary concepts. It is almost impractical to fully embrace it. That is why looking at the grey area could sometimes provide us with a better understanding of the situation. Under pressure and with a good enough motivation, the line between good and evil becomes blurry and as humans, we act in unpredictable ways. An extremely evil person acts in the noblest of manners, and a paragon of virtue acts in a despicable way.

Moral relativism manifests in everyday life in various forms, and one thing I've come to notice is that the availability of morality is almost directly proportional to the availablity of basic resources. In a society where everyone is well provided for and their basic amenities are taken care of, morality is prevalent among the citizens and anyone who deviates from the norms of the society is tagged an outlaw. The opposite is the case for societies where everyone is left to fend for themselves. Even when we say we want fairness, what we really mean is “fairness only if it benefits me”. We hold everyone to the same standard—both rich and poor, abled and disabled—knowing fully well that there is nothing fair about that. And as usual, people resort to any means necessary for their survival and peradventure you are able to withstand the pressure to act in the opposite direction (for whatever reason; could be fear, lack of skills or resources to carry out the act or personal ideology), you are called a person of integrity.

Below are two instances where moral absolutism and moral relativism come into play and influence people's decisions, causing them to act in a way we might or might not agree with:

Making decisions based on values and ideology.

Ideologies and principles = Who? What?

Who you are and what you should do. Black and White aspects of life.

Making decisions based on circumstance and reason.

Circumstances and reasons = Why? When?

Why you should do it (good enough reason) and when you should do it. Grey area (zone of hypocrisy).

The pictures above are excerpts from the Netflix series Far From Home. The main character of the show Ishaya Bello comes from a poor background where his family struggles to make ends meet. Having a strong desire for success, he decides to make it and change his situation by any means. Somewhere along the line, he comes across an opportunity for his younger sister to attend the school of her dreams. He pitched his idea to her, but she rejected it because she believed it was cheating her way there. He eventually carried out the process for himself and got admitted into the school.

PS This is going to make sense better if you’ve seen the movie

But here is what I think about each instance:

If you live life mainly based on ideologies and principles, it would be difficult to get things to work for you—without putting in extra effort(even this does not guarantee that you would get it)—because the world's system is designed to make the majority fail. People's interests get in your way whether they realise it or not; it ends up clashing with yours.

If you lean too much into the grey area, you will lose your sense of self, make excuses for acting out of place, put everything on the line for your self-interests, sabotage people and probably cause them pain.

There is hardly any moral theory that has successfully been able to group all actions into right and wrong, without having exceptions. All concepts of morality rely on the circumstances, the intentions, the persons, the interpretations, the places and the severity of the acts. Moral absolutism and moral relativism are just two sides of the same coin we flip in determining the course of our actions. We flip the coin in the air, saying we don't mind either option—head (absolutism) or tail (relativism)—but as the coin is about to land on our palm we secretly pray and hope for a tail. We want absolutism for others, but resolve to relativism when we are involved.

With all been said, I believe when giving our opinions on complex matters, we should not give them based on how certain we think we are e.g. “I’m very sure this is the right thing to do” should be replaced with “These are the benefits of doing this, and these are the disadvantages of doing that. So you can compare and decide which you think is best”. Certainty should be replaced with reliability.