During times of confusion and upheaval, a well-calibrated conscience can spare us from a lot of unnecessary drama and sorrow.
To put it another way, moral clarity is a kind of superpower.
Unfortunately, morality can also be weaponized in ways that don’t actually solve problems or lead us toward higher ground.
Paul Rosenberg has written about how we tend to recast our moral concerns as moral judgments.
He says:
“Frequently, we listen to an argument only long enough to find some reason for a moral judgment; then we close our ears, declaring that the other person is a “fill-in the blank.”
When we do this, we tend to shift our focus from addressing the actual damage done by someone to simply applying abstract labels to them,
Labeling someone as a “liar” or a “fraud” may make us feel justified but it’s not the same thing as addressing legitimate benefits or harms.
Most of us would be mildly ashamed to recognize how easily we can be manipulated by those who convince us to squander our moral energies on diversions that don’t really matter.
Spending our days bagging on a particular sports team or hating on a particular political party or figure or gossiping about the shortcomings of others does nothing to change the world for the better.
If we’re serious about being problem-solvers, we have to be able to move beyond the false gratification of name-calling.
This means keeping our moral energies carefully focused on what really matters.
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