Living By Simple Moral Codes Makes Us Worse, Not Better

How people become hypocrites, jerks and pushovers.

The majority's most fundamental vulnerability is its simplistic interpretation of morality whereby one doesn't have to consider context. Most of us claim to embrace unconditional moral rules, a code that applies no matter what context.

Always be this; never be that. Always be honest; never be dishonest. Always be receptive; never be unreceptive. Always be giving; never be ungiving. The list goes on.

These one-attitude-fits-all-situations rules are easy to remember and fun to preach but impossible to follow. No one follows them.

Instead, we all try to figure out the contexts in which it’s better to be honest vs. dishonest, receptive vs. unreceptive giving and ungiving, etc. That's what we really do and that's what we really should do, though with greater awareness and more honest admission that that’s what we’re all really doing.

We don't become hypocrites by sometimes being dishonest, unreceptive or ungiving, but because we pretend that one never should be, as though it’s possible to live by these impossible moral principles instead of struggling with moral dilemmas, deciding which situations call for which actions.

We become jerks or pushovers because we oversimplify morality. We become jerks because we can defend our every action with some variation on the absolutes. Never lie but always be diplomatic. The jerk says, “When I don’t tell you the truth, I’m being diplomatic. When you don’t tell me the truth you’re a liar.”

We become pushovers because we fall into self-doubt and retreat when accused of failing to live by these fake absolute moral principles. When we’re shamed for lying we don’t say, “Yes, I lied here because I bet it was best in this context.” Instead, we get defensive trying to persuade our accuser that we would never do such an always-bad thing as lying. When the jerk tickets us for having failed to follow the fake moral code, we apologize.

Our fake absolute moral principles stunt our moral growth. Because we’ve decided we should always do this and never do that, we fail to get around to wondering about when to do this and when to do that.

If we want to become smarter we have to trade in our unworkable moral absolutes for moral frameworks modeled on the serenity prayer with its quest for ever-improved “wisdom to know the difference” between situations that call for this vs. that response.

Here’s a list of variations on the serenity prayer applied to some of the moral dilemmas we face every day and will face until the end of our days. They don’t go away any more than changing contexts go away. These dilemmas can’t be sidestepped with fake moral absolutes. They can only be ignored, making us hypocrites, jerks and pushovers.

Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D., is a biophilosopher and social science researcher studying the natural history and everyday practicalities of decision making.

In Print: Negotiate With Yourself And Win!: Mind Minding for People Who Can Hear Themselves Think

Online: Mind Readers Dictionary

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