A lot of people ask me, what has compelled me to want to dive into such deep or controversial conversations during a time where “wrong-think” could be so easily criticized. What causes me to be so #obsessed™ about our current state of discourse.
Of course, the easy answer for most people is attention. It’s rather easy to stand out or become a pariah for a cause when most people living day to day don’t even have the time to think about what they even stand for. In this day and age, our individual and moral values tend to be as clouded as our daily search history.
This can make it rather daunting for someone to jump off the ledge of safe/reputable ideas into the domain of their opposition. Especially considering that most people often have no idea why they hold the beliefs they claim to support.
It’s not something you can really blame anyone for either, as it’s not like these are concepts that we have to face on a day-to-day basis, outside of extenuating circumstances such as times of war, famine, or plague. In these moments our values get challenged constantly at of fear of life or death or whatever lies in between.
Instead, most of our lives are rather cushy. It’s easy for us to think we would be heroic in the face of evil until we are placed in the very circumstances that challenge our current moral standing. I say current because you would be surprised how quickly your beliefs could change when assaulted by a worldview that is dominant to your own.
However, it does seem that the more grounded you are in your values, the less likely you are to be swayed by mass conformity. This makes it a lot clearer to navigate the world when you are doing it based on your own principles.
It’s my belief that very few of us really take the time to address our moral lens outside of the minor grievances we parrot from those around us. Especially those with a lack of moral frameworks such as religion, education, or a strong work ethic. This can leave a very large gap in our analysis of the world at large because we are left with a vacuum that we quickly fill with whatever feels best in the current moment.
It causes us to make rash decisions or get wrapped up in tribal wars such as race, culture, or polity. It forces us to shirk our responsibilities to try and get the best of our proverbial “others.” It causes us mass confusion and extreme distrust in our neighbors, or for some, our families.
All simply because we do not take the time to examine what we actually believe, no, what we know to be right.
The funniest part is, nobody actually can define for you what is right, outside of what is right for them at the time. For their own family, race, tribe, religion, so on and so forth. The older I get the more I believe that no single person, nor a group of people has any right to dictate the behavior of others except when in mutual parley. The more groups you add in, the more complicated social gymnastics you have to perform to keep all of the groups happy in each other’s company. We barely understand our relationship with the importance of labor, let alone the inner workings of each faction’s belief systems.
We could claim that our most fundamental right is freedom, but everything that follows is still likely to advantage some or disadvantage others. Is this a fault of the systems in place? Or is it the lack of a moral framework that motivates the average person to contribute any more than the bare minimum required to skate through?
Here is a fun thought experiment I try with a lot of my friends. Imagine money was not an option. Imagine every single need you had was met in terms of food, shelter, water, hell even the internet. You have a job, that needed you to come and provide a service that could only really be performed by someone of your talent or tenure. Would you still go to work every day 8 – 5 for forty hours a week? Would you still consider it a duty to endure your task for the sake of providing a benefit outside of your own?
It’s my suspicion that a decent handful of incredibly hard-working individuals would still say yes despite the lack of meaningful compensation for their efforts provided for their community. This to me is an indicator of a strong moral framework of work ethic. Something that my generation unfortunately lacks.
Not that I fully blame them, however. They have been essentially presented with a rigged game. A promise that they could be anything they wanted if they went to school or worked incredibly hard, only to find that they would have to sacrifice more than they were ever taught to be comfortable with. Because as we all know, there is always a sacrifice.
Many of them sacrificed years of their life working hard and keeping their nose to the grindstone to receive their rewards later on in life. While many others took on ball-and-chain levels of debt to receive an education that should start them, leagues, ahead of the pack, only to find themselves working the same jobs as those without the degrees, and for pennies difference.
Many more even traded in their moral values in order to get a leg up in the game. Using their own morality as a cashier’s check for a quick dollar to avoid the nagging responsibilities. But in the end, it all has a price. You just don’t always have to pay the price upfront, or even understand what it is you sacrificed until it is too late.
“You are going to pay a price for everything you do and everything you do not do. You do not get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you are going to take. That’s it.”
– Jordan B. Peterson