With all the overwhelming debates since time immemorial about what constitutes a ‘good’ act and what doesn’t, along with the heritage of guilt-tripping narratives we have inherited from a lifetime of social conditioning, we may as well relieve ourselves of this heavy burden of trying to be ‘good’, whatever that may mean. The entire seeking of being a good person presupposes that we lack the goodness we seek, rendering moral striving an excruciating act of self-loathing. Should we then let go of the question of morality altogether?
Should We Stop Trying to be a Good Person?
While definitions of morality drastically vary according to each school of thought, what is obvious, yet often overlooked, is that morality is a matter of action, not identity. Philosophical discussions and debates on ethics concern what constitutes a good action rather than what constitutes a ‘good person’. Where then does the strive to be good come from and how does it relate to moral action?
Prominent American psychologist Carl Rogers extensively researched the outcomes of conditioned positive regard on the development of one’s self-concept. He discovered that one whose upbringing involved reward and punishment leads one to have conditioned self-worth. As children, when certain behaviors are rewarded and others rebuked, we tend to conflate our inherent worth with actions. The plague of modern society is the constant pursuit of being ‘good enough’. Roger argues that conditional positive regard leads one to internalize a sense of inherent worthlessness, for self-worth becomes conditioned on certain actions.
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterA gap is created between the real authentic self and the ‘ideal’ self, denoting the imaginary self one seeks that meets the social conditions of positive regard. Thus, a schism is established between the ‘I am’ and the ‘I should’, and great suffering occurs in this dissonance.
Roger advocated the practice of unconditional positive regard, which effectively delineates the overlooked distinction between action and self-concept. With a view of our inherent unconditional worth, the question of morality takes a different light when we no longer attach our self-worth to it. Morality doesn’t involve being good, but doing good. Nevertheless, perhaps even more than before, we may still wonder why should we concern ourselves with moral acts. If it’s not for being good, what for?
What Is the Selfish Selflessness of Moral Acts?
Inscribed at the entrance of the United Nations building in New York are the following lines from a poem by Saadi Shirazi:
“All human beings are members of one frame
Since all, at first, from the same essence came.
When time afflicts a limb with pain
The other limbs cannot at rest remain.
If thou feel not for other’s misery
A human being is no name for thee”
Saadi was a famous Persian poet from Shiraz. At first glance, the poem seems a rather hyperbolic discussion of the importance of having empathy towards other human beings. A closer inspection, however, shows that Saadi is talking about something much deeper. The poem starts by defining human beings as parts of a whole, springing from the same ontological source, expressions of the same principle or essence. It follows from that first clause that whenever a part of the whole is afflicted, the other parts cannot remain undisturbed.
From Saadi’s perspective, unless we experience a real connection beyond the false self-isolation of our individuality, we have yet to embrace our humanity. When we are connected to the whole, we experience ourselves and others as different parts of the same ‘body’, as it were. Consider your two hands – they are apparently distinct, they can each be grasping completely different things, but they are part of your body. Your right hand can easily hurt your left hand, or vice versa. While the inflicted hand is the one injured, your entire body will be affected. While Saadi’s ideas may seem strange, they are evident in our ordinary experience. It certainly feels horrible to harm another person, as our experience shows and as a plethora of psychological and neurological studies prove. Further, the relation of personal morality to collective morality is not new in philosophy, discussed from as early as Socrates to Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, albeit in different ways.
What Saadi is proposing as a motivation for morality is far from an ideal utopic case of selflessness. Rather, it is a selfish motivation grounded in an awareness of the ontological connection of our intersubjectivity – an awareness of the selfless whole of which every human self is a part. Under this perspective, every act of harm is essentially an act of self-harm. We care about morality not for others but for ourselves.
Can We Move Beyond Romanticism?
While the question of what constitutes a moral act is beyond the scope of this piece, what is important is to unveil moral striving from emotional identifications and attachments and abstract romanticism. When we view ethics as a matter of self-interest, interwoven with the best interest of our collective humanity, our concerns take a different and lighter form, grounded in common sense.
No longer hindered by the desire of ‘being good’ nor by abstract idealistic notions of ‘doing the right thing’, we can come to view morality as the simple practice of preserving our individual wellbeing. We can care about others because we care about ourselves, aware that the pain we inflict on them is one that we simultaneously inflict upon ourselves.
We can love others, not because we are awfully nice people, but because we love ourselves enough to not want to experience hate. From this perspective, we can understand the difference between morality and immorality as one between acts of self-destruction and self-preservation.
