Saturday, 5 July 2014

Shades of grey

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the concept of morality, right and wrong and all that complicated stuff that makes my head hurt. What I've really struggled with is knowing that everything, including morality, is one big social construction that has most likely been created by other people. I do believe that it is something that is needed though, we need to have generally agreed principles of what is right and wrong in order to function as a society. However, it needs to be something that can change and be moulded with society. Its dangerous when people aren't able to think about multiple sides of things and consider other people's point of view rather than completely disregarding everything someone says because it doesn't match what you think.

Sometimes I feel like people need to realise that people are immensely complex and have the ability to be both great and terrible throughout their lives. No one can ever know exactly what its like to be someone else and so everyone is inherently self-centred. If someone hurts you it is almost impossible to see that person as anything other than bad and deserving of punishment.. On the flip side, if someone you love and respect does something terrible it takes time and a lot of hard work to adjust your view of them and it might never happen.

Life is a lot easier if you have a set framework where you know that certain behaviour is always wrong and another is always okay. That isn't always the case though, everyone has different reasons for their behaviour and no one other than the person can ever truly know the reasons behind it. Therefore, I think it is important to take into account the complexity of behaviour before completely judging it.

I've come to judge things on how much good they put out in the world rather than in absolutism.

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