On Morality
What Is It That We Are Trying to Protect?
1. What Is Morality?
What is morality?
We speak far too easily about right and wrong. We say killing is wrong, violence is evil, and that good people and bad people exist. We believe this because we have been taught so since childhood. But if we look even briefly into history, we encounter something strange.
Humanity has discussed morality for thousands of years, yet there has never been a complete agreement on what morality actually is.
Socrates believed that if a person truly understood the good, they would not choose evil. For him, wrongdoing was not a matter of intention but of ignorance. Kant, on the other hand, argued that moral laws exist which must be followed regardless of circumstance or consequence. Then Nietzsche revealed an entirely different face of morality. He questioned whether what we call morality might itself have been shaped by history and power.
All of them were trying to understand human beings. And yet, they arrived at entirely different conclusions.
At some point, I began to wonder: Was morality discovered? Or was it invented?
Honestly, I do not know. But there is one thing I can say. I do not believe that absolute morality exists.
2. Judgment Is Not So Simple
Let us imagine disciplining a child. Is corporal punishment inherently evil?
Today, many people would say yes. They argue that striking a child can never be justified under any circumstance. That argument is persuasive. But other memories also exist. For some people, a father’s punishment during childhood became a turning point in life — remembered not as fear, but as awakening.
If that person grows up and disciplines their own child in the same way, what should we call them? An immoral parent?
I am not arguing that corporal punishment is right. I simply want to ask: Are we judging the act itself, or the outcome?
From a child’s perspective, imagine two parents. One gives a single strike, clearly addresses the wrongdoing, and ends the matter that day. Another never raises a hand but expresses disappointment for days, repeatedly pointing out the mistake.
Which one is more right? Life is often far more complicated than moral textbooks suggest.
3. When Does Killing Become Acceptable?
We say killing is wrong. Yet exceptions immediately appear.
Self-defense. But where does self-defense begin?
Someone is holding a knife — yet smiling, perhaps joking. Should I attack? They stare at me. Is this the moment? They raise the knife. Is it already too late?
If absolute morality existed, these questions should always have the same answer. Yet even courts reach different conclusions every time. So I can only say this:
Your morality is not morality to me.
4. What Still Remains
Does that mean we must live without any standard at all? I do not think so.
Even after doubting morality, something still remains. I hesitate to call it morality. The word itself feels worn down by too many certainties. Instead, I call it protecting dignity.
But the dignity I speak of is not grand or abstract. It begins with a simple desire: the desire to be recognized by others. Recognition is not unconditional acceptance. Dignity is the effort to understand another person’s situation, and the consideration that naturally grows from that effort.
Of course, consideration has limits. Consideration that consumes oneself is not included. Only what one can truly bear. I try to be considerate toward others, but I do not demand it in return. I may hope for it. But when that hope fails, I choose not to turn disappointment into accusation.
5. Dignity Means Protecting Boundaries
Dignity is often described through large concepts — rights, freedom, human value. But I believe dignity appears in much smaller moments. At the very boundary where relationships begin.
Imagine a scene. A holds a knife. B stands in front of them. Knowing that B might feel afraid, A explains: “This knife is for cooking. I have no intention of harming you.” B remains tense but tries to understand. Then A raises the knife. At that moment, B says: “I am trying to understand you. But I feel threatened. I will keep my distance.”
Refusing to label someone as evil while still protecting one’s own boundary. To me, that is dignity. A state where understanding and boundaries exist together. Dignity is both the effort to sustain a relationship and the courage to step away when necessary.
6. Even Understanding Cannot Always Save a Relationship
But the hardest question remains. What if the other person never intended to understand in the first place?
Some people see trust not as a relationship, but as an opportunity. Imagine someone deceived my family. Not by accident. Not through misunderstanding. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knowingly chose deception because it mattered more to them than another person’s trust.
When you discover this, anger naturally follows. Why us? Why make that choice? The desire for revenge is not unnatural. I do not deny that feeling. And I do not forgive them. Dignity does not mean accepting everything.
But eventually another question emerges.
While I continue to hate them, who remains longer inside that relationship?
Perhaps I am the one still standing alone in something that has already ended.
I may understand why they acted that way — fear, desire, or desperation. Understanding is possible. But understanding does not require continuation.
So I choose. I do not seek revenge. I do not hold on. I forget. I remove them from my life. Only then does the relationship truly end.
7. Why Law Is Necessary
One thing must be made clear. Forgetfulness does not mean rejecting legal responsibility.
Law is necessary. Human beings cannot live while fully trusting one another. Law is a set of rules we have agreed upon in order to live together. But as societies grow larger, perfect rules become impossible. Individual circumstances cannot always be fully considered. That is why punishment is decided within context.
I believe even unjust laws remain laws. Because once law collapses, social trust collapses with it. Illegal acts must therefore be punished. That is how society sustains itself.
But I want to make one distinction clear:
Illegal actions and morally wrong actions are not the same.
An illegal act simply means breaking an agreed rule. It does not always mean dignity has been violated. Likewise, legal actions may still fail to protect dignity. In a democracy, law is a promise we must continually revise. If a law is unjust, we must change it. But until it changes, it remains law.
Illegal acts are punished not because dignity was destroyed, but because society must continue to function. After that, another choice remains. Law does what law must do. I protect my own life.
8. The Choice of Forgetting
While we continue to resent someone, it may not be them who slowly collapses — but ourselves.
So I let go. I forget. Whether that harms or benefits them, I cannot know. But one thing is certain: I do not become a monster.
Perhaps this is only a personal choice. Still, I sometimes wonder. What if all of us simply stopped holding onto those who repeatedly destroy trust — quietly placing them outside our relationships? That might become a stronger consequence than punishment itself.
Of course, this assumption is almost unrealistic. It would require all of us to awaken. Yet I still believe this: The quiet decision to end a relationship may sometimes leave deeper consequences than the desire to destroy someone.
9. What We Should Truly Fear
I do not believe in morality. But neither do I believe we can live while protecting nothing.
Perhaps what we ultimately try to protect is not rules, but relationships. Not perfect righteousness, but the effort to understand one another.
And when even that effort disappears, we may become not dangerous to each other, but meaningless to one another.
Perhaps what human beings should fear most is not evil, but being forgotten.
In order to function effectively in negotiating our environment, we need to rely upon our ability to make distinctions. These distinctions in themselves are certainly functional and enabling, but can distort the way in which we understand our world. We can easily fall into the fallacy of what Whitehead describes as “misplaced concreteness,” reifying what is abstract and treating these hypostatized “things” as more real than the changing events of our experience. We can easily and at real expense overdetermine the continuity within the life process as some underlying and unchanging foundation. Such linguistic habits can institutionalize and enforce an overly static vision of the world, and in so doing, deprive both language and life of their creative possibilities. The referential use of language as someone’s technical morality — expressing the way the world ought to be — can too easily lay claim to the power and control that would make it so. - Roger T. Ames, Dao De Jing (Introduction)