[Off-Topic] The Cult of Gray Morality
I’m reading the excellent book The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, first published in 1961 — if I’m not mistaken. And, before the sarcastic references to the word ‘selfishness’ begin, let me refer to the book’s introduction:
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a brutal mindless brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares nothing for any living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.
This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.
The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets: (a) that any concern with one’s own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and (b) that the brute’s activities are in fact to one’s own interest (which altruism urges men to renounce for the sake of their neighbors).
That said, I don’t recommend reading the book, since it deals precisely with dismantling concepts known as “common sense” today — something most people simply have no interest in changing :-D But seriously, if you enjoy thinking, this collection is very interesting.
Just for a taste — if you have an open mind — I’m putting down several excerpts from chapter 9, The Cult of Gray Morality.
The Cult of Gray Morality
One of the most eloquent symptoms of the moral bankruptcy of today’s culture is a fashionable attitude on moral questions, best summarized as: “There are no blacks and whites, only grays.” This is claimed about people, actions, principles of conduct and morality in general. “Black and White,” in this context, means “good and evil.” (The reverse order used in that phrase is psychologically interesting.)
In any respect that one cares to examine, this notion is full of contradictions (and chief among them is the fallacy of the “stolen concept”). If there is no black and white, there can be no gray — since gray is merely a mixture of the two.
Before anyone can identify anything as “gray,” one must know what is black and what is white. In the field of morality, this means that one must first identify what is good and what is evil. And when a man knows with certainty that one alternative is good and the other evil, he has no justification for choosing a mixture. There can be no justification for choosing any part of what he already knows to be evil. In morality, “black” is predominantly the result of pretending to be merely “gray.”
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If, on some complex moral question, a man has difficulty determining what is right, and fails or makes an honest mistake, he cannot be placed in the “gray” category; morally, he is “white.” Errors of knowledge are not moral failures; no decent moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.
But if, to escape the responsibility of moral judgment, a man closes his eyes and his mind, if he evades the facts of the issue and strains not to know, he cannot be placed in the “gray” category; morally, he is as “black” as one can be.
Many forms of confusion, uncertainty and epistemological laziness help to obscure the contradictions and hide the real meaning of the doctrine of gray morality.
Some people believe it is merely a restatement of things like “Nobody is perfect in this world,” i.e., everyone is a mixture of good and evil and thus morally “gray.” Since most people see themselves in that description, they accept it as some sort of natural fact, without thinking much more about it. They forget that morality deals only with matters open to man’s choice (i.e., to his free will) and therefore no statistical generalization is valid on this subject.
If man is “gray” by nature, no moral concept is applicable to him, including “gray,” and something like morality is impossible. But if man has free will, the fact that 10 (or 10 million) men have chosen wrongly does not mean the eleventh will also; it does not make it necessary — and it proves nothing — about any individual.
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A similar notion, involving similar errors, is held by some people who believe the doctrine of gray morality is merely a restatement of the proposition: “There are always two sides to every story,” by which they mean no one is entirely right or entirely wrong. But that is not what this proposition means or implies. It does not mean that the claims of both sides will necessarily be equally valid, nor even that there will be a small grain of justice on both sides. More often, justice will lie on one side, and the disqualified (or worse) premise on the other.
There are, of course, complex problems where both sides are right in some respects and wrong in others — and it is here that the scheme of pronouncing both sides “gray” is least permissible. It is on this type of problem that the rigorous precision of moral judgment is necessary to identify and evaluate the various elements — which can only be done by disentangling the mixed elements of “black” and “white.”
The basic error in all these various confusions is the same: it consists of forgetting that morality deals only with matters open to men’s choice — which means: forgetting the difference between “cannot” and “will not.” This allows people to translate the platitude “There are no blacks and whites” into: “Men cannot be totally good or evil” — which they accept in obscure resignation, without questioning the metaphysical contradictions it entails.
But not many people would accept this, if that platitude were translated into the real meaning it is intended to smuggle into their minds: “Men will not be totally good or evil.”
The first thing one would say to anyone repeating the above statement is: “Speak for yourself, brother!” And this, in effect, is exactly what he is doing in fact; consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or unwittingly, when a man declares: “There are no blacks and whites,” he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: “I will not be totally good — and please do not regard me as totally evil!”
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Observe the form in which people encounter this doctrine: it is almost never presented as something positive, as an ethical theory or a subject for discussion; predominantly, one hears it as something negative, as a quick objection or reprimand, in a manner implying someone’s guilt or breach of something so obviously absolute that it needs no discussion. In tones ranging from surprise to sarcasm to anger to indignation to hysterical hatred, the doctrine is thrown at you in the form of an accusation: “Surely you don’t think in terms of black and white, do you?”
Caught by confusion, inability to defend oneself and fear of the whole subject of morality, most people quickly answer guiltily: “No, of course not,” without any clear idea of the nature of the accusation. They don’t stop to think that the accusation is saying, in fact: “Surely you are not so unjust as to discriminate between good and evil, are you?” — or: “Surely you are not so evil as to seek the good, are you?” — or: “Surely you are not so immoral as to believe in morality!”
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Observe, in politics, that the term extremist has become synonymous with “evil,” regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are “extreme” about, but that you are “extreme” — i.e., consistent).
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These are the reasons why — when someone asks you: “Surely, you don’t think in terms of black and white, do you?” — the appropriate response (in essence, if not also in form) should be: “You can be damn sure I do!”