How Moral Feelings Can Make Us Immoral

Morality matters. A lot. Much more than the attention we give it, especially the inattention of those who have strong moral passions, folks who worry that they’re not good enough and therefore strive to be more loving, kind, caring honest, generous, tolerant, or loyal, folks who obsessively aim to attach themselves to the named virtues and avoid the named vices, the kind of people who wince when accused of being unkind, uncaring, or disloyal, or whatever, like it’s evidence of their immorality.

Maybe you’re like that. Lots of us are. Paradoxically, the morally ambitious don’t give morality the attention it deserves.

Here I’ll show how that kind of passionate striving to embody the named virtues and skirt the named vices is the road to absolute hypocrisy, stunting moral growth by oversimplifying the moral challenge.

You really want to be good, not bad. You wince when someone says you’re uncaring and soothed when someone says you’re caring. See, you’re trying to collect all the virtue cards and abstain from all the vice cards. Really trying, so you go broad, avoiding anything that implies vice. You wince when someone accuses you of being angry, jealous, or stubborn. If a word sounds in any way pejorative you want nothing to do with it. Other people get angry and jealous or stubborn. Not you.

So how’s it going?

It feels OK, but isn’t really. You end up with conflicts between the cards. For example, you want to be kind and honest since they’re both virtues. But since they’re often at odds, as when you honestly think things that people would consider unkind, you have to choose. But you won’t. You won’t even notice the trade-off between honesty and kindness, because, for you, what matters is collecting virtue cards and avoiding vice cards.

Someone accuses you of being unkind. You say you’re just being honest or that, no, you weren’t being unkind, or at least didn’t mean to be, since your intentions are always good. Still, it eats at you a bit because they still say it was unkind and you don’t want to collect that card.

So you come up with ways to deflect it. You say they’re unkind for calling you unkind. Whatever helps you get rid of that vice card. Sure, you’ll say you’re open to criticism, that you have integrity, are always open-minded, always learning, but that’s because those are virtue cards. Collect them all. You can’t afford to be introspective. If every time you look at yourself you wince, it’s easiest to just stop looking.

Meanwhile, what’s really going on? Well, you’re a human, equipped with the full human repertoire, all the motives we’ve all got. Sure you’ll admit to that. You’ve got bad motives, too. You “accept your shadow.” Nobody’s perfect. You’re humble that way (collect another virtue card).
Morality—indeed wisdom—is about knowing when and how to play which card in a give situation. There are no exclusively good or bad cards, just right and wrong cards to play in different circumstances.

Show me a virtue card and I’ll show you a situation in which it’s a vice. And vice versa. Show me a vice card and I’ll show you a situation in which it’s a virtue.

It’s even more complicated than that. Show me a named virtue and I’ll find you a synonym for it that makes it a vice and vice versa. Stubborn? Steadfast. Loyal? Sychophantic. Uncompromising? Tyrannical. All of these cards are in the human repertoire. The supposed vices are vices when they’re misplayed. Likewise the virtues. Love psychopaths? Loyal to fascists?

It’s even more complicated than that. Love, caring, and loyalty denote strong preferences for someone or something. Preferences are relative. The more you love something, the less you love other things. Indeed, the more you love something, the more you hate its opposite. If you love your kids, you’d hate to see them hurt. The more you love justice, the more you hate injustice. Turn that love card over. It’s got hate on the other side of it.

But you don’t think of it that way. You don’t really think. You feel. You just collect love, caring, and loyal cards. You wince and deflect when someone calls you unloving, uncaring or disloyal. Sure, you can pretend you love and care about everything and are loyal to everyone. Those are virtue cards and you want them all. By making morality all about collecting virtue and rejecting vice cards, you become a hypocrite.

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Maybe your anxiety grows along with your hypocrisy. But there’s a solution for that. There are these exclusive clubs looking for members. They have lifestyle brand names and rituals. Ritual activities but also ritual ornamentation, things you can wear and put up around your house that prove you’re a member of one of these exclusive clubs. The clubs promise an unlimited bounty of good cards with no bad cards. Join the club and you will be officially loving, kind, caring honest, generous, tolerant, loyal, etcetera.

To whom? It’s not specified which is great for you. You can say you love everyone. But really, those virtues are all directed within the club: You’re loving, kind, caring honest, generous, tolerant, and loyal to the club and its members, and since prioritizing your club is relative, you’re less and less loving, caring and loyal beyond the club, except that now, as a member of your exclusive club, you enjoy tossing those vice cards down at all of the people who aren’t in it. You’re loyal to the club. They’re disloyal to it, and therefore bad, unworthy of the club.

That’s how moral striving fails to address the true questions of morality—when to play which cards, none of them exclusively good or bad—and results in stunted moral growth, failure to cultivate the quest for the wisdom to know the differences that make a difference to when, how and why you should play which card in your human repertoire.

The moral of the story? Stop wincing when accused of having responses in the common human repertoire. Stop to think about whether you used the right response for the circumstances.

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