Dear Colin,

One challenge I have always faced is how to strongly believe in a set of values but not judge other people when they diverge from those values.

When we believe in something, be it principles or morals, how do we act and treat others who adhere to different—or at times, seemingly no—standards?

-Arnav

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Hey Arnav-

I really like this question, because it strikes at the heart of a few things I think about a lot.

Key to traversing that avenue of thinking is the dichotomy between moral objectivism and moral relativism.

The moral objectivist or universalist standpoint is that there are absolute or near-absolute moral and ethical values that we can say are true in all or most situations, across all space and time.

If you believe that killing someone is always wrong, no matter the circumstance, for instance: that’s a morally objective position.

If you believe that killing is okay in some circumstances—during a war, in defense of your family or self, etc—but not all circumstances: that’s a morally relativistic position.

The tricky thing about these concepts is that if we make objective statements about morality, we often succumb to our own circumstantial bias.

If I come from a culture that is all about ritual human sacrifice, and that’s a key component of my religion, my civilization, and everything I’ve ever encountered culturally tells me that human sacrifice is not just okay but wonderful and ethically pure, then I’m far more likely to decide that human sacrifice is good according to the universe’s laws about such things.

So there’s a solid chance that any universal statement will be dependent upon the lens of the person making that statement.

Me being a 30-something, straight, white man from an English-speaking, Western culture in the 21st century, having grown up middle class, left-handed, blue-eyed, etc; these are all things that can influence my perception of what is obviously good and correct. Had I been born in another place, another time, or as another person with another collection of attributes, my latent sense of such things would almost certainly be different.

So although it can be tempting to decide that our beliefs are applicable in a universal, absolute sense—not just for us or in some circumstances—there’s an excellent chance that someone else from somewhere else is doing the exact same thing for exactly the same reasons and coming to entirely different conclusions.

The flip side of this, though, is just as complicated for other reasons.

Making morally relativist statements can leave us beholden to a sort of Zeno’s Paradox as we try to measure which acts falls into which categories.

If I were to say, for instance, that killing is wrong, except during wartime, how do I determine what’s a war and what’s some other kind of conflict?

Is it the declaration of war that matters? What about undeclared wars? Proxy wars? Terrorist attacks that are seen as an act of war by one side, but an attack on civilians on the other side?

What if a war is declared, and you are sent to fight, but the person on the other side, in the other trench, throws down their gun and raises their hands in surrender? What if you’re told to kill that person, regardless? Who’s rules about war and where that term begins and ends should we listen to? What exceptions apply? And why should we trust those who are making these rules for us any more than another random person with another set of definitions?

What’s morally legitimate and what isn’t becomes very fuzzy very quickly when we become relativistic about such things.

It’s possible to never quite feel right about your actions because there are an infinite number of ways to interpret them.

That in mind, I would argue that it’s often worth cutting other people slack when their morality of behavior doesn’t seem to measure up by your personal standards, because we’re all sort of groping around in the darkness here, trying to find something that allows us to live better lives according to our individual metrics for “better,” while also trying to expand our personal horizons for that term; to ensure our “better” is as close to our optimal definition for the word as possible.

This is something that has been reinforced in my own thinking by the years I’ve spent living in other countries, amongst folks from other cultures.

There’s a lot of cultural homogeneity these days, for a variety of reasons, but there are still distinct differences between groups of people, and the behaviors of communities and individuals within those groups.

I’ve learned, from my perspective at least, that it’s possible to get to know someone who behaves in ways that are antithetical to your understanding of moral correctness while still recognizing that they are moral people; it’s just that their morals are different from your own.

If you come from a sub-culture that holds it to be self-evident that animals shouldn’t be mistreated, and should never be killed for consumption, it makes sense that you might cringe at the thought of a culture where they routinely and perhaps even ritually slaughter animals for meals.

It’s important to recognize, though, that from their standpoint, it may be you who is the morally negligent party.

Maybe this relationship with animals—the rearing and consuming of them—is an integral part of building community, or of their connection with their ecosystem. Maybe they maintain health and an awareness of their place on the planet via these traditions, and those who do not take part in those rituals are removing themselves from this circle of trust and humility.

Now importantly: this doesn’t mean that you need to go eat meat just because doing so is important to someone else, based on someone else’s moral system.

Recognizing that there are other moral perspectives doesn’t imply that we need to adhere to those other perspectives. It also doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to change or fight against them, if we find those standards to be truly hazardous or dangerous or even just unappealing. That’s how social standards and cultural norms change, after all: they come into conflict with each other. That’s a feature, not a bug, of society.

But it does mean that we can try to understand that other person and where they come from, and do our best to see them as humans, first, and as holders of certain ideas, second.

This gives us permission to separate moral viewpoints from the bearer of those viewpoints, which makes it less likely that we’ll succumb to outright prejudice and makes it more likely that we’ll be able to engage with folks who believe and live differently from us in productive ways.

A few ideas I find to be useful in this regard, personally:

The phrase “have strong opinions, weakly held” is applicable here. Don’t be afraid to believe in things and act upon those beliefs, but also aspire to be humble enough to change those opinions when presented with new information or perspectives.

I try to do regular check-ins with my beliefs, to make sure I’m not clinging to outdated (to me) ideas simply because I haven’t taken the time to challenge them for a while. It’s amazing how long such perspectives can sit on the shelf, untouched and unaddressed, and how easily they can be replaced if you take the time to do so.

And finally, I tell myself regularly that it’s not my responsibility to convert anyone to any particular way of thinking.

This idea runs counter to a lot of what we’re taught and told by organized ideological organizations in particular, and often our own internal thought processes as well.

Meme theory posits that bits of information and ideas struggle to survive just like genes. A “meme” is like idea DNA, and will, like a gene, do its best to be passed on from generation to generation.

As such, some ideas have survival mechanisms built into them, like the notion that we must spread the good word, share concepts with anyone who will listen, and force our points of view on others if they resist our obvious rightness.

This propensity of ideas themselves, alongside the potential monetary benefits of building organizations around certain sets of moral principles, often incentivizes us to convert everyone around us to our way of seeing things.

And I would further argue that this propensity isn’t always a very socially or personally positive one.

So when I say that I give myself permission not to convert anyone, that’s what I’m referring to. I consciously remind myself that it’s not a threat to me or my worldview when someone disagrees with me, and that I needn’t force my ideas on them, or try to argue them into submission. I can make my ideas available, if I choose to, and leave it at that.

That last point, especially paired with the broader context of this discussion that I mentioned above, is what allows me to more often than not avoid harsh judgement and antagonistic, evangelizing behavior when faced with people who believe differently than me.

I’ll happily put my thoughts and perspectives out into the world for others to do with what they choose, but the argument that we should all see things the same way, should approach building society and living life in the same way, seems counterproductive to me.