Morality is only moral when it is voluntary

During my school days, I had this subject called Moral Science. During this class, we were told different stories, which always ended with – moral of the story. It was always fun to listen to these stories. Though I liked these stories, I always wondered why was it part of my school curriculum?

Morality – principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

Honestly, I have to agree to the fact that these stories did help me mould my character to an extent. In all honesty, morality is only a byproduct of decency. Of course, be kind to each other, help each other, don’t get greedy, be wise, don’t cheat/hurt others are necessary values to teach our children. But most of us stop with that, is that where the moral values stop? I always considered myself to be a good listener. The problem with listening is, you will only be told what they want you to know. That is the reason I rely more on observing these days. 

So, who defines what is right or wrong, good or bad? Is there a community for it? If so, who heads this community? I will tell you who heads this community, you head this community, you are the community. My moral values need not be the same as yours or vice versa. For instance, I don’t drink or smoke, because those are my principles. But I am not gonna judge someone who does smoke or drink. But there was a time when I used to think it was wrong, because of my lack of exposure. Your morality or moral values will keep evolving along with you.

Things which you thought were wrong once up on a time, might be okay now. People are gonna frown on me for the thing I am gonna point out next. Sex before marriage. I am not here to advocate it is right or wrong to do it. All I am saying is, its fine, everyone needs to chill about it. The problem is, people think, we were not allowed to do it, so it must be wrong. We need to understand that just because we were not allowed to do something, we also don’t let others do it and pass judgement on them. I mean doesn’t it contradict with what is being taught in those Moral Science stories. Don’t discriminate people, without knowing them. 

Where does one draw line? Morality is a very complex structure. We are being taught, respect all living being equally, and yet its okay to murder cows and chickens, while murdering a homo sapien, you go to jail. Why does homo sapiens think we are superior to all other species? We are the only species that are so proud that we have moral values, and yet we are the only species who kill each other among ourselves, for the same values. For instance, we appreciate when someone quotes things like – always be yourself, and yet we celebrate people who pretend to be someone else in movies. Lets take a more small case. Love marriages are frowned up on, in the society I live in. When I was a kid, one of my relatives went for a love marriage, to add more to the fire, it was a female. That was enough for my other relatives to discriminate them. I mean, its not like they did something that could potentially end the world or something.

Again, we are contradicting ourselves to the moral stories we were taught, don’t talk ill about a person behind them. You know the people who are discriminating the concept of love are the same people, who celebrate our ex-chief minister of Tamilnadu, who was actually convicted an accused in income tax fraud. Where is the moral in that? It is very convenient, that we homo sapiens can bend our morality as per our needs. Was it moral when Krishna instructed Bheema to hit Duryodhana below the belt in their last fight? Was Duryodhana not moral when he chose Bheema to fight the last battle, when he could have chose any other weak brother whom he could have won easily? Was it moral for Arjuna to use Shikandi as as shield against Bhisma? 

I don’t think most of the people understand the concept of morality. Morality is only moral when it is voluntary. You don’t try to impose your moral values on others. The moral values you impose on yourself are based on your experiences of life, similarly other people will come up with their own moral values. Start observing, don’t just listen.