Shades of Grey

Our society commonly accepts that there is no black nor white, only shades of gray. Of course, should anyone do the forbidden act of analyzing, that declaration would be found to wiggle and squirm. Is murder a shade of gray? Is armed robbery a shade of gray? What about sexual molestation of minors? Is there some good in these acts that makes them only three quarters bad? Should we punish offenders with only three quarters of a punishment because they really only cause three quarters harm?

What about the adoption of an abandoned child by nurturing parents? Or the provision of a prosthetic for an amputee? Or cataract surgery?

And why should we punish as alluded above acts that are only gray? Why should anyone suffer pain and frustration that is clearly existent for acts that are only more negative than positive on a sliding scale?

Should we suggest by even a simple whisper that the world really is not gray, an almost obsessive thunder attacks us from many in society. In fact, their cries would leave the detached observer with the impression that the mere belief in philosophical and moral clarity is a greater crime than any act of murder or rape.

How did we reach this judgmentalism?

Certainly we were not always this way. Western culture had a clear sense of positive and negative, right and wrong, good and bad, beneficial and harmful. It openly avowed that certain beliefs, words, and actions were white or were black. Interestingly, attitudes were not seen with the clarity that beliefs, words, and acts were seen. I never read a 17th century writer arguing that someone had the right facts, the right beliefs, and the wrong attitude. That was simply a nuance it seems was overlooked.

But as we move into the late 1800s we found our world more complex than previously we confronted. Improved travel and communication meant the average person was simply exposed to far more experience and ideas than before. 

Simultaneously, the move from farms to industrial occupation in urban areas, meant the concrete realities known by the agriculturalist no longer anchored the minds of the growing middle class.

And lastly, with the “aid” of evolution and biblical criticism, we no longer humbly trusted God with what we did not understand. He was no longer in charge, we were. He no longer could be trusted with the mystery in this world. We were its masters. And so, suddenly, Western society needed some way to address the flood of information, no longer anchored by the hard realities of the natural world, and no longer cared for by God.

We took the easy way out. Men like William James struggled with the problem and decided that the old idea of right and wrong was too simplistic. Life was just too complex. Adopting a baby might help hurting Johnny or abandoned Annie. But the adopting parents would inculcate their own faults, negatively affecting the child for life. Jim may be wrong to get angry with Bob and murder him, but afterward we find that Bob was a sexual molester and Jim did the community an unknown but great service in removing one of its sinister threats.

And so, we are asked to believe that our world does not have any right or wrong, good or bad, beneficial or harmful reality. Only simpletons would ever be fooled otherwise. But the obsessive fear of our society with the black and white demonstrates our insecurity with our own belief. If we are right than why do we act like we are afraid of an alternative belief.

It might be because our belief disproves itself. If there is no right or wrong than our own belief cannot be right and the belief in concrete morality cannot be wrong. But deeper. Maybe our fear is because we do not really believe our selves what we claim. Why do we act as those something is clearly good or self destructive or harmful when that helps us feel comfortable, and argue that good and harm do not exist when that makes us feel comfortable? And then there is the deeper issue yet.

If our discovery of complexity does not justify our conclusion of ambiguity, then we are really just lazy. Complexity means that you have to work harder. You have to be more diligent. And you are rewarded for that effort. If right and wrong are clear but more complex and nuanced than we were used to understanding, than all this talk of gray is really a way to hide our own laziness in understanding and living in our world.

And if we are really lazy to think and understand and hiding our eneptitude under the mask of gray, than we are really betraying ourselves for the sake of temporary comfort. We are trading our own futures for now. We are selling our birthright for the mess, literally, of pottage.

Have many who claimed to believe in moral objectivity and clarity demonstrated lives and used expressions offensive to any reasonable person? Absolutely. Could this proposition be wrong? Yes. Would the objective effort in investigating and discovering be wasted? Never. For we would understand ourselves and we would better our children's heritage for the investigating. And that is something to not be afraid about.