Moral Question of the Day

Hey y’alls, it’s been a while. I’ve been travelling out and about, first in Switzerland, then in Scotland, so I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and write (actually, I think my last post was from Switzerland, but that’s why it was so short). Anyway, this will be the last blog post I ever write from France (or, at least for a long time), so hopefully it will be pretty special. Or maybe it won’t be special at all. We’ll see.

Normally, I would mark a special occasion such as my departure from France with a special Top 5 (that, of course, being the greater theme of this blog), but I’ve been neglecting to write about a Moral Question of the Day that I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks now, and if I don’t write about it soon, I just might forget about it, and that would be a real shame. Other Top 5’s (such as ones about Switzerland/Scotland/traveling in general will follow, although I can’t say exactly on what schedule at this point since my 3-hour work breaks at my job in France no longer exist. Anyway, without further ado:

Today’s moral question comes from my brother, who was inspired by a discussion in a med school class. Copied and pasted here is what he recounted to me in an email:

i know you do some moral questions of the day, and today during a medical ethics lecture, I heard an interesting one. Some catholic doctor guy asked, “If you do something that you know is wrong, what defense do you have?” and “Have any of you ever done something you knew was WRONG?” Implicit in his questions is the belief that people make wrong decisions. I asked him if he believes that people actually believe that they are making wrong decisions at the time, or if it is possible that people find out that they made a wrong decision after facing the consequences. My example to him being a kid getting a cookie from the cookie jar because he wants a cookie (makes sense), then finding out it was WRONG after he was punished. He ignored it mostly, but i think it is interesting. Or, you could have the example of someone cheating. He or she may know that it is WRONG, but the belief that he can get away with it, and his desire to have sex overcomes that knowledge, so that it seems like the right decision at the time. Aren’t all decisions based on some amount of uncertainty, and then the KNOWLEDGE of being WRONG based on the eventual outcome?

Well put, sir. Here are my thoughts:

I am in full agreement with you about the fact that all decisions comprise a certain degree of uncertainty, otherwise, they wouldn’t really be decisions (For example, there is no uncertainty that you need to breathe in order to live, and thus breathing is not really much of a decision). Knowing whether something is right or wrong at the moment when you make the decision is not a luxury that many of us have, which is what has led to all of the cliches about hindsight being 20/20 and so forth (for the record, I believe that hindsight can sometimes be just as biased as foresight, especially with regards to religious people who say things like, “See? God is punishing you”.)

However, with regards to the belief that people make wrong decisions, I wouldn’t hasten to rule anything out. From my point of view, I have done many a thing in my life that in hindsight is clearly wrong. Did I know at the time I was making the decision that it was a bad choice? Most of the time I would certainly say no. However, one of the decisions that comes to mind was a case where I realized what I was doing was wrong while I was in the process of doing it. The problem was I hadn’t really thought about the choice before I made it. I was so preoccupied with what was enjoyable that I didn’t stop to think if my actions would hurt anyone. So, in the context of your professor’s question, I did something that I knew was wrong, I just didn’t stop to consider the fact that it was wrong until I was already in the process of doing it.  Consistently with the point you raise, however, as soon as I thought about what I was doing, and considered the fact that it was wrong, I stopped doing it, which points to our natural inclination to steer away from things that we believe are “wrong” or inconsistent with our morals.

That example, however, only covers me — I would be hesitant to speak to the motives of other individuals, or people in general. I can speak from observations about their behavior, but it is difficult to derive intention from action. For example, say that I have a friend who is hurting my feelings. I can say to myself that what they are doing is wrong, because it hurts my feelings. I can infer that if this person considers me a friend, he would try to avoid hurting my feelings, and thus consider actions of this kind as “wrong”. However, is the friend in question aware of the fact that he is hurting my feelings? Is the friend acting in an anomalous way due to unforseen circumstances? The friend might not realize he was hurting my feelings until I tell him so (the “consequences” of this scenario), in which case he will deal with this information accordingly (hopefully and apology or explanation of some sort).

This would point toward your possibility that people don’t realize their choices are wrong until they have seen the consequences. But what about decisions that don’t directly affect those around us? For example, I buy things from Wal-Mart. After having attended a liberal arts university, and hearing about the atrocities of Wal-Mart (e.g. its gender inequality, its detrimental effects on small businesses, its exploitation of foreign sweatshop labor, etc). I continue to shop at Wal-Mart. That is a decision that I have thought about, and continue to make, even though I question the morality of the decision that I am making. Like you said, there is a degree of uncertainty, but when I look long and hard at my decision making I think it boils down less to uncertainty and more to convenience taking precedent over moral causes that are somewhat far-removed from myself. Wal-Mart has never driven anyone I know out of business, and while I attended the lecture of the 2 sweatshop workers at Denison, I feel no closeness to sweatshop workers, so while I can see the moral validity of the “boycott Wal-Mart” cause, I have not championed it, because it is not close to me, and thus not high on my priority list. I would say it is more of a matter of laziness rather than uncertainty.

Laziness brings to mind another example — procrastination. To be fair to procrastination, it is not that dire of a sin. No one is really harmed by it, save for the person who sets out to undertake it. But how many of us have had an important paper to do, and in the midst of playing a video game or watching a television program announced to the room, “Man, I should really be working on my paper,” only then to continue sitting in front of the television, not working on the paper? The announcement seems almost disingenuous, because if we really believed deep in our hearts that we should be working on the paper, we would probably be working on the paper. We have forseen the stress and loss of sleep that the procrastination will engender, yet we persist in procrastinating anyway? Granted, stress and loss of sleep are not that great of evils, all things considered, and sometimes the consequences of procrastination are an A+ on a paper, so again I must state that this is a moral example that must be taken with a grain of salt.  However, I  still think that sometimes laziness can overtake morality, at least for some of us.

My next example relates to “Bad Boy” appeal. What about people who do things that they thing are “naughty”, or “wicked”, or “nasty”, knowing that this excites them? This point of view is generally summed up in the Billy Joel song “Only the Good Die Young”. In one of the verses, he sings, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; the sinners are much more fun.” Now, one could take this song as a stab at religion, but what if some people actually believe that it is somehow more fun/sexy/spontaneous/exciting to be “bad” or “wrong” than it is to be “good” or “right”? This could just be an issue of semantics — an indiosyncrasy of our religiously biased terminology and lingo in an increasingly secular world. People could be saying that things are “naughty” when the implied “naughtiness” has little to do with their personal beliefs. Like when we ask people if something is “kosher” when we mean to ask if it is ok to do; this has nothing to do with being jewish, it is just a figure of speech that people like to employ in commonplace situations. However, I do believe that there are people out there who are excited by the prospect of morally questionable actions — it’s not called “temptation” for nothing. Back to your cheating example, a married man or woman might know that it is “wrong” to cheat, and while a great deal of the excitement of cheating may come simply from the sexual pursuit, there may be an added element of excitement inherent in the cheating that comes from the fact that the cheater is being “bad”, in which case I think it would be hard to deny that someone did something that they knew was wrong.

This question is difficult to answer, though, because it deals with notions right and wrong, which is often largely subjective and difficult to define. Granted, there are the standard stereotypical responses, (killing is wrong, lying is wrong, helping others is right, etc.), but often the “rightness” or “wrongness” of an action is so circumstantial that it is difficult to make blanket statements. The classic example from my philosophy class would runs as follows:

Lying is wrong. Right? Is it wrong all the time? What if you live in 1940’s Europe, and you are hiding Jews in your attic, and an SS officer asks you if you’ve seen any Jews in the neighborhood?

Like you said, a lot of decisions boil down to uncertainty, so it would be difficult to determine for most decisions whether people know with absolute certainty if the decision they are making is right or wrong. I don’t think it is necessarily as black and white as your professor made it sound, and it certainly isn’t a case where people take on the persona of a cartoon villain, and espouse the side of evil for the sake of evil itself. Generally I think that many of our actions are made based on criteria that aren’t “right vs. wrong”. Neitzsche argued in his Geneology of Morals that the concepts of Good and Evil are a scourge on the world coined by Christianity and Judaism. So, yeah, whenever you try to objectively discuss issues like right and wrong, subjectivity can get in the way, and things get complicated. Probably more complicated than your ethics professor wanted to get into with you. And again, I think that it is a distinct possibility that people do make decisions that they know are wrong. So while it may have been rude of him to dismiss your question, your professor may have been coming from a respectable position.

Well, that wraps up my last French post. I’m gonna miss you, Le Mans. I’m even gonna miss all of your ugly, ugly tramway construction. Okay, maybe I’m lying a little bit; I probably won’t miss the tramway construction, but we’ve had some good memories, haven’t we? Sure we have. While I may be on to bigger and better things, Le Mans will always be the setting of a special chapter of my life. See you all on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Tootles.

Moral Question of the Day

Warning: The following post may talk about things that make people uncomfortable/should not be viewed by children.

Question: What’s with Bad Guy appeal?

This question is perhaps more complicated than it would first seem. First of all, while “Bad Guy appeal” is typically looked at as a female phenomenon, it is by no means exclusively so. I recently had a fling with a girl who, while by no means would be considered a “Bad Girl” in the rebel/hardass sense, was certainly a bad girl in terms of the fact that she was no good for me. A friend of mine at college stayed with a girlfriend who repeatedly cheated on him, and another friend of mine repeatedly got back together with a girlfriend who dumped him for the express purpose of having sex with other guys (meaning she told him of her intention to do so). I also had a conversation with a friend in my study abroad program who had studied psychology at her school, and told me about a study she had read where a significant majority of men surveyed (I believe she told me something like 80%, but I could be wrong), found many of the things that physically aroused them to be morally despicable. So I suppose another way I could phrase the question would be, What’s so sexy about being bad?

On the surface, the simple answer would be that people are attracted to confidence, and “bad” people tend to possess confidence (or the semblance of it) in large quantities. This again applies to guys as well as girls, with the distinction that for guys, personality tends to play a less integral role in attraction, particularly if the guy in question is looking for a one-night stand. For example, if a man meets a woman at the bar, whether she is confident/shy might not matter, as long as she is physically attractive and the man feels capable of getting in her pants (although confidence can clearly play a role in the second of these two factors). In my experience, if you ask a guy what is attractive about a woman, he will point out a physical feature such as chest, butt, face, or even eyes. Women tend to point out a personality trait, such as confidence, or a chip on the proverbial shoulder; or sometimes something even more abstract, like an air of mystery, or a “twinkle”.

However, leaving the question resolved in such a black and white fashion is unsatisfying for me. There is an old saying in America that reads thusly: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”. Recently I’ve been coming around to that way of thinking more and more. I don’t hate the people who have screwed me over as much as I hate their mindset.  I hate the person that other people tell me to be in order to have more success with girls. I hate the Heathcliffs of literature and the characters played by Mickey Rourke in films. I hate the fact that acting like a”Bad Guy” seems to be a necessary evil.

Let me clarify a bit.  When I was in the midst of the aforementioned fling with the girl who was no good for me, I repeatedly received advice from members of my family telling me to “Just be mean to her every once in a while. It will make her appreciate you more.” Two of my best friends from high school, with whom I stayed in contact during college both told me, “If you really like a girl, you can’t be as nice to her as you want. You have to be kind of a dick sometimes if you want a girl to respect you.” (Both of those friends have now cheated on their girlfriends, and have had many more partners than I probably ever will). Even in high school, I had a conversation with one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life, and he told me, “Look, sometimes, when you meet a girl, you have to act like you only want to get in her pants. It simplifies things, and prevents you from being ‘too nice’. Then, once you’ve gotten past the first hurdle, then you can start to be yourself.” While I can see the practical wisdom in all of these pieces of advice, I’ve never been able to follow any of them. Something inside of me won’t allow it.

Here’s another way to state the problem: When I was young, I used to think that romantic relationships (sex, dating, marriage, etc.) were a mutually consentual thing between two partners. When two people met, they would feel some sort of connection, be it through eye contact, conversation, etc., and then as this connection grew, sex and relationships would arise out of this mutual feeling. The older I get, and the more I see and learn, the more the situation appears to more like this — The majority of people don’t know what they want, so take what you want, and your confidence in doing so will convince your partner that what you’re doing is mutually consentual.

That probably makes me sound like a rapist, which brings up another point. I think the way that our society views “the game” is conducive to attitudes that promote rape. One of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard was a testimonial from a rape victim at Denison’s Take Back the Night. The girl told us the story of not only the circumstances of her rape, but also the first time she tried to confide in someone. She went to one of her best friends, whom she told she thought she had been raped at a party the night before, and the friend replied, “Well, at least you got some.”

I think that sex is over-prioritized in the meat-market atmosphere of college parties, a point that was reinforced to me every time one of the guys in my a cappella singing group told me, “Hey Curtis, tonight we’re gonna get you some.” I often hear women cite the stereotype that “Men only want one thing”, but that’s oversimplyfing things. Yes, men want that one thing, but so do women for the most part. The problem lies in the fact that the men who are willing to do whatever it takes to get that one thing tend to be the ones who get it the most, for reasons that are tied directly to the “Bad Guy Appeal” attitudes listed above. Guys who are dicks take what they want, and subsequently have the appeal to get it. Other guys, who may have started off “Nice”, learn from the success of these individuals, and adopt the wisdom that my friends tried to pass on to me in high school and college — that sometimes it pays to be a dick.

The third way I could phrase today’s question is this: Why do feelings sometimes contradict our reason or morality?

I’ve already brought up the example of the survey where men said they found things simultaneously physically arousing and morally despicable. This also is quite applicable to my “Bad Girl” situation. It was apparent to me that the girl in question was no good for me long before I got over her. No matter how much she hurt me, and no matter how many logical reasons I had to give up, I kept pursuing. Women with abusive husbands will often say things like, “Deep down, I know he loves me”, but rationally, abuse is not a loving action, so these kinds of declarations clearly stem more from feelings. Similarly, boys/girls who are already in a relationship with a “Bad Guy” type generally believe that they can change their partner into someone who’s a good/dependable partner in the long run, a belief that is clearly based more on feelings than observable facts or reason.

One reason I can point to right away is religion. Many religions teach us that our bodies are worldly things, disposed to sin and error, and thus our bodily urges (e.g. sex drives) are dirty and sinful. There are two ways in which this could lead to the feelings/morality opposition that my question addresses:

1) These religions are correct, and sex really is a dirty thing, so we should use it carefully, and only for procreation.

2) The fact that religion plays such a role in our society and culture has led us to be conditioned into believing (consciously or subconciously) that sex is dirty or sinful, so in the case that we do venture into the exploration of our own sexuality, we are already of the mindset that we are doing something dirty. Since we naturally find sex arousing, we associate arousal with things that are against our morals.

Either way, this opposition is clearly apparent in our society’s sexual dialogue. When people become sexually involved, partners will frequently say things to each other like, “I feel like being really naughty tonight”, “I’ve been a bad boy/girl”, or even “Talk dirty to me.”The images of dirty/bad/naughty are naturally ingrained into our sexual conscious, and it manifests itself in our lingo. I have no doubt that this in some way plays a part in the Bad Guy/Girl appeal we are discussing.

The aforementioned “bad girl” with whom I became involved once told me, “This whole situation would be so much easier if you just didn’t have feelings.” I couldn’t help but agree with her, because if I hadn’t had such strong feelings for her I would have left her on her unappreciative ass a long time ago. But I think perhaps it is my feelings that causes me to hate “The Game”. Acting like dick to attract girls would make me feel disingenuous, like I was lowering myself. Also, if I were to separate my feelings from my romantic pursuits, I would feel like I was giving up a part of who I am, part of what makes me the person that I know and like.

There is one final contradiction in this issue that I feel merits consideration, and that is the contradiction between people’s short-term and long-term romantic goals in our society. An anecdotal way in which I can illustrate this is a conversation I had with some girls here in Le Mans after my fallout with “bad girl”. The girls I was talking all were of the belief that a guy shouldn’t be “too nice” if he wants to be desirable. They tried to console me by telling me, “Well, Curtis, you might be a nice guy, but you’re the kind of guy a girl would want to marry.” I told them that didn’t make me feel much better, because generally I like to date a girl before I marry her, so initial appeal is important to me as well. It made me think about how irrational it was to look for different qualities in people you date vs. people you marry. The way I see it, dating is the process through which you discover how you function in a relationship, and what qualities you want in a partner. While those qualities may change as you learn more about yourself and others, at every point you should be looking for qualities in people that you want in a long-term partner. To consciously look for different qualities in a boyfriend and a husband seems silly to me.

I talked to another friend about this, and she told me, “Well, it’s the classic debate between excitement and stability; people want excitement from sex/dating and stability from marriage. But that’s just silly, because you can have both. In fact, I know you can have both.” I found here words very wise; I think if you love someone enough to marry them you should have both. But here’s where the mind/feeling opposition rears its ugly head again. What do we do when our feelings tell us that an asshole is exciting and attractive, when our mind tells us that really he/she is just an asshole, and we should be looking for someone dependable who will treat us well? I generally favor my mind in circumstances such as these, but as I said previously I am not willing to simply dismiss or relinquish my feelings.

Okay, I think I have thoroughly and comprehensively explained my qualms with the Bad Guy appeal, and its apparent and underlying causes. If you feel compelled by these issues, feel free to leave me any opinions, anecdotes or advice you have in the comments section. I promise the top 5 lists this week will be lighter, easier reading. Tootles.

Moral Question of the Day

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these. I guess I’m making up for it by hitting you guys with a pretty heavy subject. The question is:

How do we as human beings learn to deal with loss?

Loss is a universal human experience. At some point we all lose something. We lose a basketball game, we lose an iPod (rrrgh…), we break up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, we lose a friend or a loved one, etc. Last October I experienced the first major loss of my life when my dog and long-time friend Darby passed away. I had lost a grandpa to lung cancer, but I had only met him a few times, and I was only five years old. I had lost friends of friends or friends of family, but everyone in my immediate circle of family and friends had somehow stayed alive and kicking for my entire life before I lost Darby.

To be fair, I must say I had lost people in other ways. My family has moved a number of times, and so there are people whom I had once considered among my “best” friends at one point that I rarely (if ever) speak to anymore, simply because of geographical barriers. I remember being devastated when my first girlfriend broke up with me, even though now in retrospect I realize that things probably turned out for the best.

Still, Darby was the first friend of mine that I lost to death, which is significant in a number of ways. Friends/girlfriends lost for geographic reasons can be regained with effort (and via new resources such as myspace.com), or in cases such as breakups there are generally reasons one can point to why the relationship needed to end. Death is so much more final, and there is no why involved. I mean, we know that all organisms eventually die, but there is no clear reason we can point to why they need to die (aside from overpopulation). I don’t feel any better off with Darby now that I have some hindsight and perspective; if he were alive he would still be a great friend. His death didn’t help me grow as a person at all, in the way my breakups with previous girlfriends did. All his death did was leave a void in my life that I have to deal with in one way or another.

As I look at my life up to this point, I realize that I have been fortunate to have kept so many of my friendships and family relationships intact. However, as I look forward to the horizon of my future, I also realize that I will not always be so fortunate. Some of my friends and family have already had near misses with heart problems, cancer, etc, and it’s only a matter of time before old age, disease, and accidents begin to claim more of my loved ones. (I could die before I lose anyone else, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I won’t).

It appears to me that loss becomes an ever-growing presence and force in our lives the older we get and I’m not just talking in terms of friends and relatives (although that might be the part of it that scares me the most). The older I get, the less sharp I feel mentally (and given that I’m only 23, I feel like that shouldn’t be happening at my age). Physical decline isn’t really an issue for me yet, but in 10-15 years that could become a subject of concern as well. At the same time as we must begin coping with increased loss of friends and family, we must also confront the loss of abilities that once came naturally to us. I realize that there are also many things to gain, such as a job, a house,  a car, a wife, children, etc. But then we retire, children move a way, wives can feasibly die or divorce us, and so on. After a point, is life just characterized by more and more loss until we die? If this is the case, how do we cope?

Many would point to religion, and a life beyond this one. That is a comforting scenario, at the least, and perhaps that’s why so many people ”get Jesus” or some other form of religion when they grow up and start families.  Others like Ernest Hemingway write books about how depressing life is, and then kill themselves. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this isn’t an advisable coping mechanism.

I guess in one way, we all just accept loss and realize that life goes on with or without us, and then make the choice whether we’re going to keep up or not. When I found out Darby had died, I cried for almost the entire day, but by the next day, I felt cried out, and I felt a certain need to move on. It was an ambiguous feeling, because while I realized that thinking about Darby was painful, and putting him out of mind was the best way to move on, I felt like it would be disloyal and disrespectful to just forget about someone who had been such a good friend to me for 14 years. Ultimately, I had so many new experiences on my mind while I adapted to life in France that it was no longer really a choice — Darby (and grieving for him) was passively removed from my mental priority list. My life has gone on without him, and I’ve even been quite happy for long stretches since October. I still miss him, but life is filled with so many experiences, I find that other things just move in to fill the void.

But what do we do as more and more losses leave more and more voids?

There’s a real upper of a question for you. It’ll probably be a good thing for me to forget about that question tomorrow while I write about Harry Potter. See you then. Tootles.

Moral Question of the Day

So a friend of mine who is currently enrolled in medical school recently received an evaluation of his performance in one of the school’s programs. The evaluation was quite critical, but what bothered my friend more than any of the criticisms was the “strengths” section of the evaluation. The section read something like this (I’m paraphrasing from memory):

“This student tries really hard; he always tries his hardest even though it is nearly impossible for him to understand what’s going on around him. He always puts forth his best effort, even when he doesn’t succeed.”

I must admit, if I had received this evaluation, I would have been pretty pissed. This reads to me like one of the most backhanded compliments of all time. I think it does a better job of disparaging my friend than the criticisms in the “needs improvement section”. For those of you who don’t see my point, let me translate this compliment into non-candy-coated language:

“Wow, this kid really sucks at this. I mean, he’s gotta be borderline retarded. He tries as hard as he possibly can, and he still gets almost no positive results. There is no way this student is as bad at anything as he is at med school.”

That’s how it sounds to me, and that’s how I think it sounded to my friend. This leads to my moral question of the day:

Does the amount of effort we put into something affect the value of our end product or result?

From a totally subjective point of view, I would say it clearly does. In the example I just cited, it is worse (or at least more frustrating) to suck at something when you’re giving it your best effort (otherwise, at least you have the excuse that your lack of effort caused your sucking). In the same vein, when you’ve invested a lot of time and effort into something, it is generally more sastisfying when you succeed (or at least more of a relief).

But in the grand scheme of things, does this really matter? Hypothetical example: in a company meeting, two employees make presentations about directions they think the company should be heading. One employee spent a good thirty hours over the course of a week prepping his presentation, doing research, toying with Power Point preferences, anticipating questions, etc. However, when it gets to the day of the presentation he’s so nervous that he forgets important points, stammers when answering questions, and makes other such mistakes. Employee 2 spent 3-4 hours the night before putting his presentation together, but he is confident in his idea and capable of handling public speaking on the fly, and presents his ideas with confidence and clarity. Do you think the people in the board room evaluating the candidates will care who put more effort into their presentation?

Another way to think of it: Two athletes are competing for a starting spot on a basketball team. One is naturally gifted and takes his abilities for granted. The other is athletically uninclined and has to work for everything he gets. Athelete 1 parties, drinks, and stays out late, while athlete 2 watches tapes of himself, practices shooting in his driveway, sleeps with his ball in his arms, etc. On tryout day, Athlete 1 runs faster, jumps higher, makes a higher percentage of his shots and defensive stops than athlete 2. Who do you think will get the starting spot?

In high school, I used to pride myself on the fact that I could get the same grades as the other “smart kids” with only a fraction of the effort. To me, that was a form of proof that I was somehow smarter or better than they were.  Now, I’m less competitive, and I respect my fellow students who work hard for their grades.

Puritan American work ethic would tell us that anything good in life requires hard work. Other philosophies such as Taoism tell us that we should be like water flowing down a rock, taking the natural “way”, which in some ways resembles the proverbial path of least resistance. So do we have to try hard to be fulfilled? Or is trying hard only a way in which we try to make up for our shortcomings? Ideally, I would think that we would try to combine natural talent with effort in order to optimize our output, but in the end, which is more important? Is one or the other definitively more important? Something to think about.

Moral Question of the Day

I said I was going to intersperse non-top 5 posts here and there, so I figured no time like the present to kick them off. The fact that my tirade against French cheating engendered a comment within a day leads me to pose a question I had been considering for some time anyway, which is more or less directly related to cheating:

If someone acts in a way that they know would be hurtful to someone else (such as cheating), but the person in question whose feelings would be hurt never finds out, is the action somehow more excusable/justifiable?

 The question basically comes down to this: Is acting with the knowledge that you would hurt someone’s feelings bad in and of itself, or is it only the actual hurting of someone’s feelings that is morally reprehensible?

 In my experience, I feel guilt when I know my actions would hurt someone I care about, even if that person won’t find out. This guilt is certainly lessened when the person whose feelings I would hurt is a more of an abstraction, or someone I want to hurt, such as Doane Administration, although I still try to avoid being discovered in such cases simply to avoid getting in trouble.

But I wonder, when you act in a way that would hurt someone, is the action itself bad (I am reluctant to use the word “evil”), or is it only the actual hurting of the feelings that is bad? This reminds me of a conversation I had with the eternally wise Ron Santoni, and one of the few times that I thought he was clearly wrong about something. He claimed that nuclear weapons were evil in and of themselves, because they were created for an evil purpose/with evil intent. I argued that a nuclear weapon lying dormant in a silo couldn’t possibly be evil in and of itself, that is was rather just an inanimate object that existed with no real good or evil about it. The evil, I claimed, was in the actual use of such weapons to hurt and destroy other people. However, when it comes to the above mentioned issue of cheating, I find my thinking to be somewhat Santonian. The knowledge and intent to perform a hurtful action seems wrong to me, even if the actual hurting of the feeling never takes place (the hurting of the feelings in this case being analogous to the realization of the destructive potential of the nuclear weapon). I know that the cheating case is slightly different, because in order to avoid hurting someone’s feelings once the action has taken place, other morally questionable measures such as lying or covering the truth are generally called for, but it’s an interesting conundrum nonetheless.

Moral Question #2: Does my dismissal of the notion of a nuclear weapon as evil, paired with my conviction that cheating as an action is wrong, regardless of the consequences, make me a hypocrite?

I think since a nuclear weapon is an object, and cheating is an action, I’m okay here. I actually thought about this for quite a long time, though. Just some food for thought. I hope you enjoy it. Tootles.

 p.s. I hadn’t planned to answer every Moral Question of the Day that I post. Initially in my mind they were meant to be left open-ended for the reader, but sometimes I can’t resist. We’ll see in later posts if this bad habit continues.