On Moral Temperance

Pragmatically, there are few arguments for moral excellence. We are not bee or colony animals, so it simply isn’t human to sacrifice ourselves wholesale for the greater good and think of that as a viable strategy. Now, we have jobs to keep and children to protect—survival is important in the average human ethos.

Yet, without striving for moral excellence, we will often find ourselves slipping. It is not, then, that the effort to be morally absolute is necessary because we need to attain it, but rather because we are incapable of attaining it that we must overshoot our target to get even close to where we need to be to keep the metaphorical social lights on.

Though materially, the stigma, judgment, and loss of opportunity that we will be subject to by our peers is the only real harm we incur from immoral behavior (as long as it is within reason), the greater harm we inflict upon ourselves is part of a much smaller degradation of the moral culture in society. By failing to be moral ourselves, we contribute to the amorality of society, setting examples for those still learning the norms—those young or new to our society through immigration or education—that such immoral behaviors are permissible.

While many moral behaviors are simply signals of having a degree of moral conditioning, such as generously tipping or being courteous to a rude cab driver, other behaviors help structure the flow of resources in society, like not jaywalking or giving to charity. These moral norms are mixed, and so seeking a rational limit to what moral norms we take up leads each person in pursuit of their own standard of moral excellence to develop a tempered approach to their morality where they themselves function.

This is not to say everyone is for the greater good of society. Some may find society itself in need of contention and act flagrantly against it. They may see their disobedience as a virtue and see their disregard for the common good as a statement for the good that the commons ignore in the free and destitute.

Others may consider moral innovation outside of the norms as a moral good, being hyper-ethical to the point that they do not fit within society—doing acts of vigilantism or starting secret societies to protect their minds against counterintelligence and the pitfalls of convention—as morally excellent ends they wish to pursue, no matter how it may drag them down in life.
Regardless, the moral temperance we all choose—by being ethical in some areas and unethical in others—must be looked at as moral, regardless of what ends we align ourselves with.

Are not the gangsters of this world creating a security apparatus for themselves where the world failed to provide them one? Are not the revolutionaries and mavericks needed to move society forward and show its weaknesses so it can be improved? Are not the law-abiding citizens and charity drivers necessary in maintaining the security apparatus that keeps society stable so everyone else can run their experiment?

Live it or hate it, everyone’s moral experiment is necessary, though the volume of people participating in each experiment is not necessarily skewed to the philosophy of freedom of thought and minimization of harm as I would like to admit personally.

The natural selection of the culture itself, however, will never care what I think. The Logos here on the earth is, after all, the final outcome of the cosmos giving us this large organic chemical reaction that is just starting itself out through our biotechnological species.

Regardless, the need to have some moral temperance will remain true, no matter what peer group you find yourself in. They will have standards—you may agree or disagree—and those positions and behaviors will have consequences depending on whether you can balance the scales of respect or if you are going to run yourself afoul of everyone you find yourself in contact with.

At the end of the day, it is just as much a matter of having a society to live in as them letting you be a part of it. Though everyone cuts different corners, everyone has their own good and evil they construct for themselves in their minds. What works, works, and what doesn’t, doesn’t. If it fits the social narrative, it does not mean society will fit the resource distribution of reality and succeed.

To what ends we strive to be moral needs to be a little more respectful and a little bit more innovative if we want to survive—because the innovation it will take to survive will inevitably rub people who don’t want to change the wrong way. That’s just me and others who would like to see society reach a utopian state. As made famous by a certain fictional butler, it is true: “Some people just want to see the world burn.”