"It's only 'right' relative to the goal of maximizing my personal happiness, though. It could be a 'wrong' way to live for someone else. God talks about this, too…"
But those who have taught me all about the rights and wrongs, the dos and don’ts, the shoulds and shouldn’ts, told me all those rules were laid down by You — by God.
Then those who taught you were wrong. I have never set down a “right” or “wrong,” a “do” or a “don’t.” To do so would be to strip you completely of your greatest gift — the opportunity to do as you please, and experience the results of that; the chance to create yourself anew in the image and likeness of Who You Really Are; the space to produce a reality of a higher and higher you, based on your grandest idea of what it is of which you are capable.
To say that something — a thought, a word, an action — is “wrong” would be as much as to tell you not to do it. To tell you not to do it would be to prohibit you. To prohibit you would be to restrict you. To restrict you would be to deny the reality of Who You Really Are, as well as the opportunity for you to create and experience that truth.
There are those who say that I have given you free will, yet these same people claim that if you do not obey Me, I will send you to hell. What kind of free will is that? Does this not make a mockery of God — to say nothing of any sort of true relationship between us?
Neale Donald Walsch
"Don't you just love the lack of objective morality? The lack of set rules?" I asked. "Rightness and wrongness are just judgments. They're just beliefs. Something is only right, relative to something else."
"But surely killing is wrong," Zac said. "Like, if you were to murder an innocent child, that would be wrong."
"Relative to what, though? Murder might seem obviously wrong, but ask yourself why. Would it be obviously wrong to murder an innocent child to save a thousand innocent children?"
"Ugh, I don't want to murder any children!" Zac cried.
"Of course you don't! But you're in a situation where those are the only two choices available. Murder one child to save a thousand, or murder a thousand children to save one. Which option is right?"
"I guess I'd murder the single child," he begrudged.
"Okay, now analyze that decision for a second. Killing a single innocent child is only wrong relative to your belief that life intrinsically has value. But killing a thousand innocent children instead of a single innocent child is also wrong, relative to your belief that life intrinsically has value. Therefore, if you believe life intrinsically has value, you would sacrifice the single child for the many, assuming all other variables are equal. What was once wrong now becomes right, relative to a new set of circumstances.
Now I have a new variation for you. You can murder one child to save a thousand children, or murder a thousand children to save one child — but the single innocent child is your own daughter. You love her dearly, and you can't bear the thought of being alive if she is not. You don't think you'll survive if you kill her, because you'll probably kill yourself too. But you don't think you'll survive if you kill a thousand children either, because you wouldn't be able to live with yourself and you'd probably kill yourself immediately after the massacre. So why don't you just kill yourself now? But if you kill yourself now, both your daughter and the thousand children will also die, so that is highly selfish and immoral, given your value system.
You also have to take into account the flow-on effects, like your other children being left without a father. Or think about your business and all the people you employ no longer having jobs if you die. You know the job market is tough right now, and you don't want to do that to your people who have hungry children to feed. You're a shepherd, and you want to look after your flock.
So, does the most moral choice involve killing your daughter to save a thousand children, but not killing yourself? That would be torture for you. Is torturing yourself moral? Is your life worth living if you can't live with yourself, and what you have done?
You know your wife would never forgive you for killing her little girl, and she might kill herself too as a result. She's fragile, you know? So you have to take into account the probability of that scenario happening. If that happens, your other children will still be alive with an emotional wreck of a father and no mother. There's a high probability they'll end up all fucked up anyway. What do you do then, huh? What is the most moral choice?"
Zac put his head in his hands. "Fuck. That is dark."
"But that is life, and people are making choices like that all the time. 'Do I steal this loaf of bread to feed my starving child, or do I let her die?' But if you steal the loaf of bread, maybe another child will die when the baker runs out of money. Life is not black and white — it is a highly nuanced system of cause and effect; choice and consequence.
Every choice has consequences. Even a decision you make in the privacy of your own home or your own mind can have flow-on effects that play out countless years in the future in ways you cannot even fathom. Your private choice to take a bath tonight might lead to a new idea in the bathtub, which leads to you saying something to a friend, which leads to that friend taking action on something that affects something somewhere else. It's the butterfly effect at play — with a mere flap of its wings, a butterfly in Chicago can cause a tornado in Tokyo. There are so many variables at play, and context matters a lot.
That's why I get so frustrated with lazy thinkers who try to make everything black and white when it is not. Everything is a giant, interconnected system. The world is a mathematical mosaic. If you change one variable here, then another variable somewhere else is going to get out of whack. Every choice has a consequence. Actually, here's what God has to say about killing…"
Why, in past lives you’ve actually killed people.
What’s wrong with that? You said yourself that sometimes war is necessary to end evil.
We’re going to have to elaborate on that, because I can see that statement being used and misused — just as you’re doing now — to try to make all sorts of points, or rationalize all sorts of insanity.
By the highest standards I have observed humans devise, killing can never be justified as a means of expressing anger, releasing hostility, “righting a wrong,” or punishing an offender. The statement that war is sometimes necessary to end evil stands true — for you have made it so. You have determined, in the creation of Self, that respect for all human life is, and must be, a high prime value. I am pleased with your decision, because I did not create life that it may be destroyed.
It is respect for life which sometimes makes war necessary, for it is through war against immediate impending evil, it is through defense against immediate threat to another life, that you make a statement of Who You Are in relationship to that.
You have a right under highest moral law — indeed, you have an obligation under that law — to stop aggression on the person of another, or yourself.
This does not mean that killing as a punishment is appropriate, nor as retribution, nor as a means of settling petty differences. In your past, you have killed in personal duels over the affection of a woman, for heaven’s sake, and called this protecting your honor, when it was all honor you were losing. It is absurd to use deadly force as an argument solver. Many humans are still using force — killing force — to solve ridiculous arguments even today.
Reaching to the height of hypocrisy, some humans even kill in the name of God — and that is the highest blasphemy, for it does not speak of Who You Are.
Oh, then there is something wrong with killing?
Let’s back up. There’s nothing “wrong” with anything. “Wrong” is a relative term, indicating the opposite of that which you call “right.” Yet, what is “right”? Can you be truly objective in these matters? Or are “right” and “wrong” simply descriptions overlaid on events and circumstances by you, out of your decision about them?
Neale Donald Walsch
"Anyway, we've gotten quite side-tracked on this whole topic of subjective morality, but it does feed into the next iteration of our conceptual model. Let's continue where we left off."
