The phrase ‘Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike’ by Oscar Wilde has some truth in it. If you really think about it, in your heart of hearts you know that the concepts of ‘morality’ and ‘dislike towards others’ are somewhere linked in your subconscious mind. However, your mind intelligently frames it the other way round, so much as so that you start believing it yourself. You believe that you dislike a certain individual because he / she is immoral. But, the truth is just the opposite. You tag people as being immoral just because you personally dislike that person.
Let’s test this phenomenon. Think about names of 5 people who you know who are immoral but you still like them. Hard to find right? Well, one can argue that it’s precisely the reason why you do not like them. But think about it from a neutral point of view. If the same actions or behaviour would have been done by someone who you really liked as a person, wouldn’t your mind always think of a justification for that person doing so? In all probabilities, yes.
Let’s take an example of a very commonly tagged ‘immoral’ behaviour – Office Politics. Let us take office politics as our immoral act of the day and try to think about it from a very neutral point of view. If your friend resorts to office politics, you always have a justification that he / she is doing it because the office exploits your friend, or because of your friend’s financial problems and he really and badly needs money, or even because your friend is doing that in response to some other colleague’s similar action against him.
But, if there is a certain individual who you personally dislike, and if that person resorts to office politics, you would straight away attribute your dislike towards that person for his so called ‘immoral’ intentions and actions. This is the truth. It cannot be possible that you do not know a single individual in the world who doesn’t resort to office politics. Hence, it is proof that when you have thought about someone being ‘bad’ or ‘immoral’ because he / she does a lot of office politics, it is just that you dislike him / her as a person and your mind strategically attributes the reason which makes you yourself feel superior. If we wouldn’t have disliked that person, our minds would always find suitable justifications and reasons working behind his action. So why do we do this? Why do we turn hypocrites and create this huge balloon of the morality-shield and hide behind it when what we are actually dealing with is ‘dislike’ towards someone else.
Morality:
The concept of morality is built upon the principle of ethics, the sense of what is good and bad, what people should or shouldn’t do, the proper code of conduct that people should or shouldn’t follow. This sense of good and bad is inculcated in a child by the parents and family since the initial years of its life. According to Sigmund Freud, it is what develops the ‘super-ego’ or sense or morality in human beings. If one’s ‘id’, or raw desire tells someone to kill a man, the ‘ego’ or the rational principle would tell the mind that ‘Killing a man would make you go to jail’ and ‘super-ego’ would tell the mind that ‘Killing a man is immoral, unethical and illegal. It is a bad thing to do.’ So the combined forces of rationality and morality keep a man from acting according to his raw desire.
But if ‘super-ego’ goes beyond ‘ego’ or in simpler words morality works more than rationality, then it is a cause of concern. Moreover, because in matters of the mind, one would not even know that it is operating. Would not even be aware that his so called ‘morality’ shield is only being used to make himself feel more superior and giving him reasons to be unnecessarily judgmental of other people.
So why do we dislike other people? There can be very many reasons. Usually the reasons are just meaningless and unnecessary such as the way they talk, what they wear or in general their manner of going about in life. You dislike them simply because they are different and nothing more. Think about it. Nobody is perfect and everybody has good and bad qualities, so what makes you look at the bad qualities in one person. In fact why do you think of those as bad in the first place? Two reasons.
1. You think the sense of good-bad or proper-improper that you have in your mind is what is right and everyone must follow suit. In short – You want to feel superior.
2. You are jealous or envious of people who are different because you never had the courage to be how they are.
The above mentioned two are usually the reasons why you actually dislike another person, and not because that person is immoral in character. Think about whether you are extremely judgmental about people or not, specially whether that is based on morality per se. Because, morality is ultimately nothing but your attitude towards your personal dislikes.
So what do you do?
Stop being judgmental. Stop disliking people and stop saying to yourself and to others that you dislike someone because he / she is immoral because now you know its not the truth. Once, you stop doing that, you would feel immense positivity inside, almost feeling a rush of negativity flowing out of your entire being. Break the ‘morality’ shield and try and embrace everyone, identify their good points and to like that person. Whenever you get even a hint of your mind trying to tag something or someone as immoral, tell yourself that morality is relative and what is moral to you might not be for another. Stop yourself. Meet new people different from you who you would otherwise have thought as immoral beings, make friends and you’ll see life would be so positive, so beautiful.
