Missing Ear

Vincent Willem van Gogh

I’m sick of this world. I need to take a deep breath and ignore the fact that I’m writing for others to read. I’m writing for my own sake, unleash the pen. I’m sick of people, to tell the truth, I lost faith in people. When we treat weak people poorly, only because they’re weak, that means we are losing the moral code which judges us. Survival for the fittest is a completely viable concept, but I project to apply it on those creatures who are alike me. I believe to measure how community is civilized, we should figure the extent of poor and weak people inside the community. The relation between how civilized the community is reversely proportional to the ratio of poor people to others.

What does make an action valid morally? Is the answer different from an individual to another or from an individual to a group? I don’t recall last time I’ve asked myself about the rightness of my actions. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have to think or take a charge for any consequence may follow my actions. Still, are we justifying our actions based on the after-action facts? You can’t tell if whatever you did is correct or wrong, until you observe the result. That means a thing by itself can’t be labeled as a sin or goodness. Indeed, that’s the mechanism religions work, I mean what if I drink alcohol in a moderate amount and stay at home, what’s wrong about it? Nothing, but God may punish me later on.

So, what makes an action valid morally? I met a young guy on the airplane, he was handicapped due to a road traffic accident. I sat next to him, he wanted to talk, and I listened to him. Then, he was very grateful and thankful to find somebody to talk to. What would change if I just ignore him and continue listening to my music? To tell the truth, the feeling of satisfaction for helping somebody was enough for me. So, the morality of an action can be determined based on its impact on the self-image of an individual. So, drinking alcohol in public where prohibition is practiced may affect my self-image in a community. Therefore, stealing would polish a thief image, and catching that thief would make a police officer feels great about his/her self-image. 

I’m reaching a paradox, I can’t determine the rationality of my argument. Since I can’t tell if something is correct or wrong, I can’t step further to discuss the conflict of interests. It’s invalid logically. The dialog inside my head leads me to conclude the inexistence of morals. Then, I can walk naked in public. Really, what prevents people from doing everything that comes up in their minds? What makes them feel good or bad when they do things?  We need to have holistic approach. Yet, to understand how primitive sometimes it’s, we need to investigate how our brain functions. We have two different systems one is to seek pleasure and another to punish.

Forget the rubbish, human brain physiology is easy way out. The main justification for everything we do is the self-interest. We’re selfish by nature. And the best way to allure people doing what you want them to do is playing on the thread of self-interest. Every little thing, good or bad, even self-destruction is based on the selfishness motivation. Yeah, I lost faith in people, and I’m one of those people. When I see my world collapsing around me because of one thing, and only one thing, and I can’t control it, because I don’t care about anybody but myself. Then, I can understand how greedy I am, how greedy human beings are.