#Atheism #Life #Moral Philosophy #Religion
Small Acts of Murder: Shame, Religion, and What We Owe Each Other
Thoughts on regret, murder as a spectrum of harm to quality of life, and arriving at a moral philosophy.
Years ago, I broke up with someone abruptly. She and my friend were over. The two began arguing. Upset, she ran outside into the rain. My friend commented that she was being ridiculous, that I should break up with her. I’m not usually so impressionable as to take such an action based on an offhand comment, but I had been feeling a little uncomfortable in this new relationship. While she was pleasant, kind, and beautiful, the relationship had mostly been physical and I was troubled that she hadn’t told me much about herself—although I had been asking. I was young and new to relationships, with all of the anxiety that accompanies inexperience. I found her standing at the end of the street, crying. If this happened today, I’d say something reassuring. I’d comfort her, bring her inside, and explain how I had been feeling at a better time. Instead, I looked into her tearful eyes and ended it then and there. I was young, inexperienced, and scared. I really just wanted to get to know her better. Instead I hurt her in a cruel way. By entering into a relationship, she entrusted me with the power to hurt her. I abused that trust. To this day I burn with shame when thinking back on the memory.
I tend to think of murder as a spectrum upon which loss of life is the extreme end. Economic slavery imposed by capitalism demands large amounts of time from finite lives to enrich a wealthy few. Systemic bigotry erodes quality of life every day. Individual actions turn small moments into unhappy memories. Life can be impacted in innumerable ways both systemic and interpersonal—beyond simply cutting it short, the extreme end of a spectrum of harm. Especially to a materialist, this view lends a new gravity to harms of all sizes. Each action or inaction that causes pain to another represents a permanent mar on another’s experience, a sliver of one precious existence worsened or ruined. No matter how trifling, each represents an injury to life itself.
I don’t believe in objective morality, either. In the view of this atheist and anti-theist, the universe is indifferent to suffering. There’s no “good book” with all the answers. This being the case, morality becomes a logical exercise: if we hold every sentient life as precious and irreplaceble, how do we model our behaviors and our society so as to maximize the quality of each? Unfortunately, grappling with this question is the work of a lifetime.
I was raised to believe that morality came from a book. God doesn’t want us drinking coffee, hence drinking coffee is immoral. Most religions cover the basics—plus a few wacky and harmful inclusions—but the topic of morality is too complex for any tome to do justice. Further, religion fails to offer a sound logical framework for thinking about morality. As a result, followers think they’re doing fine if they’re following at least most of the instructions, and in some popular traditions there’s repentance to boot. This doesn’t tend to work out very well even in the short-term, but when the scales fall from the eyes of the faithful and they break free of magical thinking, they are left morally adrift: with no way of considering how they ought to interact with others beside their personal feelings.
Developing a personal moral philosophy is not a simple matter. None of the great philosophers seem to have arrived at a complete answer, so what hope has the average person when they discover their entire worldview was bunk? Many important conversations were skipped in favor of indoctrination, so those freed from the mental shackles of religion find themselves behind their secular peers in terms of moral development and understanding. Couple that with years spent living in a reactionary environment, and it makes for a lot of catching up to do while also trying to survive in a capitalist society barely less indifferent to sentient life than the vacuum of space.
Despite all of this, I sometimes find the recollection of the suffering I’ve caused difficult to bear. It is some comfort to know that, like most, I never meant to cause harm. Most of us do our worst when we think we’re in the right, don’t know better, or simply aren’t thinking at all. But the tragedy of harm is its irrevocability. Just as the ways I have been hurt live on in me, I can never erase the painful memories I’ve caused.
If we owe each other one thing and nothing else, it is to respect each-other’s time, both in quantity and quality. We’re not born knowing how. It takes a lifetime of listening, learning, experience, and practice—hurting others all the while. Even with every effort, fallablility is simply part of the human condition. One of the few sound pieces of advice I received as a Mormon child was to consider scenarios that ask you to make a moral decision, and decide now what you will do when they occur. It may not be so easy to choose in the moment, so make the decision before it becomes difficult. This system isn’t perfect, but you can certainly consider the kind of person you want to be and how you want to affect others. Hopefully you get it right. Hopefully, with time, your ideals become instinct. Hopefully, you maintain the cognitive flexibility such that they are never rendered immutable.
Perhaps, as terror management theory would have it, this way of entwining morality with mortality itself is a means of assuaging death anxiety. Maybe the idea is that, if we must walk into oblivion, we should do it hand in hand with smiles on our faces, rather than pecking at each others eyes like hens in a battery cage. Surely, as nature demands that we spend our lives scraping for its necessities while it awaits our demise like a circling vulture, our principal aim ought to be to free ourselves from this cruel status quo? To make possible the full development of our personalities? To experience, together, the fullness of what it is to be conscious in freedom from want and suffering? Why shouldn’t life itself be at the root of our thinking around morality? After all, we owe each other everything. From the earth that made our existence a possibility, the bees that pollinate our food, the person who laundered the linens we were born on, who introduced our parents, who stitched our shoes, who taught us to read, who shared our first kiss… our obligation to everything and everyone around us is infinite. The idea that any sentient being is beneath moral consideration must be put to rest. We owe each other—and we each are owed—everything!
In light of this overwhelming debt, the preciousness of sentient life, sometimes I don’t know what to do with the weight of my shame. Although I have no children, I often recall a quote by Mitch Albom on parenthood:
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.
This idea can surely be extended to encompass all human relationships, given adequate time. Maybe it is the best we can do to take our guilt, with both sorrow and gratitude, as a pattern for our own pair of white gloves to help us handle the lives about us with due care. Since my life has become more stable I have had the time and headspace to consider the past. I find myself hoping that the most I have left with others are fingerprints, that the pain I have caused is mostly a small part of a larger happy memory. When I consider the type of person I’d like to be, it is one who shares in the sorrow he causes. I can take solace in the fact that I am at least this.
