What is Morality

We try to qualify too many actions as moral, rendering the word meaningless. Not all charges of man need be, or indeed can be, viewed in terms of morality. We do not need, for example, to qualify a standing army in terms of morality. It falls under the category of realistic and pragmatic. A standing army is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. Of a dimension outside of morality. A consideration of moral issues arises when we decide to use the army, to send them into action. Morality enters as a discussion of whether the army will be used in a pragmatic, less immoral, or fully immoral manner. Individual soldiers may, as well, act with more or less immorality, depending on how they treat those who they capture and the innocent civilians which they come upon. It is better, I think, in matters of war to leave any claims of morality out of the picture and instead only strive to not be overly immoral, to flout morality the least. 

If a side believes themselves to be in the moral right the consequences can be grave. The world is not black and white as those who seek power would like all to believe. Just because one country executes immoral actions it does not necessarily follow that their enemies are moral. Only radicals hold that is our enemy is immoral, the we must be moral, fighting the hand of evil with our goodness and propriety. Just because terrorists are immoral, it does not follow that torturing them is moral. Just because Hitler was immoral, it does not follow that the bombing of Germany and the shooting of German troops was moral - pragmatic, necessary, and inevitably beneficial to the world, yes. But moral, no. One should have only to read All Quiet on the Western Front to come to that conclusion. The story follows a German youth who, like so many Americans, was drafted into the military, set out in a field where his choice was to kill or be killed, pumped full of some vague sense of national loyalty and propaganda inspired patriotism. Shooting such a boy is not moral. But it may, sadly, be or seem necessary, at least in our present world.

I have recently begun a book entitled "Nuclear Ethics". It was the oxymoronic title which drew me to it. Using nuclear weapons has and never will be ethical. I do not denounce Truman for his decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It ended a World War and saved net lives. But it was not ethical nor moral. Killing innocent people never can be. If we were able to shift out perspectives to understand that all war, all killing is immoral, I believe there would be a great deal less war. It is when we imbue war with the virtue of morality that we find ourselves entrenched in violence. 

Perpetrating immoral actions does not necessarily make a man evil, a word too well used in todays "enlightened" age. In Buddhism one who does wrong action is not deemed evil, but unskillful. As we are all of this earth, we are all unskillful to various degrees. So long as we seek to enhance and better ourselves we are moving in the right direction. The maintenance of nuclear weapons by the United States and other countries cannot be called moral, I do not care how talented at rhetoric you are. It may be called instead understandable, as we as a nation and world have not yet moved beyond hate, fear, pettiness, and most importantly greed for power, for economic gain. And so it is. But we will never move beyond these vices so long as we use the morality to disguise them. Call them what they are. Without the power of morality to back up wars, to condone violence against others, we would not, I think, be so motivated to perpetrate these.