Beyond right vs wrong: the new moral dilemmas of the digital age

A post-truth era, where faith-technology axis clashes with a faith-nationalism axis, fosters a moral relativism and moral pluralism on the premise of morality being a human construct with dual concepts of right and wrong blurring even drowning. Consequently, the spirit of age does not usually come in terms of clear conflict between good and evil. Their symptoms are not a lack of good, but rather simultaneous struggles with different forms of good; it’s not something wicked this way, but rather something truly good this way.

This reality is revealed in the work of John C. Beck, Good vs. Good. Saying that people value the eight core goods differently: Life, Growth, Relationships, Joy, Individuality, Stability, Equality, and Belief.

The research suggests under 10% of Americans have the same priority ordering. Having to deal with multiple layers of hierarchy is something that freaks some people out, and so they tend to become resistant to or even outright condemn other people for their differing moral perspective on the world; when they encounter them, they tend to think, ‘Who could possibly be so evil?’ Confronting multiple layers of hierarchy, the instinctive response is resistance or even condemnation; when they see others with a different moral perspective on how the world ought to be run, they can think, “Who can be so evil?” The reframing brings adversaries onto the landscape of values as their navigators and puts potential discussion on the table instead of polarisation.

Leaders embody this insight, as does Harvard professor of business, Joseph L. Badaracco, in his lectures at Harvard’s Business School on leadership. The most difficult choices, he claims, are not “right or wrong” decisions but “right or right” decisions. They are “choiceless choices” , they are no masks or disguises when it comes to revealing true character. It has four axes on which to play them: consequences, rights, character, creative problem solving. None of these dimensions is independent of the other(s) and they must coexist in a dynamic balance.

Such conflicts have been part of the philosophical tradition for long. In Thomistic tradition, there is also a topic concerning the conflict between genuine goods: the so-called “the difficult good”. Aristotle’s notion of the human good, i.e., personal human flourishing, continues to play sympathetically against backdrops of impersonal, collective goods.

A more structured approach to moral theory assumes that a truly “good” person has to sacrifice “enlightened self-interest” for the greater intrinsic good. The antagonism of individual and absolute goods is central to the issue of moral complexity, and one of the reasons why a moral answer is not a matter of simple algorithmic resolution.

From a mode of binary moral warfare to a mode of value competition, interpersonal relations are proverbially altered. It does not remove dogmatic certainty; it can be humbled so that sometimes, other people can be genuine in their search for authentic goods, just that they are ordered differently.

This view can bring opportunities for quality dialogue rather than stifle conflict, seeing that goodness in humankind is complex and messy. Twined and unsettling themes that have become common in modern fiction, ‘evil against evil’. This is a decline in the moral imbalance with stories of no heroes or villains, but rather clashes between tones of darkness.

Vicious by V.E. Schwab is such a novel. Deliberately overturning the notions of hero vs villains, the story provides the existence of “no heroes” as well as a cast of villains instead of heroes. Their battle isn’t a just battle, but a personal battle of revenge and betrayal.

Describing it as a supervillain origin story, Schwab requires people to pick sides without regard for ethics and instills an emotional affection for choosing between two extremely negative and destructive characters. The epigraph in the novel, the words of the poet Joseph Brodsky, sum up what the novel is about: life is a struggle, not between bad and good, but between bad and worse.

It is this lack of moral direction that presents readers with an unsettling fact: not all evil is foreign. It might exist within a so-called reasonable, even helpful, brain. With the absence of a traditional “hero,” narratives such as Vicious break away from the opposition between light and dark in the traditional realm of fantasy. They reflect today’s gray world where morals and ethics become more and more indistinguishable between what is right or wrong. Simple moral dilemmas of contemporary life give rise to the most attractive conflicts as they evolve in the mind of the reader. Private truths and public lies are another crucial aspect.

Private Truths Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, by Timur Kuran, examines the social consequences of individuals publicly stating opinions that they don’t privately hold as a way to avoid social pressure. A broad-based preference falsification is simply a means to keep in place unpopular norms, policies, or even regimes, which may be suppressed in private by the majority. It distorts collective knowledge, obscures viable other options, and builds up unrecognised dissent.

The effect is brittle social systems that can break at the snap of fingers when a critical trigger event sheds light on the difference between what people or individuals believe and what is confirmed in public discourse, either hastening the rapid destruction of institutions or civilisations. The idea of moral relativism and multiple moral frameworks often collide, and sometimes they overlap. They both question simplistic dualities and complicate establishment.

Finally, there is a difference between moral equivalence and moral transcendence or paralysis. It calls for increased individual and community responsibilities in a connected digital world. In online communities, social media sites often provide black and white details, take an extreme stand, and foster demonisation of ideology opponents, fostering moral disengagement.

Conversely, dialectical reasoning acknowledges contradiction, the possibility of compromise, and the shifting perspectives of values. The trick to coping in situations of choices and uncertainty between privacy and security, freedom of speech and safety, or a polarised political atmosphere is not to predict who is “sitting on the right side of history” but to be bold enough to step out into the fray. Dialectical approaches foster empathy, intellectual space and functional resolution. They can create thoughtful space in digital areas by changing them from disconnected echo chambers.

A more sophisticated understanding of ethics can be achieved by societies using a variety of perspectives and dialectical tools without succumbing to cynicism. This change will lead to improved choices and an improved world. This is a time of abundant information and colliding values, and a choice that can guide us forward is dialectical; believing that there are some (private) goods that are good, and others (public) that are good as well… confronting the discomfort of the evil versus evil scenarios… and bridging the chasm between the private and the public.

One should not aim for an impossible degree of moral righteousness, but rather a judicious, religious, and sociological attitude toward the inevitable tensions, one that knows nuance, humility and responsibility.

The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners.