The Just Individual - vi

Recently Ireland held a referendum on same-sex marriage. I had mixed feelings about it. It was heartening to see that majority endorsed it but at the same time I was troubled that a question of justice was put to the masses.

In most part of the world, the question of justice has changed from a majority desire to minority desire. In olden hierarchical days, with the rule of privileged minority, majority indeed suffered relatively. Feudals suffered because of the king, the middle class suffered because of the feudals and king and the working class suffered because of everyone. Therefore, justice was indeed part of the majority desire. However, this has changed with the advent of democracy.

Now the question of justice is mostly applicable to minorities of any identities. In such situations only people well versed with justice should decide upon it. I do understand our legal professionals could be found wanting when it comes to segregating justice from morality, however, I still believe it should be left to them and not to the majority population.

The Just Individual - III_a

I have previously argued that 'innate' morality might not be true. The mechanism for morality involves series of steps. A new study has come to similar conclusions that babies may not have innate morality.

From Science Daily

New research from New Zealand's University of Otago is casting doubt on a landmark US study that suggested infants as young as six months old possess an innate moral compass that allows them to evaluate individuals as 'good' or 'bad'.

The 2007 study by Yale University researchers provided the first evidence that 6- and 10-month-old infants could assess individuals based on their behaviour towards others, showing a preference for those who helped rather than hindered another individual.

Based on a series of experiments, researchers in the Department of Psychology at Otago have shown that the earlier findings may simply be the result of infants' preferences for interesting and attention grabbing events, rather than an ability to evaluate individuals based on their social interactions with others.

According to the researchers this morality can be explained by simple association hypothesis. The mechanism to invoke 'self pity' is also similar. In the case of preferred event, there would be self pity against the hinderer and in the case of non-preferred event no mechanism.

The Just Individual - notes

When I was going thro' the article, Suppressing Feelings of Compassion Makes People Feel Less Moral, it reminded my own dilemmas.

Around ten years ago, I started ignoring beggars completely. My reasons for it have evolved over time. However, during the initial days, I used to feel somewhat uneasy.  I used to give a big amount of money to one or the other person just to make sure I haven't lost my compassion. But over time I have stopped it.

I guess a person is clearly aware of his/her diluting compassion whenever s/he takes such steps. However, the awareness wasn't articulated until now.

From the article:

People who had suppressed compassion did, apparently, have a change in their sense of morality: they were much more likely to either care less about being moral or to say that it's all right to be flexible about following moral rules. Cameron thinks this is because suppressing feelings of compassion causes cognitive dissonance that people have to resolve by rearranging their attitudes or beliefs about morality.

The Just Individual - v

As I discussed previously, morality's basic block is empathy which originates from 'self pity'[ii]. Since the mechanism of empathy requires few traits and faculties[iii], this empathy and in turn morality need not be unique to human beings. There are studies that have observed empathy and/or morality in other animals too[i].

I have also observed that, in some situations, empathy can turn to oneself  when the empathy to others results in loss to self[iv]. Then the person considers the greater morality in his/her self-preservation as the self-pity to himself/herself masks everything else. Therefore, morality has its limitations because of its underlying empathy mechanism. However, some of the religions have adopted morality of this nature as a noble way.

The famous story of Jesus rescuing a woman from an angry mob by invoking self-pity of people for their own sins and making them feel guilty for not empathizing with the woman is a wellknown case here. Even though not a rational way, it's still acceptable since it rescued a non-criminal powerless woman from a certain death.  However, even today, many, even among rationalists, unquestioningly, take this story as a guiding force of morality.

Just the other day,  I read a journalist deriding the movement against corruption as one set of corrupts fighting other set of corrupts. He makes a fundamental mistake that politicians or bureaucrats are as powerless or non-criminal as the woman in Jesus's story. More importantly, it's also lost to the journalist that it's a ploy to rescue a woman who was obviously not guilty. However, the story is lost but contextless generalization of one sinner condemning the other is left.

In another development, I read a person invoking 'cast the first stone' in a discussion related to a news that ministers in Karnataka were caught watching porn in the Legislative Assembly. The self-pity gets so strong here that the legality aspect of watching porn in restricted areas gets lost.


Thus I believe morality is a primitive trait. It anyway doesn't set us apart from other animals (Why do we have to bother about that point anyway?) and it also has its limitations. Therefore, logically, if humans want to really make themselves unique then they should be just. Justice cannot be decided by individuals because the morality of an individual for the self overrides it. Justice is a communal morality. It directs rightful empathy towards an individual even if it meant displeasing the morality of communities. So, it's a communal morality for the sake of an individual.

An individual is a just person if s/he subscribes to this communal morality and ready to condemn herself/himself in certain situations.