Moral arrogance

This is something I’ve always been frustrated by, but I wasn’t really cognizant of it until recently. 

When someone goes around asserting their frustration with how immoral other people are, they are inherently implying that they consider themselves to be morally superior to others. Ergo, hypocrisy. This is irritating. Nobody likes to be talked down to. 

Similarly, when someone goes around accusing those around them of lacking empathy for not adhering to the same values as they do, it is almost universally true that they themselves are lacking empathy. They are not willing to see things from others’ points of view, or to consider the emotions and feelings of others, and instead move straight into attacking them. 

Furthermore, people who boast online about their hyper-rationality are almost universally blind to their own irrational biological impulses and emotions, which play a major role in the decision-making processes of all humans — whether we like it or not, we are carbon-based skeletal meatships driven by electrical impulses, the need for reproduction and survival, and eons of evolution, and we will never not be. The world is analog, not digital; most decisions cannot be boiled down to binary truth tables and most logic is fuzzy by nature. Nobody is perfectly rational, and if you think you are, I would urge you to look deeper into yourself. 

If you choose to avoid meat and dairy products, for example, that’s great and I support you. I wouldn’t dream of eating a cat or dog, for example, so I can understand how that moral logic might be extended to all other animals. It’s just not something that I care enough about to desire to switch my diet (plus, I am not even disciplined enough to minimize my sweet consumption, and I think protein is very much something I need more of, not less of). But the moment you start looking down on others for not adhering to your subjective standards of morality — and yes, they are subjective — then we will have a problem. A family member of mine once told me “I always looked up to people who didn’t eat meat — I thought ‘you’re so much better than me.’” This pattern of thinking is a problem. You are not better than anyone else just because you’ve decided to opt out of your omnivorous place in the food chain, and if you were lost in the Indian jungle and a tiger decided you were lunch….you still would be. (And the ability to cook and eat meat was a major factor in human evolution and achieving the level of intelligence we have today as a species.) You’re also not worse than anyone else. You are simply more disciplined. Eat your impossible burger and beans and gross salads — seriously, I support it. But don’t give me crap for adhering to a different system of morality than you do, unless of course I start, I don’t know, running around cutting people’s heads off with an axe or something. This has nothing to do with avoiding meat and dairy, either, as it's a completely valid lifestyle choice -- it's the pushiness and subtle implications of moral superiority that grate on me. 

Once we have lab-grown meat that tastes the same as regular meat, is as available, is the same nutritionally, and costs the same? Then yes, I will stop eating animals. That's how it works in my paracosm, incidentally. You can eat a chicken sandwich, but it's not really chicken, it's lab-grown -- but for all intents and purposes, it may as well be real chicken, because it tastes the same. (It's also fun to think about -- what would it be like to hang out with a dragon that was eating a human sandwich, but the human meat was lab-grown? Or to hang out with a talking chicken as you ate a lab-grown chicken sandwich? Or...what about a human eating a lab-grown human sandwich? Jeffrey Dahmer moment. That doesn't happen in my pararcosm at any rate. But I digress, lol.) 

The same individual keeps talking about how guilty they feel about not donating enough to charity. This is grating as well, as it implies that I should donate money or else I am inherently inferior for not living up to this person’s moral standards — which are, again, contrived. Nothing wrong with following that, but stop lecturing me on how important it is. I pay my tithing, though somewhat erratically (still a full tithe payer though) and no, I don’t care that the church used it to build City Creek Mall or whatever because what they do with my money isn’t my problem. That said, after that 10% tithing is paid, I see no need to donate to some charity that is probably posturing and giving more money to themselves than anyone who actually needs it. Like at Panda Express, why would I pay extra to donate to a charity when the organization itself, which has way more money than me, could be donating to it? Instead, aside from tithing, I’d rather use my money to help those in my immediate sphere — those for whom I can make an immediate, tangible impact. When I do finally fall in love someday, I hope to use it to spoil her, whoever she is, and give her everything she’s ever wanted. Alternately, quite frankly I’d also like to use it to ride awesome roller coasters and water slides, and no, I don’t feel guilty having fun when I could technically have donated that money to some abstract charity. I do what I want, and I do help people. Doesn’t mean I will ever feel guilty for living normally. 

I don't dislike philosophy -- in fact, I find it interesting. However, I do dislike preachy, self-righteous, overly moralistic philosophy, and I tend to shut down whenever someone launches into it. 

I should also add that this piece is riddled with my own irrational biases, and thus should be taken with a grain of salt. And I've only skimmed this, but it might provide a more detached explanation as to why I find this frustrating. 

Regardless.

If you follow this pattern of thinking, do not surprised if you end up inadvertently cutting people off from you. A pretense of moral superiority is easily discernible, and again and as always, nobody likes feeling looked down on. It’s human nature. We need to feel loved and connected with others in order to survive. 

Here’s something I found online which illustrates my point succinctly. I did not write this.

I am already so stressed about trying to excel academically, professionally, and at writing, artwork, coding, mathematics, physics, information technology, cyber security, computer graphics, engineering, music, fitness, and aesthetics, while trying to keep up on my fun and less productive hobbies too. Then suddenly someone comes and dumps all these big world problems and I just don’t have the energy to care. 

End rant.