This is my first blog ever. These blogs will be written in first person and will be more opinionated and less formal than my articles. The point of my blogs is to talk about more social related issues or ask questions that relate to society and humanity. Hopefully these posts will offer perspective on the world we live in.

For some background, Immanuel Kant is a famous philosopher. He believed that there were certain moral absolutes, or rules, that were always true when it came to morality. He believed that for something to count as a moral absolute, it had to have a certain amount of universality to it without any contradictions. For example, imagine walking into a nearby gas station to buy some chapstick, but you realize that you forgot your wallet at your house, so you just take the chapstick and leave. Taking that chapstick was stealing, and by doing it, you’re basically saying that it’s okay to steal. But now imagine a world where it was actually okay for everyone to steal, and since it's okay, people did it all the time. Most likely, you don’t like the idea of stealing being a moral rule, even though you just stole. So there’s the contradiction. No one would say stealing should happen all the time because no one actually thinks stealing is good. Kant was trying to make the point that you can’t make exceptions for yourself. If you get to do whatever you want, why shouldn’t everyone else?

Now Kant had some other rules for what could be a moral absolutes(I know, a little confusing), but we won’t get into that today. I feel like most people would agree with Kant on this issue. “It’s always wrong to steal”, “Lying is always bad” etc. But I think people only say that because it’s pretty intuitive and easy to say. There are plenty of situations where spouting out a moral absolute doesn’t feel like the right answer to an issue. For example, would you steal a loaf of bread to keep your family from starving? Would you tell a lie if it meant saving someone’s feelings? I think people who have never been faced with a moral dilemma are the only people who actually condemn people for sometimes not always following moral absolutes. You may not understand why someone would steal money, but maybe they need the money to support their family. I have never been in a situation where I felt I needed to steal or cheat or whatever, but I can understand that I don’t have the same experiences or pressures as other people do.

The main thing that irks me with moral absolutes is the lack of focus on consequences. I’m going to use a borrowed analogy from “Crash Course”, the youtube channel. If you have watched any Batman Vs. The Joker movies, you know what always happens. Batman defeats the Joker but doesn’t kill him, and then he takes him to jail. Seems good until you realize that the Joker escapes, because he always escapes. When he’s out of jail, he then goes on to torture and hurt people. The Joker is the main one at fault for the deaths he caused, but isn’t some of the blame on Batman? He could have killed the Joker a long time ago and in effect, he would've stopped many later murders by the Joker’s hands. In general, of course, murder is wrong, but I can’t say that Batman’s action to not kill the Joker was the best thing to do. I know what you’re thinking, most situations aren’t this serious. When is anyone going to be in this situation. I get it, but it seems that by only and always following moral absolutes, you’re saying that any negative consequence of your action has nothing to do with you.

However, I don’t think that this makes following moral rules easy. In fact, it’s probably really hard to always follow them. I do in general believe that good people don’t do certain things and they shouldn’t do it either. If you want a main takeaway about what I said from this post, it should be that saying something is “always” wrong or right is too simple.

Thank you for reading my first post. I will do more in this series soon.