Convergence Of Morality

Morality is woven into to every stitch in the fabric of our society. From our criminal justice system to our foreign policy, from throwing a surprise party to honking at a car that cuts you off, virtually every one of our complex actions must first undergo some sort of moral processing that tells us whether it is okay or not to do. As expected, this moral processing varies from culture to culture and is the basis of many of the culture specific traditions and laws that we see today. However, this moral disagreement across cultures is so distinct that many intellectuals, especially in this current generation, have elected to believe that there are no absolute laws of right and wrong but rather that human morality is simply a projection of our

They also believe that any convergence that we have seen stems from those in power enforcing their morals upon others, rather than a mutual agreement. My first response to this is that firstly, there is a great amount of moral convergence happening in the world right now. Of course there will be a few small exceptions, but generally speaking the world has rules things such as slavery, blood sports and cannibalism as ethically wrong. Just because moral convergence if slow, it does not mean that it is not occuring. Secondly, the relativist is probably partially correct here when they assert that moral convergence could result from enforcement by another nation, however, it could just have easily resulted from people in the age of globalization, recognising that there are more moral ways of living. An example of this is the abolition movement. The first country to establish a movement for the abolition of slavery was in fact, Great Britain, who was at that time one of the leading world powers. Thus, if no other nation was “enforcing” their morals on to Great Britain, then it sure seems like they converged on a moral truth of their own

But what then are these universal moral principles that all humans should agree upon? In general, there are two opposing sets of universal ethics: Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Utilitarianism essentially determines if an action is good or bad by the consequences it produces. According to this type of ethics, the most moral or “correct” action is the one that maximizes overall utility, which is in this case happiness. This code of ethics is exemplified well by the trolley problem. The trolley problem is a hypothetical scenario in which a train is travelling on a track that is headed towards two people and will kill them if you do not intervene. Luckily, there is a lever that you can switch so that the train switches on to another track with only one person, however, if you switch it you will kill this one person. In this example, the principle of utilitarianism dictates that you should switch the lever because only one person would die instead of two and therefore you have acted to create a situation where the most amount of happiness is maintained. In theory, this principle makes sense. How could anyone not want to maximize overall happiness? However, upon closer inspection, living as a utilitarian is not only plausible, but forces us to commit atrociously immoral actions if they “maximize happiness.” For example, if you and three friends were starving on a