The Moral Instinct In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

How do we decide what is good? How do we decide what is bad? We make these decisions based on our morality, which is the “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour” (Oxford Dictionaries). Morality groups people together, and, as Jonathan Haidt says, “it gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.”

Differing opinions on moral issues often cause conflicts between groups. For example, in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the Igbo natives and white colonizers had differing ideas about what is moral and what is immoral, which led to the white men jailing the natives for killing twins and mutilating Ogbanje children, even

Mother Teresa is viewed as a saint by the public, while Bill Gates is hated and Norman Borlaug is hardly known, even though Gates and Borlaug did much more objectively saintly things (Pinker). Gates and Borlaug have saved millions of lives, while Teresa only provided very primitive medical care to “sick patrons” (Pinker). In contrast to Teresa, who has been “beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century,” Bill Gates “has been decapitated in effigy in ‘I Hate Gates’ websites and hit with a pie in the face” (Pinker). The reason Bill Gates is despised because he is the world’s richest man, so he is viewed as money-hungry and selfish. In reality, the supposedly despicable man has benevolently donated 28 billion dollars to charity, but people often ignore that fact (Tweedie). Borlaug kept himself and his work out of the media, which, led to the public not knowing about his work (Pinker). If you were to ask someone for their opinion on Norman Borlaug, Pinker suggests they would answer, “who the heck is Norman Borlaug?” In contrast, Teresa was “the very embodiment of saintliness,” because she was “white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth” (Pinker). People believe she is the real saint because of the image she creates in

We see this in Things Fall Apart, when the white colonizers jailed Igbo natives for doing what the white men believed was morally wrong (Achebe 178). We see this when we read how Mother Teresa is considered to be a saint because her image appeals to the people more than the rich Bill Gates and the unheard-of Norman Borlaug (Pinker). We see this when we turn on the news and hear about the tension and violence surrounding the LGBTQ community (Dastagir). What does this mean to us, as individuals, and as a society? It means that the way for us to prevent conflicts is not by forcing our morality down others’ throats, but rather, by learning to accept the beliefs of others. Next time you are in disagreement with someone, it may benefit you to think about their