The Paradox of Moral Decay

Over the last few years, a horrifying idea scratched at the back of my mind. Could morality be a path to psychopathy?

I wondered whether moral ideas, even “true” ones, could actually be infohazards. It’s so paradoxical, that a moral idea could essentially be poisonously immoral, so much that the knowledge of it is forbidden.

If one pursues moral truth, they will undoubtably find themselves in contradiction to common moral beliefs. Curiosity and the desire for utopia inevitably leads us to see how corrupt and problematic “normal” is. Furthermore, “normal” seems to have ceased to exist since the advent of the internet age. As one explores deeper moral philosophy, one is faced with seeing behind the moral curtain. This exposure to newfound moral “truths” presents one with two major paths.

The two paths

The first path is to antagonize others’ beliefs and defend one’s own. If one begins to see normal as morally insufficient, one is compelled to change normal or else exist as a bystander to people’s naive corruption.

Confronting people doesn’t go over well in most cases. It takes serious tact and caution. One has to respect the other in order for any real cooperation. One must tolerate corruption. Simply stating one’s differing beliefs implies the other is inferior, which is often felt as threatening, provoking justification or defense from the other.

Engaging in moral disagreement separates one from the herd, exiling one to suffer with isolation and resentment. That is, unless one successfully colonizes other people’s minds with their moral beliefs. Of course, I use such a loaded term like ‘colonizing’ in jest to highlight the feeling of tension and provoke a little defensiveness in you. No one wants to colonize their loved one’s minds except maybe a psychopath (we’re getting there, don’t worry).

The second path is to remain silent and respectful of opposing beliefs. A peacemaker role. This means one must disregard their own emotional response to the moral conflict. Habituating a disregard for one’s morally activated feelings is a path to corruption. It’s a path to moral insensitivity. This may develop into psychopathy if let to brew too long.

More disturbingly, I believe this is the path most would want one to take, without realizing the implications. It saves them from confrontation and conflict. A peacefully psychopathic descent.

My own experience

What initially brought this idea forth was my experience with veganism. For the sake of this topic, let’s ignore whether or not veganism is truly moral or not. We will focus on the consequences of merely owning such an idea within our minds.

On a daily basis, I must confront ubiquitous moral conflict. Initially my reaction was anger or motivation to engage others to resolve this conflict. But overtime my reaction changed. I didn’t want to be constantly insufferable. I didn’t want to be alone either. So, I would keep my mouth shut. I would try to hide that I’m vegan. Quite the contrast from the meme that vegans “always tell you” (here I am telling you). I didn’t want to become another meme.

Instead, I’ve grown to become like a psychopath. My response to moral conflict grows weak overtime. On a near constant basis, I must grapple with the idea that it’s OK to inflict suffering on innocent animals. From my own perspective, I don’t distinguish animal from human as moral categories. It’s a bit more nuanced. Yet, the tolerance of suffering bleeds through. The moral decay spreads through my mind with uncomfortable logical consistency. The suffering of even humans becomes tolerable.

To clarify, it’s not that I think animals and humans are equal, I actually think that the value of lives is more nuanced than that. That includes within humans and across species. For example, if a sentient creature can suffer, I think it’s kind to not cause that suffering. I would hope that sounds like an obvious statement. If someone disagrees, I would have to believe that they think it’s more kind to cause the suffering. Perhaps some believe that we must be kind to humans alone and that it’s cruel to not let oneself eat meat and that animals are less valuable so they’re suffering doesn’t matter as much.

Whether someone or something is valuable depends on its capacity to impact other sentient experiences, positively or negatively. Someone who influences the lives of multiple people is valuable in part because multiple lives rely on that person to maintain positive sentient experiences. That person isn’t valuable only for existing and having the capacity to have valuable experiences, but also because other people who are capable of having valuable experiences depend on that influential person. Basically, multiple people suffer if that influential person vanishes.

Bonus horror: imagine that a human vanishing actually makes other sentient lives better, including the lives of other humans. I’m sure many of you have individuals in mind, political figures or otherwise. Most animal’s lives are neutral, simply because they aren’t very influential. I’ve also become afraid that humans could be across the board pretty negatively influential in the grand scheme.

Is everything I’m saying infohazardous? Have you been poisoned just by reading this?

Anyways, my experience is that I learned to tolerate people’s insensitivity and be more accepting with sentient creatures harming each other. This has led me to become less responsive to even human harm. Overtime I’ve worried that this is some kind of transformation into something like psychopathy. People often assure that this worry means I am definitely not one. I think that notion is slightly silly, especially if we are talking about a slow descent (or heavenly ascension to enlightened psychopathy??).

It’s even reached an uncomfortable apex where I’ve fascinated over observing suffering. Such morbid curiosity is probably fairly common, but still, I don’t like this. Some of you have probably seen this emerge in my art, with depictions of cruel scenarios. Though, just to be clear a lot of my art depicts my own suffering through metaphor or is an attempt to invoke something from the audience to make a point or to serve some cathartic purpose.

I’d imagine that some number of psychopaths are programmed by potentially inevitable circumstances that happened to generate similar paths as the one I’m describing above. Maybe not usually in relation to an overt moral idea, but instead ideas centered around fairness, which I’ve explored similarly too. Perhaps as they were made to tolerate their own suffering inflicted by abusers, they have generalized an insensitivity to other’s suffering on a fair level.

That said, I still behave morally for the most part, at least in alignment with my own beliefs. I don’t often invest in challenging others moral beliefs, unless it seems fruitful to do so, which does occasionally happen. I have to pick and choose my battles but still, I feel that I am being trained to become unresponsive to my own moral outrage.

In a strange way, empathy could lead one to a loss of empathy, like some sickening moral paradox. This is what led me to wonder if spreading moral ideas could be harmful or infohazardous. More disturbing would be that the pursuit of moral truth is commonly corrupting. Moral deviancy inevitably threatens social cohesion, even if that moral deviation is closer to utopian truth.

I still prefer we pursue a better moral reality, even with these apparent risks. Moral truths may be infohazardous on some level, but the effect could be transient as well. The curse of moral knowledge fades as it spreads. It may be like a Basilisk, but at least the horizon looks nice.

If you’ve kept up, you know, I’ve explored veganism and its impact on mental health in the past. This entry is definitely familiar to that. The madness of the vegan is a moral social crisis. Even when it’s not moral, it’s probably still a social crisis.

I’m trying out making special art sets for the posts. I hope to be writing more again now. An update post might come soon. So much has happened, both terrible and great. The second, and now primary book is so near completion. The amount of work is almost indescribable. It may still be a while until it’s in print, but I’m at the final formatting stage now.

Thank you to the patrons! You’ve genuinely helped a lot on this journey.