Many Shades of Grey?

Anything is justifiable with the words "look at it this way..." but that doesn't make it justified. I am a firm believer in moral objectivism--that the activities of human beings are either right or wrong, but that we are all just incapable of grasping the true difference. We instead invent this concept of "the many shades of grey between black and white" to justify our actions (no matter what they are) in the event that our conscience is unable to weigh the pros and cons of our activities or those of others. This is how we can get away with judging the deeds of others with more impunity than our own actions, based almost entirely on our perceptions of other people rather than the facts of their circumstance. This "many shades of gray" theory gives us the benefit of the doubt no matter what, and allows us to search out justifications for our actions no matter what the consequences of those actions were. The reason I don't subscribe to this "moral subjectivism" is because the worst among us--child molesters even--are able to use it to find moral justification for actions that our society convicts them for. Now ask yourself, are you no better than a child molester?

It is a fact that there are circumstances in life where morality is ambiguous to us, where the pros and cons of doing something force us to choose the "lesser of two evils," or force us to choose randomly because the consequences seem either morally neutral or are too large or small to conceive, or have their effects at a great distance from us. But let's be honest, when people insist that "there are many shades of grey," what they are really saying is that there is only grey. If even minute immoralities can be shirked off as possibly containing ambiguities, and therefore be rendered "neutral," then the same could logically be said about large immoralities (which is why we have justifications for murder, war, and even child abuse), so what is really meant is that all actions are ambiguous, if only because it is the logical extension, unless one wants to start deliniating what is ambiguous and what isn't (which is just to be acquiescing to moral objectivism anyways).

So instead, the subjectivist then jumps to label an action as "more acceptable" simply due to the particulars of who is doing the action and what they were doing it for, or some other immaterial criterion we can establish as a judgment point in our own minds that is separate from its ambiguous consequences. That way, that which is more divorced from our actions directly, that which is the work of the majority, that which is not done by intent (or by accident), that which is performed by people of authority (political or professional), and that which we do (as opposed to the like actions of others), all becomes "more acceptable," simply because it tends to be the case in nature, regardless of the very real consequences of those actions. People and intentions become more important than actions and consequences.

It is as if we are to accept, and eat, the spoiled fruit off the ground just because the picker had "intended" to pick it when ripe and just forgot. "Oh well, we say, the picker is a professional and he didn't mean to let our food spoil. It wasn't his fault, therefore, his food is safe to eat." It may sound like a straw-man criticism, but consider what professionals are allowed to get away with doing unintentionally in real life, particularly towards minors, under the premise of "they didn't do it intentionally." Good intentions aren't good enough. That which is rotten, is rotten, regardless of whether it was intended to be ripe when served. Likewise, psychiatrists who intend to treat teen depression with a prescription for a series of suicide pills, have produced rotten fruit, regardless of their intentions to treat and heal. We can't seperate or ignore the negative consequences of actions simply because we trust the person who did the action, and likewise, can't overemphasize wrongdoing simply because we don't trust them. Either way, we are letting perspectives govern consequences, and in the case above, putting psychiatrists before clients, or perpetrators before their victims.

Almost all actions carry with them positive consequences and negative consequences, so on the surface it may appear that morality is subjective, and that all judgment about right and wrong "depends on how you look at it." The problem with this view is that it inevitably forces you, the subjectivist, to concede to a new set of moral laws which may not be so tolerant to your intuitions--the laws of nature--where the strong cut down the weak, the majority cuts down the minority, the powerful cut down the impoverished, the old cut down the young, and the young cut down the old--where the affluent justify the ruin of those who suffer at a distance, and where each of us escapes all judgment from every "ambiguous" deed and non-deed simply because the court in our own minds is always adept at finding justification and absolution from the feeling of guilt, regardless of consequence. This is the new moral law that you inevitably subscribe to when you accept the "many shades of grey" illustration, because this is what we see happen in the world when culture accepts the subjective nature of morality as if it was unsubstantiated truth (by its own subjective principles). We are forced to base our lives around the law, which allows for us to justify our immorality so long as doing such is legal, and so long as there is a benefit (no matter how minute) stemming from our actions (no matter how destructive). So long as all actions are considered "grey," there is no right and wrong, there is just "grey," for everything and everyone.

It is understandable that in circumstances of ambivalence or ambiguity we're forced to make a choice and accept whatever consequences or benefits come from the action. What is not understandable though is when we have to justify to ourselves that the action we were forced to take ultimately was the correct one, or at least, the better choice, after the fact. It seems merely self-serving, a quest to save the ego from itself so as not to subject it to the fact that the "lesser of two evils" we just chose was still in fact "evil." If it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation beforehand, and you choose "do," you're still as damned after the fact as you were before, let's not forget. Just because you chose doesn't mean you haven't produced damnation on yourself. It's better to accept the consequences of your actions, accept that your choice had repercussions, than to carry on as if you just averted catastrophe simply because you made a choice. Who can we pass judgment on? No one, because no one is qualified. All we can do is do the best we can and accept the consequences that come inevitably from "our best guess."

If an action has more negatives than positives, it is not "a shade of grey," it is morally wrong, and sometimes, things that are morally wrong are necessary to do, but their necessity doesn't make them right. If an action has more positives than negatives, it is merely "less wrong," or morally acceptable at best. Only actions that produce no negative consequences whatsoever can be considered unquestionably morally right (if they even exist), and only actions that produce no positive consequences are unquestionably morally wrong. What those morally right and wrong actions are, though, is difficult for anyone to say because the human mind is governed by instinct, emotion, reason, culture, legality, and a whole host of other characteristics that influence our perspective. Without these forces pulling us in one direction or another, we'd be able to possess the purely logical expression that morality is, that thing that we are all just stumbling around trying to get a handle on and align our intuitions to. Mankind invents its own moral laws to try to simulate the perfect "form" of morality strewn from our intuition (as evolved in us via instinct) and expressed as culture, but all man-made systems fail to express it completely, in one simple formula, the fact of what is "black" and what is "white." So we have "grey" only because we don't want to face the fact that we often don't know the difference.

We are all children.

Who's Watching the Watchers?

Because of what the adult brain loses as it develops from adolescence, adulthood is not great. It is not qualitatively better or greater than adolescence by experience than adolescence is greater by innocence, or ignorance (as it were). The adolescent brain is simply fighting to express itself in a world governed by unbridled adult expression, for better and worse. By contrast, the adult brain is fighting itself in a world governed by its own self-imposed inhibitions, those learned by experience, and also for better and worse. So where do adults get the idea that they are qualified to judge the young?

The adolescent calculates the why not while the adult simply contents itself with knowing the why not. The adolescent tests its limits while the adult lives comfortably within them. The adolescent strives for a costly adventure as the adult settles for safe and clean complacency. The adolescent seizes life regardless of the consequences while the adult lives in a world of consequences and denies life. The teenage mind defies expectation while the adult mind defines it. When the teen mind defies life to its detriment, the adult mind defines it to the same extent. The adult is superior though for its longevity while the teen is superior for its aspiration--both have what the other lacks.

If you're an adult, and you find this characterization limiting, then you are experiencing the same effects of decadence (which is to say vanity) that limit the youth perspective. Characterizations of people on the basis of age are naturally limiting. The only difference of course is that these characterizations draw a line of equivocation between adults and adolescents (and children), while most adult heuristics in regards to young people do nothing but reinforce the so-called superiority of adults (in the active realms) and children (in the passive ones). All the truth in the world adds up to adults thinking in adult ways and framing non-adult situations with adult-centric perspectives. That's all there is to it. Truth is a function of power, and because adults are in power, their truth prevails. And yet, their truth about humility still applies to everyone.

In the name of humility, the justice system is often considered to be the sociological "parent" for adults. It's supposed to be the high-holy thing that judges adult behavior and punishes indiscretions in the rational world. It is however formed and created by adults, so one is left to wonder, who is watching the watchers? Who is judging adults in the manner in which adults judge the young (other than the young people themselves?)? Adults are given unbridled expression because they exist free of judgement half the time, and when they are being judged, they not only participate in, but create the system for which they are to be judged by. What child has that much authority over the judgement system when he or she is facing the scorn of adults? If only children could set the terms by which they could be judged by, because then they would have the same free terms that adults reserve for themselves. As it stands, adults are policing both themselves and children, so adult judgements go unchallenged in either case. 

It is entirely human for an adult to be taken by the decadence that is bestowed on them by culture, and there isn't one alive that doesn't think, in some way, that they are superior to young people. Adults don't need to be derided for their egotism any more than kids do for theirs, they simply need to be awakened and cut down to size so they may see themselves as the increasingly decrepit apes they are. None are so high and mighty that they should be beyond reproach, whether adults (in active realms) or children (in passive ones). Chances are, in the grandiosity of the cosmos, nothing an adult human says makes any real difference or carries any more universal a truth than the children who were once told "not to speak unless spoken to." Whoever said the adults could talk?

Incapable, Yet Culpable

Could it be that the greatest threat to America's children is not the threat of predation, but the threat of incrimination--for innocent sexual games played among themselves-- by a system that deems them incapable, and culpable? I've always considered it worse. For one, the "child abuse industry" (add "entertainment industry" where applicable) affects many more children (whole swaths of the population at a time) than any lone child molester does, and arguably, with the same ferocity and delusional, narrow-minded lack of insight about the effects.

The real difference is that child molesters are outlaw scumbags that society hates, they are easy to ridicule, easy to shame, and therefore, the only recipient whipping boy of society's pent up reservations about the treatment of children. On the other hand, protectionist groups and law enforcement are sponsored scumbags that society regards as heroes.

It would seem that whether the molester has the kid tied up on the floor or the officers have the kid tied up in a cell waiting for a judge to determine against the kid's life on earth over something as trivial as "seeing someone naked" at the age of 10, the child is going to suffer at somebody's hands. It turns out society has no problem with children suffering, only so long as the entity man-handling the minor with its grubby hands is state sponsored. Society has no problem ruining a child's life, so long as its tax dollars go into funding those responsible for doing the deed. After all, the right to life and dignity was never something it granted children to begin with, not so long as they were "minors."

So all this righteous indignation about corrupting children can not and should not be without mention of the juvenile justice system, the system society has entrusted to turn normal children into registered sex offenders.

On Individual Choice

Choice for children is an illusion. The choices they are given have more to do with what is acceptable to the parent presenting the options than it does with children 'following their hearts' and any other such sentimental claptrap. This is not to say that an illusory choice is unfair, as complete freedom of choice for anyone is severely restricted, and just being granted the right to make it empowers and teaches them to use and form their own judgments, and--most importantly, suffer their own consequences (within reason). This is to say, choosing is always a learning experience.

Culture plays a big part in the degree to which a child's choice will be reinforced at any particular time, as eastern cultures tend to be more imperative and collectivist and western ones, more interrogative and individualistic. The idea of a child having choice at first appears to be something inspired by western individualism, however, in either culture, regardless of parenting methodologies, warmth, and cultural differences, trends regarding the child's choice are cyclical. It could be said that children in collectivist and individualistic societies are simply socialized to construct their individual wills likewise, to align with whatever the prevailing social trend is. It is inevitable that a thousand different influences (Bronfenbrenner) are going to converge on a child's will from birth and distort it, molest it, and mature it, until it is conformed with the cultural and historical modes of its society, and that with reinforcement, children will learn to bend their own will accordingly.

A child's evaluation of certain objects and activities has more to do with what the society that surrounds him or her values than it does anything particular to the characteristics of "childhood." If we lived in a society where anal sex in childhood was valued as much as we value the toy aisle, our children would love anal sex, and anal sex would be another so-called "pure" and innocent childhood pastime. There is nothing beautiful, pure, disgusting, or obscene, other than what adults have termed these things.

The former transition is one created by the socialization of the child by caregivers and the other contextual and ecological factors. However, it is also a child's human ability to resist the flow, and ultimately, this small resistance fuels the evolution of society, but such can only happen if they remain active players in the social game. Children who totally fail to bend their will to the expectations of society by the time they are developmentally expected are labeled disordered, or truant, or otherwise socialized in inappropriate ways, and they are effectively done away with. That is no exaggeration.

The ability of children to make the choice by which to structure their behavior, either in accordance or protest, highlights the reality of a child's humanity. And though parents seem to detest their children when they are either too eager to participate or too disobedient to comply, it is in those instances when the child is most human. If anything, those instances ought to be the most celebrated moments in a child's life. Unfortunately though, when a child's humanity interferes with an adult's authority, humanity is crushed.

Adult is No Standard

Children are often accused of thinking the world revolves around them as if believing this was such a "low" or lesser thing--as if it were a behavior divorced from the adult. Believing one is at the center of something important is as human as human, whether it's believing that all one's friends are spending their time talking about them or believing that extra-terrestrials would have any reason to travel endless light years to us for momentary visits. No. Far from being something divorced from adults, it is the very nature of the human ego to assume itself untouched by behaviors it deems low or lesser than it. By so easily dismissing the child's egoism, adults reveal their own.

Advertisements will even exploit this standard, simultaneously depicting children as rambunctious egoists bent on gratifying their passing fancy along with an adult, normally the mother, in desperation for what she deserves--attention to her plight, attention on her struggles and efforts, only to find that her labors are such that only some godsend product can help dissolve. Advertising is the propaganda of its target audience. When adults are the demographic, the advertising is unquestionably adult-centric. Because adults reserve for themselves the resources of society, they are inevitably the main target audience, thus the majority of advertising is adult propaganda.

Adult-centrism is reinforced by this propaganda. Its main tenet being that whatever constitutes adulthood at any time and place is the standard and pinnacle lifestyle, ideology, perspective, culture, and developmental ability of the human race. Indeed, "adult" is often interpreted as meaning or being synonymous with "human." Childhood and youth is considered unfortunate temporary states of being on the way to becoming adult, which is to say, becoming human.

However, all is subject to interpretation, and all interpretation that prevails is a function of power. Alternative positions, whether adult or child, are simply alternative positions--developmentally defined expressions of humanity. One is no more "superior" by virtue of its power and authority as the other is "inferior" by virtue of it's ignorance. No one is inferior or superior. All expressions of humanity are relative to one another. The only thing maintaining the adult as the standard form of human being and all it's various alternative (child-like) positions as "lesser" or "inferior" states of being, is a function of their power to enforce this perspective. This is done through their propaganda.

Harm is Human

Like all people, children need a degree of harm in their lives to sustain them. It is an essential function of living in a physical world that they should fall. It is part of their right to life, if any such thing can be said to exist, and an essential fact of their humanity. Whenever adults intervene to prevent this essential fact of life, they are doing so on the very same faulty intuitions that put the child into harm's way to begin with. A child jumps from a high branch without thinking and breaks a leg upon hitting the ground. An adult speeds his vehicle on the straightaways only to loose control around a sharp bend. If it can be argued that children need to be forcefully withheld from getting themselves into situations that entail risk, then the same could also be argued for adults. That, or we could just accept that harm is a fact of life, prevent it when we see it, but otherwise not let the little things bring so much trouble.

Both children and adults have systems of repression to deter them from harming themselves or others, with one crucial difference. The actions of adults in the world are governed by laws, in this example, speed limits, but the freedom to exceed such limitations still remains with them. Until vehicles are built such that they can not exceed 20 miles per hour, for instance, the ability to step on the gas and place oneself into a situation entailing risk at higher speeds is entirely within the adult's control. And as much as the adult seems to make such accommodations to such freedom on their own behalf, they seem to want to deny children the same. They want to manually enforce that children can not even by force of will place themselves into situations that entail risk, and therefore, induce the ease of knowing their children are safe.

But are they? We all know feeling a child is safe carries more weight than a child's actual physical proximity to safety, but that is a separate issue.

The point being made here is that all interactions between children and adults are governed by a battle of wills, sometimes they cooperate and other times no, but every interaction of either consent or dissent takes place between two separate wills. The adult's will, in this case the caretaker's, expresses itself through the repression of the child's (whether the child's will is legitimate or not) on the excuse that it is doing so for the celhild's wl being--only superficially attempting to justify itself in the terms of the child, entailing repression. The child's will finds self expression through resisting the adult's repression--regardless of whether the repression is legitimate or not. Likewise, it doesn't care to be justified by the laws of adults, entailing jeopardy.

The ambiguity regarding the legitimacy of these opposing worldviews (between jeopardy and repression...both alternate forms of each other) allows for objectivity to reign once the rationales between either perspective have been given time to play themselves out. In this universe, children can not be right all the time, and adults can not be right all the time, just as if we were talking about the relationship between any two people. However intuitively this may lend itself, adults tend to presuppose that their will carries automatic legitimacy on the grounds that it is older, and therefore, anything an adult attempts, in this case, for the purpose of protecting children from harm, inevitably accomplishes its goal. In actuality, the adult exercises its faulty judgment about the care of another human being that has fallen as children for themselves when deciding about which branch to fall from.

All is a function of their natures.