Funmurphys: the Blog

Moral Smugness

One of the classic situations in which almost all ethicists will tell you it's okay to lie is the following: You're sheltering a Jewish family in your house in 1944 German occupied Europe when the Gestapo knocks on the door and asks if you're hiding any Jews. I bring this up because it leads to the point we all tend to be morally smug. If we were polled, most of us would answer that not only is it OK to lie in that circumstance, but had we been in German occupied Europe in 1944, we would have had to lie as we would have had half a dozen Jewish families living in the attic. Sadly, this isn't, and wasn't the case. Most people didn't shelter the Jews - the few exceptions such as Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, and the rescue of Danish Jews by ordinary Danish citizens (It's a myth that the Danish king put on the Jewish armband but the truth that Denmark was able to save most of its Jews - the majority who were smuggled to Sweden and even the fraction deported to Theresienstadt) are notable by their rarity. We look down on those who failed at such an obvious moral test. And yet we fail to realize that there are times and places where it's very hard to be virtuous, and other times and places it's easy. Apparently, it was far easier to thwart the Nazi's in Denmark than anywhere else in Europe; not necessarily because the individual Danes had more moral courage, but perhaps because of the support found within Danish society and culture.

We look back at slavery as a huge evil and a moral stain on our country -- which it was. But we too easily dismiss the difficult decisions men such as Thomas Jefferson had to make and the moral anguish they suffered. We feel superior - we tell ourselves we would have done everything in our power to end such terrible suffering and injustice, unlike so many of the time. And yet we forget that to be opposed to slavery here and now carries no cost, no penalty, and no moral superiority. Sadly, slavery is still an issue in the world, but mostly overlooked in this country, although you can still do something about it. We feel the superiority, yet it we didn't earn it, but the people who worked against it and finally ended it at such great cost, they earned it. We've simply inherited it, along with a host of other moral improvements that allow us to look down at our ancestors.

We feel so much better about ourselves when we consider how much better we would have done in prior moral challanges than those who actually had to face the consequences. It helps us ignore what we are failing to do because of the consequences to ourselves here and now.