It’s late at night and I’m a bit caught up thinking of ethics.

You were hoping for better? What can I say. It’s just a fact that one does one’s best thinking while laying in bed and while walking. It’s a bit odd, isn’t it? The walking triggering thoughts doesn’t so much surprise me, given the “white noise” sensory cues you get from ambient sound, changing sights and smells, etc. Laying is bed is almost the opposite, isn’t it? Darkness. Quiet.

In any case, morality. Some people define humanity by our ability to use tools, but they’re missing the forest for the trees. Humanity is defined by the ability to overcome instinct with rationality; it’s the ability to move beyond our genetic program when confronted with an event. This allows us to create and use tools, yes, but more importantly it allows us to make moral choices consistent with a predetermined, rationally-considered moral system. The second clause is, to my mind, far more indicative of humanity than the first.

That ability to move beyond instinct, natural or God-given or however you want to define it, is not something to take lightly, is it? Yet often people purposefully move back from rationality to instinct, yet don’t see why this is immoral. By that, I mean allowing your reasoning to be clouded by some internal (say, a hot temper, or lust, or jealousy, which is a potent vice indeed) or external (through the use of drugs including alcohol, for example) cause. The actions taken once one has moved from rationality to instinct may be moral or immoral, but regardless the act of removing one’s ability to adjudicate the morality of an action is immoral in and of itself, isn’t it?

Beyond personal decision-making, I’ve also been thinking a bit about a broader societal question. Sometimes you’ll hear an argument like, “How can you spend money on X when there are people starving in the world?” I used to think this was patently ridiculous, but not so much anymore. While I don’t necessarily think there’s a moral obligation to live an ascetic life as long as anyone lives in poverty, I do think that there’s an obligation not to waste one’s resources whilst someone lives in poverty. A good definition of waste might be purchasing something that goes unused or is only consumed conspicuously. That is, I don’t think it’s implausible to say that buying a closet full of unused suits, or an empty second home, is borderline immoral. I think this is true under any moral system that you choose.

Let me hit you with one more before I go. Morality, regardless of moral system, is a skill. It can’t be learned without practice, and I certainly claim no special proficiency. The easiest morality is (almost tautologically) doing the right thing when it is easy to do, meaning that the cost of doing the right thing that you bear is small. This is the please and thank you morality. I get upset when I see people talking on their cell while in a checkout line, or tailgaiting, or neglecting to thank a waiter, because it seems clear that if such easy morality is too much of a burden, there’s no way that person will do the right thing when it really matters. The hard morality, then, is doing the right thing when it’s hard to do, or when the personal cost is great.

The hardest morality of all, as far as I’m concerned, is doing the right thing when your counterparty acts immorally. I’m 22 years old, and I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve known who act in a moral way whether they’re dealing with saints or bandits. To be honest, I don’t know if I have it in me to ever reach this standard. I defined morality as a break with the animal world, a higher order of evolution. Often, temptation, avarice, hatred and the other vices are described as human vices, inherent in the human condition; I think we ought to keep in mind that they are our most base and least human component of all.