Assignment 4: Are Nagel and Thoreau right? Can there be universal moral ideals, while, at the same time, our individual consciences are authoritative arbiters of right and wrong?

I think domestic violence is acceptable.

Yeah. Wow. You didn’t expect that, did you? Are you shocked? Do you think I have lost my mind? And most importantly, do you think I am a bad person? You probably do. And you should. Society gives us the answers to what is right and what is wrong, at least hypothetically. Violence is bad, talking is good. But only because that is what society thinks, is it what the individual people in the society think? There is a big difference between the two. The first is something which gives us as a collective the certainty and reassurance that there is something bigger out there, binding us all together. It is something we have in common and therefore is favorable to keep up or leave untouched. Furthermore, it makes us stronger as a cultural entity and allows us to be proud of ourselves as a country. These advantages are strong. They are so strong that they hide what is underneath. What I mean by that is the duplicity that slumbers in so many of us, the latter of my comparison. What we express publicly and what we truly believe from the bottom of our hearts are too often two different things.  You may consider this a vague claim because you may ask yourselves: how is there a way for me to know this when the people really just keep it to themselves? The truth is most people are not the best liars. They “go with the flow” and tag along with society like little chicks after their mother, because they are afraid to be abandoned. What they do not notice is the fact that the truth can be detected from the way they act.

                There were several incidents, in which I was certain a person standing in front of me had racist thoughts in their heads while they were talking to me. Even though they were verbally expressing the exact opposite to that, the look in their eyes could tell me how different their actual beliefs were. I am conscious of how accusative this might sound, considering I can never be sure about a person’s thoughts and should never judge someone without knowing them. However, it is my opinion that racism is bigger than we know. At least in Germany it is a big issue (I never experienced this in the United States.), which has become more and more of a problem, considering the amount of power that the right-wing party has gained in the last few years. So the two sides I discussed earlier have actually shifted. Since there are constantly more people that express their racist beliefs publicly, it is suddenly not so clear anymore what “society thinks”. Society is split and therefore people are not afraid to be abandoned when they state their opinion anymore. Of course this is exaggerated and is not yet fully the case, but the way it looks now definitely heads into that direction.

                Shifts like these happen frequently, whether it is in a negative way, like in this case, or in a positive way, like when slavery and segregation were abolished in the United States or the growing acceptance of homosexuality. This illustrates that there might be a problem with “moral ideas”. There is no way to deny their existence but what are they worth, when people think differently in their individual consciences? It appears as if they are merely a façade that covers up the true rawness of humankind.

(If it didn't become clear, I want the reader of this essay to know that I most certainly do not and will never think that domestic violence is acceptable. The use of this phrase was intended to demonstrate to the reader - in a rather provocative way - the set of "moral ideas" that is existent in all of us, as members of a society -consciously or subconsciously.