Here are five brief essays on morality in the Trump era, and a conclusion that asks more questions than it answers.

1. A Post-Moral World

We live in a post-truth world; soon we may also live in a post-moral world. As Nietzsche declared “god is dead”, we might declare morality a dead artifice which must be abandoned.

We are all immoral.  Let us not convince ourselves that we are moral, or that morality justifies our actions.  We are biased in countless ways and cannot make impartial decisions or act beyond our own prejudices.  All of our actions are immoral; and inaction is also immoral.  We cannot and will never be moral beings.

We are all going to die, and this anxiety causes us to act in ways that abandon morality.  We should not trust any other person to act morally, and all systems should be set up with the greatest pessimism of human nature possible. 

2. The Gradient of Morality

Morality is a scalar principle; those who are more educated, more wealthy, or more powerful necessarily must adhere to a higher standard of morality.  This is an ethical imperative.  Consider a toddler: we intuitively understand that they may hit, bite, and throw tantrums, but a parent must not stoop to their level; the adult has a higher standard of morality.  In the same way, the masses may be seen as childish by the ruling class; but this does not bid the wealthy and powerful to stoop to a lower level of morality or to take advantage of other human beings.  Morality is a gradient which scales with the impact one has upon the world.  Consider the executive of a large company, an elected politician, or a billionaire; because of the great affect these individuals have on others, they must be held to a high moral standard.  Even within an individual’s life, actions which affect a greater number must be held to a higher moral standard than actions which affect a lesser number.  Consider one who works in a nuclear power plant, or as a journalist for a major newspaper; their standard of morality is higher while working their jobs than while driving home from work.

Is democracy an ideal form of government when half the population is misinformed and the media is owned by the rich and powerful?  Is a republic an ideal form of government when power so easily corrupts?  How do we hold the educated, wealthy, and powerful to a higher moral standard, especially when the general populace is not privy to the daily moral decisions of the wealthy and the powerful? 

Trickle-up-ethics does not work.  The lower classes should abandon morality so that the higher classes are forced to consider the necessity of morality.  A kind, complacent, and moral lower class will always be taken advantage of.  

3. Empathy as the Origin of Morality

There is a growing movement in modern ethics that asserts morality is not a fabricated code of conduct, but rather a biological predisposition.  The origin of morality may lie within our emotions.  From this perspective, morality is not a complex social construct built upon objective truths, but a feature which was naturally selected for in the evolution of mammals.  We should acknowledge our animal natures and the possibility that morality is not a higher human creation, but an important evolutionary achievement.  

If morality is born out of empathy for other beings, then the only moral compass is our own emotional state, which varies greatly from day to day and from person to person.  There is no morality beyond our own biased perception of goodness.  This does not negate following our emotions in order to act in better ways.  If empathy is our only moral guide, then we must strive to be empathetic of others regardless of whether or not we declare morality dead.  In the face of an absurd and indifferent universe, it is up to us to introduce care, intention, and decency into the world. 

4. A Moral Language

The spreading of common wisdom and aphoristic thoughts may be the only way to affect what we call morality on a larger scale.  Consider the implications behind the following phrases: “Make America great again”, “Time is money”, and “Ignorance is bliss.”  These aphorisms all have insidious philosophical underpinnings.  These common phrases tell us (1) that regression is good, (2) that life can be reduced to an economic equation, and (3) that it is good to be uninformed. We can reimagine these phrases with better underpinnings such as: “Make America great for all”, “money is only money; time is invaluable”, and “the unexamined life is not worth living; ignorance is piss”.

Language is propaganda.  The phrases we commonly use don’t shape morality, but they do shape our thoughts and our actions.  This is to say, if we cannot be moral beings, then we may at least be able to adopt a moral language.  People will always act in their own self interest.  While we cannot change a person’s actions, we can use language as propaganda for moral thinking.  This is a subversive thought.  If the immoral powers of the world use propaganda to further their own ends, then shouldn’t those who believe in human goodness also push their own propaganda? In a fascist regime this is a dangerous thought, but if moral ideas are disseminated through grass roots movements, there is less risk.  It is the outsiders, fringe groups, and thinkers without power who must invent propaganda against the immoral and the amoral.  No one else will.

5. Morality in the Trump Era

Donald Trump and the people he surrounds himself with are immoral, or at best amoral.  His followers, however, are not immoral, they are simply misguided.  The people who make up the MAGA movement are mostly well-intentioned; while their vantage point and opinions may be built on faulty logic, they are driven by moral sentiments and have a clear desire to make the world a better place.  By definition, being driven by morality makes one a moral agent, regardless of whether or not we agree with the values their morality is based upon.  

This is another reason in the argument for abandoning morality.  When we cannot agree on morals, morality can cause more harm than good.  People who have a strong sense of morality are often closed-minded and prevent progress towards more humane and egalitarian ways.  A strong morality can be more dangerous than no morality at all.  At least immorality is predictable.   

The Trump era is marked by inconsistency in moral activity.  People who are guided by strong beliefs have unexpectedly acted in ways that marginalize other people and run counter to their belief systems.  How do we anticipate when a highly moral group of people will suddenly abandon their beliefs and act self-interestedly?  A pick-and-choose morality is more dangerous than none at all, and comes along with unpredictability and the strong-willed stubbornness that accompanies a strong moral system.

As a final point in this topic, let’s distill three of the most important values discussed throughout earlier sections: Empathy, Language, and Responsibility.

Empathy is how we understand the feelings of other beings; Language is how we express our thoughts; and Responsibility is the way our actions affect the world.  In the Trump era, people don’t care for others; they use language that is slippery, imprecise, and incites violent thoughts and actions; and they do not feel responsible for their actions, nor are they held responsible.  This is true on both sides of the aisle, and across our wider contemporary American culture.

An Open Question / Conclusion 

Should we choose to abandon morality, along with its inherent relativism and bias?  Or do we choose to hold onto our moral systems, despite their major flaws?  Is there a middle way, wherein we pick and choose values to keep and values to discard?  Or do we force morality to undergo a sea-change, perhaps even renaming and redefining the discipline?  What does morality look like in a world after Trump, and how do we set our eyes on this future?  How can we lay the groundwork now to bring about a better world for our children and our children’s children?  Can we define something more flexible than morals, more free than values, and more adaptable than ethics, so that rigidity does not constrain us?  Or do we abandon all this and set up structures that allow people to be the animals that we are?  Do we acknowledge that to be human is to err, and to be moral is to realize one’s own immorality?  As promised, we have asked more questions than we have resolved, and perhaps this lies at the heart of the issue, both in terms of the irreconcilable ethical dilemmas that plague our current era and the notion that morality is sometimes just the questioning of our own underlying assumptions.  Perhaps all we need to do is ask: how do others feel, what are the meanings our words express, and in what ways do our actions affect the world?  Can we reach deeper than fixed moral concepts and encourage the constant questioning of our underlying assumptions, that, through its adaptability across time and culture, brings us to a place beyond morality?

The Trump era is one of great moral shifts.  How we reorganize and realign morality now will affect generations to come.  Do we choose to venture beyond morality?