Other people’s morals should challenge us
When others express an ethical view that’s different to ours, we often interpret it as a personal challenge.
I think this is rational and good and right.
Examples:
Meat-eaters, when someone says ‘I’m vegan’, often feel defensive, or anxious. They feel a need to justify their meat-eating, even if the vegan didn’t ask them to.
When all my friends are posting about climate change, or racism, or domestic violence, or transphobia, I feel a bit guilty that I am not also posting about these things.
If an acquaintance says that they are taking more covid precautions than you, you may feel tempted to write it off as extreme, liberal signalling, or hygiene theatre, or explain to yourself why actually your own behaviour is not that risky, or why you deserve to do it.
I’m very susceptible to interpreting others’ ethical principles as a moral challenge to me. My feelings in these cases are similar to my feelings when I’m explicitly criticized: one part feels ashamed and wants to live up to others’ moral standards; another is defensive and wants to vindicate my own moral choices.
The thing is, I think that these reactions are valid. As a vegan, I don’t feel judgmental about meat-eaters, and I’m not interested in shaming them, or evangelizing to them. But there’s no denying that I do think they’re morally wrong to eat meat, all else being equal. I think it would be better for them to avoid eating meat. I think they are morally flawed in this small way.
Similarly, if someone is taking more covid precautions to avoid transmitting it to others, then they should think I am morally wrong, in that limited domain (if they are consistent). If it’s morally right for them to have a certain level of caution, it’s morally right for me to do so too.
If someone shares a basic ethical framework with you, their moral differences should be seen as a challenge, and therefore it makes sense to react emotionally, either by justifying and excusing oneself — ‘I agree that this is morally right all else equal, but all else is not equal’ — or by strongly rejecting the implied judgment — ‘I think you are wrong and we have no moral duty to do this; we may even have a moral duty to do the opposite.’
Of course sometimes the appropriate reaction — though one that often takes longer to brew — is ‘you know what, they’re right; I’m going to change my behaviour’.
‘Everyone is entitled to their own (moral) opinion (within reason)’ is a useful political principle — if we all feel constrained to be violent evangelists for our moral beliefs, things will end badly. But that doesn’t change the fact that morality isn’t a preference, and things are right or they’re not, and sometimes we do, in fact, think that others are morally flawed, in limited ways, and others think that about us — even our friends who we love and care about. And that’s ok; it’s just part of being reasoning beings who think for ourselves and care about being good.