Friday, August 12, 2011

Morality


“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”

~Thomas Paine

How so many of us think that whatever we are doing is wrong but it needs to be done, to survive and flourish. Or feel bad, sometimes guilty about our conduct and yet continue. Till some time back, I used to think that people who might not act in a noble way are better than people who might have sold their conscious altogether and don't even realise it. But as Hitchcock puts it,"such is worse". Because the former is a man with full cognizance of his actions and yet he justifies them and continues to act in a ignoble manner. And that can only imply his preference for it.

I haven't yet been in a situation which tests my morality simply because my profession doesn't demand me to tread such a path. But what if one day, I was put in some such situation...would I cave in?

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