Why "Morality" is dead

Few human inventions have proliferated as successfully as the concept of ‘morality’. Morality occupies such a premium in our social interactions, and is so integral to the way most of our social structures are built, that most of us are brought up to venerate and strive for it, while few bother to question what it really is.

Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most prolific and influential philosophers to have lived, in his work ‘Human, All Too Human’ offered a very critical take on what morality really is. He proposed that all that morality truly means, is conformity to tradition. A person is considered ‘good’ or ‘moral’ if he or she obeys tradition and is considered ‘evil’ if they challenge these customs and traditions. Resisting tradition, no matter how silly or unfounded that tradition may be, has always been considered immoral or evil.

In Nietzsche’s mind “the free human being is immoral because in all things he is determined to depend upon himself and not upon a tradition.”

He considered morality to be a ruse which the inferior ‘herd’ uses to hold back the ‘Übermensch’ or ‘superior man’ who could rise above conventional morality. Upon careful reflection, it is hard to deny his proposition. Morality does indeed seem as nothing more than a tool to ensure conformity. It is predicated on the notion that the needs of the broader society take unconditional precedence to the needs and desires of an individual.

To some extent, it seems practical for us to have had such a framework, since our communities functioned only because of people co-operating for the greater good. But at what point does this really become a system wherein we are indoctrinated to ascribe value to ourselves only as a function of a group? At what point does this become oppressive towards individuality?

More importantly, in a socially dynamic world, morality is static. Morality is, therefore, used to admonish difference and diversity- it is used by the stakeholders of the establishments to crush any attempt to reform or improve them in light of changed environments and changed realities. Shouldn't our belief systems be democratised and our standards of morality change to reflect the realities of our times? Why is it that traditionalists still vilify homosexuality as ‘evil’? Morality (inextricable from religion) has ensured that we have not evolved past such petty, insecure intolerance to anything or anyone that is different or does not conform to some arbitrary norm or tradition that reflects the social realities and beliefs of a different time.

Maybe it is time we stop the tyranny of arbitrary, retrogressive customs. At the very least, we owe it to ourselves to honestly and objectively re-examine the ‘morality’ that we venerate and value so much. We must always question what we are, by default, expected to believe. After all, in the words of Nietzsche-

“Objection, evasion, happy distrust, pleasure in mockery are all signs of health: everything unconditional belongs in pathology”