Moral Beauty

While we may not be able to prevent the unfathomable horrors being unleashed on people and those responsible revel in impunity, what we can do is refuse to accept the decline of moral and intellectual capacity we see in so many leaders. We must, in fact, resist it.

When there is a total absence of morals, Susan Neiman says, it opens the floodgates for people to act on their worst impulses; “if we are now living in a world where leaders of major countries do not even feel the need to pretend to be acting on moral grounds, we’re in real trouble.” 

In Moral Clarity, A Guide for Grown-up Idealists, Neiman writes that moral language has been appropriated by conservatives and warmongers to justify unjustifiable acts. Because of that, progressives, those who believe in human decency, have abandoned moral language for fear of sounding idealistic. But, she says, we shouldn’t abandon morals because they have been misrepresented and co-opted, this would be like abandoning love because you had a bad experience, it would be ridiculous. 

We have moral needs, she says, “needs so strong they can override our instincts for self-protection.” We see today, for example, on every continent, people pouring out into the streets protesting, expressing rage, and this Neiman says, is out of moral motivation.

While anyone can claim any action, including torture or war is moral, that does not make them so. Defining moral values is not up for grabs. Neiman says we should reclaim moral values and that while we might not always live up to them, there is historically quite a lot of consensus on what these are, going back to the enlightenment.

We must however be mindful not to call for moral purity. In our culture of constant critique and judgement, this can easily lead to a sort of moral fundamentalism, which, just like the absence of morals, leads to division and exclusion, and feeds into the cancel culture behaviours.

Our leaders may have abandoned moral action, but that doesn’t mean we should, it just means we need to look for it elsewhere. And it is everywhere, and once we are able to see it, it is beautiful.

Neiman says that while we can’t change all of the world we live in, we all have the opportunity to make something in our world better. And while we may need some great deeds for inspiration, they shouldn’t distract us from good ones. And most good deeds are actually often quite banal. 

Payam Akhavan, who has worked with genocide survivors all over the world, says that amidst the crumbling of the world we know, we also see the rising of a new global consciousness which is rooted in a belief in human dignity. He says there is inspiration in the truth, in the power of steadfastness, of not compromising on your beliefs, and of maintaining your moral integrity even in the face of injustice.

The people who have touched him the most, he explains, are not the powerful, visible people, but the unsung heroes, those who do good in the silence of their own conscience. They are the ones, he says, who shine a light in the darkness. 

And like Neiman writes, these can be small things, small decisions we each make every day. This is how we bring about revolutionary change in the world, Akhavan says, through seismic shifts in our consciousness, and this begins close to us.

All the great moral leaps in human history come with great sacrifices, something we must remind ourselves of, and unfortunately, progress is not linear, as we are witnessing today. But that does not mean we give up. As many great scholars and thinkers keep reminding us, we keep fighting the good fight, not because we might succeed but because it is the right thing to do. And because the alternative would be so much worse.

As Akhavan says: “world peace is not only possible, but it is inevitable, it is the next stage in our collective evolution on this planet. The question is whether we will achieve it through a common vision and collective will, or only after unimaginable catastrophes leave us no other choice.” 

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Words, Veronica Yates and illustration, Miriam Sugranyes.

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References

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Moral Clarity, A Guide for Grown-up Idealists, Susan Neiman.

‘How Spirituality Can Save Us from Global Chaos w/ Payam Akhavan’
Soul Boom, with Rainn Wilson, 11 March 2025. Watch here.

‘Moral Clarity with Susan Neiman,’ The Evolving Leader, 30 March 2022. Listen here.

Susan Neiman on Morality in the 21st Century, Philosophy Bites, 27 March 2010. Listen here. 
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Further Resources

‍One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad.

‍The World After Gaza, A History. Pankaj Mishra.

Why Are Some Journalists Afraid of “Moral Clarity”? Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, June 24, 2020. Read here.

‘Ta-Nehisi Coates On His Obligation To This Moment,’ The Amendment Podcast, 24 October 2024. Listen here.

‍Saving Beauty, Byung-Chul Han.

‘Letter to the American People,’ The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security. Read here.

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