Morality is context-dependent

(Here is an earlier post on my concept of morality, before reading this one)

Morality is a function of both the action under consideration, as well as the specific society in which the action is evaluated (the roots for this go back to the origin of morality). In other words, morality of an action cannot be judged without exactly specifying the society in which it is to be judged. For instance, the question “Is abortion moral?” is meaningless, because it doesn’t tell where the question is being asked – whether the society under consideration is the whole world or Russia or Iran. And the response to the question depends on that. The answer may be a “yes” in Russia, a “no” in Iran and “unclear” in US. There is no absolute measure of morality – it completely depends on the views held by the living members of the society under consideration – and in isolation from these views, any judgment of morality is meaningless.

But we hardly ever actually specify a region when asking such a question! Indeed, people often ask “Is abortion moral?” instead of “Is abortion moral in India?”. Isn’t that conflicting with what I said above? No. I think there are two subtle reasons to it:
1. There is usually an implicit region or society under consideration when such a question is asked, even if not explicitly stated. For example, if this question is raised in a religious meeting, it is very likely assuming the followers of that religion as the society for the purpose of this question. Or otherwise, the society implicitly assumed in such questions is usually the country in which the question is being raised.
2. Often people discussing such questions fool themselves into thinking that they are answering the question for the whole mankind, while they may simply be judging it for the society of their country or religion. For example, let’s say this question results in a “yes” in US after resolution of the debates. And it’s likely that some people in US discussed it just in the form of “Is abortion moral?” believing that they were thinking for the whole world. However, this “yes” has no validity for the Iranian society, unless the discussion was truly done is a global context i.e. the discussions actually included the view of the Iranians in making their judgment (in which case the answer might not be a “yes” in the first place!).

The abortion example shows how the notion of morality on the same subject could vary from place to place. But even more interestingly, it could vary at the same place, depending on your “zoom” level, i.e. how big a society you consider. Consider a hypothetical situation: A strong, vigilant and loyal student of his school finds a thief breaking into the school laboratory and stealing some costly equipment. He can’t bear the sight, so he goes ahead and beats up the thief, resulting in severe wounds to the thief, and saves the school property. Is that moral? I can say with some confidence that if such an incident took in the school that I went to in my childhood, his acts would be deemed quite moral whenever discussed in the school premises, while at the country level, they would be immoral (and perhaps punishable).

So to summarize, the morality of any action can be defined only in the context of the society in which it is judged. There is no absolute morality.

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Disclaimer: (1) There are just my observations about the concept of morality/ethics in the world – my perception of “how things are”, and have nothing to do with “how things should be”. (2) I do not intend to claim any moral prowess here by stating these views – I am very likely more immoral than an average person.