Jake Bailey: Reflections in the pool of morality

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

Opinion

COMMENT:

Lake Morality is a geographical oddity.

Its black and murky waters are not welcoming. They are silent and still, but ominously so, and stare into you as you stare into them.

No one knows the exact dimensions or shape of it with any certainty- they change based on who you are talking to. Typically, the shallows lap just shy of the warm and dry toes of whoever is telling you about them- often leaving you ankle deep and with wet shoes. Or perhaps from the moral high ground where you stand, the other person is too close to the edge for you to feel at ease.

Like all lakes, its level rises and falls over time. A storm of public influence will pass through and swell it up the banks. A politician will whip up a storm of fear that will raise thrashing white caps. Or a dry spell of uneventfulness and warm winds of change will draw a few inches off the top and Lake Morality will retreat down the banks, generally exposing there was nothing to be afraid of in that newly revealed space after all. But goodness knows what still hides below the edge's surface now.

Lake Morality changes, the waters aren't stagnant. What never changes is us: that we all stand around skimming, or casting, stones, and telling people the view from our spot on the shore.

Euthanasia, cannabis legalisation, alcohol consumption. Plastic bags, arming police, refusing vaccination. Vocal rugby players, the closing of a rock sacred to native people, veganism. News headlines are a pinball machine designed to bounce you from one issue to the next and set off lights and bells inside your mind.

You'll feel something about all of the matters above, perhaps it will be consistent and perhaps it will not. At times the right and wrong are more or less clear to a majority, but they will always be subjective. From your eyes, Lake Morality will have many coves and bays, peninsulas and capes in places where others do not see them. For them to not acknowledge what is right in front of you will be confounding, but it should be tempered with a key understanding.

The first line of The Great Gatsby is something which has stuck with me since I was forced to dissect it in year 11 English. There is something humorous about taking advice from someone who has never existed, who is taking advice from someone who has never existed, but the quote goes:

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticising any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

The irony is that the line is meant to be just that- ironic. It sets in motion a book of which the purpose is moral commentary, and the narrators reasoning for desiring (and failing) to withhold judgment is deliberately ambiguous and condescending.

In the pool of morality we usually only see our own reflection when we need to see others. Photo / 123RF

It does hold a key lesson though. Lake Morality has been carved out in your eyes by your own experiences of it. We would all be pained to understand how little 'we' are a reflection of ourselves, and how much of us is actually the sum of the people around us and the interactions we have had with them. It is the cause of entrenchment- we dig ourselves into a hole carved out by the footsteps of those we associate with, be they family or friends, and shrink away from that reality.

Everyone can tell you the advantage they had growing up, and the reason for that is that our moral compass is steered by those same advantages- so that in our eyes, because we stand in 'right' place, what happened to us was generally good.

The advantages that you've had, that "all the people in this world haven't", could be growing up in a poor neighbourhood, or going to Harvard. Facing a life-changing illness, or having perfect health. A difficult family life that gave you resilience, or a white picket fence erected by supportive parents.

Because of where we stand, and how we view Lake Morality, we are happy with how we got here, because we are where we are meant to be. Our advantages are all different.

In an age where partisanship is growing and understanding is dwindling, perhaps the key to alleviating the polarisation of debate is to understand that others have had different advantages to you. To look upon others and their views which may differ from yours with a balance of weight placed upon the advantages you have had over them, as well as the ones they have had over you, and how vastly different they may be while still feeling the same.

Very few people retreat to the high ground simply so they can look down on the others, or because they like the view up there- they do it because from where they stand, the lake is much higher. Likewise, very few others splash and frolic around in the shallows or immerse themselves nakedly into the treacherous waters as a defiant shun to those who look down on them. Generally, to everyone's eyes, they are only doing the right thing- not living as an act of provocation.

Perhaps the only definite right and wrongs lie in the way we interact with others whose view of the lake differs.