Small Choices, Dramatic Inner Monologues

Following on from our analysis of humanity’s projection of its values and rationalism on the cosmos, this article seeks to go from the infinite to the mundane and look at everyday moral choices.  Let's be honest, none of us will likely face the grandeur of deciding humanity's fate or making history-altering ethical choices. Our moral dilemmas are decidedly less cinematic: Do I pretend I didn't see the Big Issue seller as I pass them on the street? Is it wrong to wear headphones or pretend to be engrossed in my phone specifically to avoid conversation in the lift? Should I tell Colin from Accounts that his "inspirational" quotes in email signatures are utterly banal and cringeworthy?

Yet inside our minds, these tiny decisions can trigger moral contemplation worthy of Socrates. Welcome to the surprisingly complex world of everyday morality, where we're all just trying not to be terrible people while simultaneously looking for loopholes and telling little white lies, most notably to ourselves.

The Philosophy of Small Stuff: More Complicated Than You'd Think

As we explored last time, philosophers have spent millennia contemplating the nature of good and evil. Kant gave us the categorical imperative. Mill offered utilitarianism. And yet neither adequately addresses whether it's ethical to take the last slice of pizza when you've already had three, or secretly “borrow” some milk for your coffee from the staff fridge.

Montaigne, the original champion of "it's complicated," would appreciate our moral gymnastics. His essays celebrated human inconsistency and contradictions, making him the patron saint of people who declare "I'm on a diet" while ordering dessert or nibbling some chocolate. He understood that our principles often crumble in the face of everyday temptations, and he'd probably just shrug at our modern ethical gymnastics with a knowing smile.

Everyday morality exists in this grey area—the space between grand ethical frameworks and the minute-by-minute decisions that actually fill our days. It's where theoretical virtue and our sense of identity (I am a good person, surely) meets practical reality, and practical reality often wins because it's wearing comfortable shoes.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Modern Life (Revised for Convenience)

1. Digital Dishonesty

The carefully crafted "Sorry, just seeing this now" text you send three days after receiving the urgent message. The read receipts you've disabled on every platform and the “last seen” you have switched off on WhatsApp. The "I'll definitely check out that article you sent" when we both know you'll die with 47 unread tabs and a million unread emails. In the digital age, our lies have become both more frequent and less detectable; a morally questionable efficiency improvement.

2. Ethical Consumption (When Convenient)

"I'm very concerned about ethical consumption," we declare, while actively avoiding learning which companies use child labour because ignorance feels better with our morning coffee.  Or we jump on a long-haul, climate destroying plane for that trip to the Maldives; after all the planes were flying anyway, right?  We've mastered the art of caring deeply about issues until they require actual sacrifice, at which point we develop sudden amnesia or a good excuse or even self-deception.

3. The Self-Checkout Rationalization

The psychological acrobatics performed when mis-scanning items is Olympic-level moral gymnastics. "If they wanted me to pay the correct amount, they should have employed more cashiers" becomes a profound critique of capitalism rather than what it actually is: stealing while feeling smugly justified.   And of course, the argument that this is a victimless crime. “Moral vacuum in the bagging area…..”

4. The RSVP Flexibility Clause

We've collectively decided that "Yes, I'll be there" actually means "I reserve the right to evaluate better offers until approximately 30 minutes before the event, at which point I may develop a sudden, non-specific illness or suddenly remember grandma’s funeral." The sacred bond of the calendar invite and RSVP has never been weaker.

5. Performative Good Deeds

If a good deed happens and nobody sees it or posts about it on social media, did it really happen? The modern moral conundrum of doing nice things partly (mostly?) for the social validation is a special form of virtue that Aristotle never anticipated.  If we virtue signal but do good things then does it matter, surely the good is still good?  And did you see what I did on Insta?  That was me being ethical.

6. Selective Hearing in Relationships

"I didn't hear you ask me to take out the bins" has replaced "the dog ate my homework" as the most transparent excuse in human history. The moral flexibility of conveniently missing requests while having superhuman hearing for the Amazon driver's quiet knock is truly remarkable.

7. The Reply-All Apocalypse

There's a special circle of moral judgement (or Dante-esque hell) reserved for those who deliberately reply-all to company-wide emails. We know what we're doing – especially with the “Thanks”. We do it anyway. Some people just want to watch the world burn (and by "world" I mean "everyone's inbox" as well as the server impact and CO2 generated).   I once was unfortunate enough to receive an email sent by mistake to every external contact of a partner company.  As my Blackberry melted in my hands I watched with incredulity as people sent “reply all” emails asking the other recipients not to reply all.  These humanoids can never be forgiven, on that we can surely agree.

The AI Paradox: Outsourcing Our Moral Labour

Perhaps the most ironic moral shortcut of our modern era is asking an AI to write our thoughts about morality for us. There's something deliciously contradictory about contemplating the nuances of human ethical behaviour while simultaneously outsourcing the labour of that contemplation to a machine.

"Dear AI, please write me a thoughtful piece about authentic human moral struggles that I can pass off as my own deep reflections."

If Montaigne worried about authenticity in the 1500s, imagine his bewilderment at our willingness to delegate our moral musings to algorithms. Is an insight about ethics still meaningful if you didn't actually have the insight? It's like asking someone else to exercise for you and expecting to get fit.

Then again, perhaps this is just the next evolution of our moral flexibility: the ethical equivalent of using a calculator instead of doing maths by hand. After all, we've been outsourcing moral thinking to religious texts and philosophical treatises for centuries rather than thinking for ourselves. The AI is just cutting out the middleman, like a moral Uber Eats delivering pre-packaged wisdom to your intellectual doorstep.

The Absurdity of It All: A Nod to Camus

My own hero Camus would have a field day with our modern moral contradictions. The philosopher who gave us the concept of the absurd, the conflict between our search for meaning and the universe's indifference, would recognize our daily struggles as perfect examples of his philosophy.

Every time we meticulously separate our recycling only to watch the rubbish truck dump it all together, we experience a small version of the Sisyphean task Camus described. We know the moral universe is largely indifferent to our small choices, yet we push our ethical boulders uphill anyway, only to watch them roll back down when convenience calls.

As Camus might say (if he shopped at Tesco): "One must imagine the shopper with a trolley full of bogof items happy, even in the longest checkout line."

Pascal's Wager: Modern Edition

Blaise Pascal gave us his famous cynical wager: better to believe in God just in case, as the potential downside (eternal damnation) far outweighs the inconvenience of faith on the mortal plane. Today's version? "I'll pre-emptively like my friend's terrible Instagram poetry just in case they check who liked it." The stakes are lower, but the hedging strategy remains the same.

Pascal would recognize our constant calculations: is it worth the social capital to correct someone's offensive joke? What's the minimum donation that lets me feel good without affecting my lifestyle? These are the spiritual wagers of everyday life, where we're constantly betting on the odds of karmic retribution.

The Runaway Train or Trolley Problem: Everyday Edition

Philosophers love the trolley problem: do you divert a runaway train to kill one person instead of five? But our everyday version is more like: do you correct someone who's been mispronouncing your name for three years, or do you just legally change your name to match their pronunciation?  As someone who is often called Rob, sometimes by people I have worked with for years, I can empathise.

Or perhaps: If you're in the express checkout lane with 13 items instead of the maximum 12, and someone starts counting your groceries, do you: a). Put one item back, b). Pretend one item is a gift and therefore doesn't count, c). Stare them down while slowly adding more items to your basket?   Yes, that guy staring at you is me. These are the true ethical quandaries of our time.

The Sinatra Principle: I Did It My Way

No article on morality and ethics is complete without quoting Sinatra and his signature song offers perhaps the most honest ethical framework for modern life. The notion of facing life's challenges and making choices according to one's own principles, even when facing criticism, captures our approach to personal morality; we all believe our particular ethical shortcuts are justified by our unique circumstances.

We're all starring in the moral equivalent of a Sinatra biopic, where we may make questionable choices but remain the sympathetic protagonist. The selective memory that lets us remember our three good deeds while forgetting our thirty moral compromises is the ultimate expression of doing things "our way."

Like Sinatra, we face our daily ethical challenges with a mixture of bravado and revisionist personal history, standing by our choices even when they're questionable.  Do be do be do…..you know the song and the dance, I’ve taken you down this road before .

The Moral Mathematics of Small Decisions

We've developed complex formulas for ethical decision-making:

• The distance you're willing to walk to return a shopping trolley decreases exponentially with bad weather, tiredness, and whining children in tow.

• The obligation to hold a door open exists in direct proportion to how far away the other person is, creating the awkward "too close to let it close, too far to avoid making them hurry" zone.

• The acceptability of pilfering office supplies correlates precisely with how poorly you feel you're being compensated.   And whether little Johnny urgently needs something for his art project and you forgot to nip out to get it at lunchtime.

Cultivating Everyday Decency (When It's Not Too Inconvenient)

Despite our moral shortcomings, most of us genuinely want to be good people. We just want it to be easy, convenient, and preferably to come with external validation. And therein lies the challenge, to our behaviour and sense of self.

Perhaps true everyday morality isn't about being perfect, it's about being slightly better than we were yesterday. It's recognizing our own absurd rationalisations, laughing at them, and occasionally choosing the harder right over the easier wrong.

Because while none of us may save the world, we might just make someone's day a little better by returning our shopping trolley, actually listening when they speak, or resisting the urge to reply-all. And in this morally messy world, maybe that's a heroic start.

Conclusion: Moral of the Story

If there's a takeaway from all this, it's that we're all moral works-in-progress, navigating a world where the right thing isn't always clear or convenient. So be kind to yourself when you fail, be honest about your motivations, and maybe, just maybe, return your shopping trolley or buy the Big Issue, even when no one's watching and there’s no chance of posting a moral selfie.

That's the real moral high ground. That, and not talking during movies. Or taking the desk I booked in the office.  Some sins are truly unforgivable and you are headed for one of those circles of hell.  You know who you are.

As Montaigne wisely noted, "The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness." Perhaps laughing at our own moral foibles is the first step toward improving them. Or at least, that's what I tell myself to feel better about my own ethical shortcuts. And if you're reading this and thinking, "Did a human actually write this or was it AI-generated?”.  Well, that's just another modern moral grey area to navigate.   Do be do be do…….

Steve Robson is a lapsed academic, sometime transaction banker and existential son who spends his time between Canary Wharf towers, arthouse cinemas and French cafes. A true believer that the unexamined life is not worth living and living proof that there is never an angst too far, he somehow manages to believe in nothing aside from a Camus inspired philosophy of human salvation and love, his hero’s passion for the beauty of an indifferent earth and more personally the élan and elegance of the Roger Federer backhand