Whats even if moral when nothing is objective?

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:02]When I was younger, I thought the world made sense. Not perfectly, but like there was a logic to it.

[00:00:09]Good people were rewarded. Bad things were bad. Right was right.

[00:00:13]Then at some point I started actually pulling at the threads.

[00:00:18]And everything I thought was solid just kind of dissolved.

[00:00:22]And the uncomfortable truth is I don't think that's because I was wrong to pull. I think most people just never do.

[00:00:30]Here's a thought experiment I want you to save it.

[00:00:34]There's a man and he genuinely completely with zero doubt religiously believes that what he's doing is right. No rationalizing, no suppressing guilt. He's speaking to himself. He's being being real with himself. He's not lying. He feels the same moral weight that you feel when you see a child being harmed.

[00:00:56]That same pull, that same certainty that something must be done. Except what he's doing, we call it harm.

[00:01:04]So the question is is he wrong?

[00:01:07]And more importantly, how would you prove it?

[00:01:10]Most people's instinct is yes, obviously he's wrong. And I'm not going to tell you that instinct is worthless.

[00:01:18]But the moment you try to build that into a logical argument, you hit a wall.

[00:01:24]Because every attempt to ground moral morality objectively runs into the same problem. You have to assume something at the base. And whatever you assume, someone can ask why that?

[00:01:37]And divine, you know, command theory, Kant's categorical imperative, moral realism, they all eventually reach a point where they justification runs out.

[00:01:49]And you're just standing there having the same kind of conviction that with with the man with no floor beneath it.

[00:01:57]So, when people say like okay, but most people most humans agree, you know, across cultures, across time, there's a conventions, I mean conversions.

[00:02:07]Like don't murder, protect children kind of thing.

[00:02:11]And like doesn't that mean something?

[00:02:12]And it does mean something, it's not nothing, but it doesn't make it objective. If even if every single human being on this planet started believing something in common, that wouldn't make it true.

[00:02:25]Um I I love this quote.

[00:02:28]I read it somewhere. The The earth was flat in in everyone's mouth for centuries, didn't make it flat. So, like humans can't be standard of what's objectively right, because we are the very thing that needs evaluating.

[00:02:44]So, if consensus fails, if religion requires assumptions, if reason always reaches a bedrock, uh it cannot justify then what's actually left. Generally like three positions.

[00:02:58]One, moral uh moral facts exist independently of any mind.

[00:03:04]Like mathematical truths. 2 + 2 a equals 4 whether or not anyone exists to think it. Maybe gratuitous cruelty is wrong is the same kind of thing, you know, just true, full stop. The problem is we have no clear way to access those facts. No faculty of perceiving them the way we perceive the physical world.

[00:03:30]So, like two, morality is ultimately groundless, Nietzsche's uh position.

[00:03:37]We invented the concept and and pretending otherwise is a uh comfortable lie. This doesn't mean anything like goes, but it does like it means every moral framework is a human construction with no external anchor.

[00:03:55]Like most people I I I think they find this pretty terrifying, which is interesting in itself.

[00:04:02]And three is the question is malformed.

[00:04:06]Maybe asking what makes right things right assumes morality works like physics.

[00:04:13]There is always uh a further fact behind the fact. And maybe there isn't. Maybe gratuitous cruelty is wrong just is what those concepts mean when examined clearly. So like not to foundation just bedrock where the digging stops.

[00:04:32]None of three um none of this fully satisfied me and I think you should be suspicious of anyone of like for whom they do like if they are speaking in such high conviction like they're certain about uh especially of like questions about morality, I think they're just overselling them their points.

[00:04:54]Because here's what happens when you zoom out. Every war, every genocide, every crusade, every uh revolution uh like if you look at it at the core of it, two groups with points that sounds sound very convincing or like moral certainties colliding.

[00:05:12]And neither side from the inside felt like they are the villains. Like they felt like the necess- necessary force against what must not continue.

[00:05:24]And the inquisitive burning heretics felt the same moral gravity you felt protecting that child.

[00:05:33]Uh the revolutionary ex- uh exec- executing, you know, the um uh blue uh blue bloods um aristocrat felt the same.

[00:05:43]The colonizer civilizing, you know, the the America felt the same. Like history really isn't a story of evil people who knew what like who knew they were evil.

[00:05:55]It's just mostly a story of people with total conviction just acting.

[00:06:00]So, in a nutshell, that's what human's history is. Competing centuries for some certainties colliding.

[00:06:08]Um the stronger or more organized one winning temporarily.

[00:06:12]Then being challenged by the next certainty, which means what we call moral progress, abolishing slavery, human rights, might just be the current winning certainty, not actually closer to truth, just currently dominant one.

[00:06:30]Like I'll be honest with you. There was a point where I thought ideas could be solid. Like you find the right framework and you follow it for the rest of your life.

[00:06:41]And then I started actually thinking and within days whatever felt solid would dissolve. Like you find this idea, you grab it and you feel like it's going to work for the rest of your life and you see what we all know what what happens. Like motivation fades, you start kind of questioning the thing.

[00:07:01]And I'd have to start again because like that's uncomfortable more than more than uncomfortable, kind of like it's a specific kind of friction doing what you feel you should, progressing in ways you can uh track and still having that background noise of what if none of this means anything, you know? What if if this all readings uh efforts and trying to know the trying to seek for truth all comes to in vain, you know?

[00:07:34]All goes into vain. And I think that's actually an honest place to be. Like not because suffering is virtuous, it's not.

[00:07:43]Not because the alternative is building your life on something you haven't actually examined. Most people do that, I think. Like, it's they just join a certainty religious, ideology, social, like not because they've taste like they tested it, because it makes life feel worth it.

[00:08:01]And I like honestly, I get it. Society is require certainty, people require certainty.

[00:08:07]Even the idea of a nothing is certain is so itself uncertain.

[00:08:12]But what I've landed on conclusion, and I'm not saying this as as my answer, is like that feeling is prior to all of it.

[00:08:23]We feel then we describe. I think we I I've said this this before in one of my videos.

[00:08:29]Um then we build systems around the description. And then we make mistake.

[00:08:34]The uh we we I mean, we mistake the system for the foundation. But the outrage you feel when a child is harmed, that's not the conclusion of a logical argument. It just comes first.

[00:08:47]So, the argument comes first, trying to justify something that was already there.

[00:08:52]And maybe that's the most honest thing I can say about morality. Not that it's objectively grounded, not that it's relative and uh therefore meaningless, but that it lives in that feeling sense, that felt sense, which is real, like which is shared across almost all humans, which tracks something, even if we can't fully articulate that.

[00:09:17]Like, it wasn't about which boulder you're pushing, it was the feeling you carry while pushing it.

[00:09:24]Certainty is what gives people permission to do the worst things in history. Doubt, real honest doubt, might be the only thing that's ever slowed atrocity down. So, if you're sitting with that discomfort right now, if the world makes less sense than it did, that's not a failure. Like, that's not a bug. It's just a feature of this world.

[00:09:48]That's the work.

[00:09:54]I'll see you guys in the next one.

[00:09:57]Thank you for watching the video.