Grounding my Moral Compass

I am privileged enough to have travelled to quite a lot of places in the world - first with my parents, then through school exchanges and later on my own. Most of them are part of the developing world, the ‘global south’ (mostly in Africa and Asia). Travelling (and I mean the local-means-of-transport-type travelling) has always felt very 'real' to me; it puts me into a very particular state of mind - the words I'd use to describe it are authentic, pure, grounded, immersed, flow.

Interacting with the locals; spending hours with them - among them - in the same cramped, old bus; visiting their schools, their markets, their farms and fields... it creates in me a sense similar to the one I got from your message.

There is something straightforward about seeing this - disfavorable life circumstances, as well as our shared, nacked human-ness in all of this. It feels straightforward because 'my moral compass knows exactly what to care about'. I can't help but be filled with compassion for the world.

I've learnt to take this compassion further - extrapolating it to deeply caring about the long-term future. I think a lot of the 'why' and 'how' of my caring for the long-term future is rooted in these very experiences.

I believe there is something good about regularly reminding myself of these experiences. Something healthy about the grounding it gives me. Although it comes with certain costs.

One is the risk of bias - for evolution hasn't shaped us to be effective altruists, nor to seek truth. This is deeply worrisome to me.

The other cost is the Weltschmerz that comes with it. Parts of me have a strong narrative around wanting to learn to sit with this (and other) pain. For its sobering effects. For you can only navigate the territory, if you have a dam good map. And you can only get a dam good map if you don't close my eyes to Reality. Even if Reality is painful at times.

Nonetheless, it sometimes feels like an incredibly difficult stretch: How can I know I do the right thing? There are so many ways we can be mislead. Emotions (left on their own) can do it. But so can the warm comfort of intellectual inquiry (if sought after purely for the sake of intellectual inquiry, or for reasons of status, even). We need to guard ourselves against these pitfalls.

But that's only a lesser part of the difficulty.

There also is the deep-rooted epistemic uncertainty about cause and effect, about the ultimate gears governing the universe. And my/our role in its unfolding.

All of this leaves me confused and torn.

How, the hell, are we supposed to know?

And, dam, is it important to know! For we live in a world where it is the consequences that count. Where nobody is going to buy you anything from your good intentions.