FLEXIBILITY, Linson Thomas

Flexibility is used as an attribute of various types of systems. In the field of engineering systems design, it refers to designs that can adapt when external changes occur.

 Moral flexibility isn't uncommon for us to run into situations where we have to choose between "right" and "wrong". The very basis of the entire society is on the basis of categorizing a particular act in one of the mentioned classes. That is how we judge almost everything around us.

Sometimes when we hear disturbing news on the TV or read about it in papers, it makes us wonder "how could someone do that". Sitting in the comfort of our rooms we try to judge/analyze the situation based on the limited and ,often if not always, biased information presented to us in what appears to be a very detailed study. Moral flexibility is what you are experiencing when your judgement is very much situational.

Moral flexibility is also an expression of personal benefit. It puts you in a lighter more manageable position and allows you to "get away" with something that you could not where you a very principled person. It allows to you create "truth", "right" or atleast the illusion of it, your version of it. It is not a compromise...a compromise will keep you dissatisfied at the back of your mind. This is calm...you know you do it, you agree to do it and you don't complain about it. You can do because you choose to believe in things in a different way, you gather a new perspective and most importantly because , atleast for you, it solves the problem at hand.

For any proposed moral rule (e.g. don't kill, or don't steal), there appear to be exceptions. Killing in self-defense, or theft in order to feed one's starving family, are perhaps accepted. The dogmatic view that there are absolute moral rules therefore seems to be too simplistic; we should accept that morality varies depending on circumstances, that it is relative.

A natural response to this argument is to object that it rests on an oversimplification of morality. Yes, there are exceptions to the prohibitions on killing and stealing, but that does not show that there are no exceptionless moral laws; rather, it only shows that those particular laws have exceptions.

Suppose that an absolute prohibition on killing is proposed as a moral law: "Thou shalt not kill." The argument from flexibility objects to this proposal, observing that in certain situations, for example, self-defense, or war, or euthanasia, killing is morally acceptable. It is naive to think that there are any moral absolutes, it suggests; life is more complicated than that. To recognise this, we should become moral relativists, accepting that morality changes to fit the circumstances.