It’s been a while since I’ve really dug into ethics, so it’s time to do it again. At its core, ethics and morality are not a case of black and white, it’s shades of gray. I have a few more examples I’ll get into in over the next week or so, but today we’re going to establish it with one example, killing other human beings.

Over the last few millenia where most people draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable killing has changed, a lot. For the longest time it was perfectly acceptable to kill any human being who was not a member of your family and a family member in the case of some grievous offense. As families merged into clans and tribes, the line between who was protected from being killed without cause expanded too. This expansion has continued to those of your nation-state, race, and eventually to everyone in the species.

Even today, most people would agree that killing someone in self defense is justified, so I’m not even going to bother with that one.

Most people would also agree that killing the enemy in a war is justified. Due to the hierarchical structure of the military the ethical obligation for killing would fall to the officers who gave the order and ultimately the responsibility falls to the politicians who made the decision to go to war in the first place. This assignment of responsibility is clearly justified in a time when there’s a draft, but it’s a little murkier for an all volunteer military. If you volunteer for an unjust war, wouldn’t you share responsibility for your actions with those who then sent you to war? To be clear, I am not thinking specifically about any wars, just the principle of it.

When it comes to civilians killing other civilians, even in our legal system there is a recognition of several shades of gray. There is a distinction between premeditated murder, negligence resulting in someones death, and a complete accident where negligence wasn’t involved. Not only is there a difference in the guilt the person who caused the death should feel, but there will be a difference in the amount of anger the victim’s family will feel and a difference in the legal consequences, if any.

Lot’s of people don’t like shades of gray, they prefer a clean cut right and wrong. In a way that’s what the definitions of murder and manslaughter are all about. It’s a way to allow concrete thinking people to view the gray areas of killing other people as black and white. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. The law has created different crimes, such as murder, criminally negligent homicide, and manslaughter, but even within each of those there are degrees. The law clearly recognizes the many shades of gray.

The different factors that go into play was whether the ends (death) were intentional or not, whether the means (such as a blow to the head) were intentional or not, and whether the actions that resulted in the death could have been avoided or not. I’ll be honest, writing about killing in terms of gray areas doesn’t feel all that good, but the point is important.

If you want black and white, then the only black is premeditated murder and the only white is not killing someone. Everything else is shades of gray.

In upcoming poses in this series we’ll be looking at sex, dietary choices, and whether or not the shades of gray are universal.