The duality of man is something I often find myself thinking about when I consider humanity in its entirety as simply one large social construct - the idea that there is good and there is bad is agreed upon, and these concepts are recognised through law, and therefore the government.
It is odd to think that these ideas we once created to reprimand or validate the actions that we commit are ingrained into our legal system, our economy - really, they can be found in everything that we have created for ourselves.
The morality that we concern ourselves with in the everyday seem to go unquestioned in terms of social rules - and those that do question them, or at the very least refuse to follow them, are penalised by witnesses.
But what do we gain from morality? Aside from a code of conduct to follow, which simplifies and reduces the effort of functioning adequately as a society, is there anything more to morality than the simple criticism of human instinct?
Our minds have been shown to correctly identify the faces of the angry faster than the happy. We process negative words like ‘war’ and ‘crime’ at a greater pace than words with more positive connotations. Our brains have evolved and been trained to recognise the negative, and it is suggestable that this is the product of a morality - which highlights the negatives of human behaviour.
I do not suggest that the violent and the unjust are things which can be ignored by humanity as an entirety - but surely a moral code which we all follow should be laced with the motivation to do good as well as the magnification of rooted evil?
Reconstructing the ethically ideal needs to be done with the ideals of rejecting the repugnant and honouring the fundamental good of humanity. The duality of man must be reflected in dual responsibility - to both reject that which is harmful to humanity, but also to praise and strive for the vision of society in which these acts are not only rejected but eradicated.
