An Aspie's Guide to Morality

Morality is a funny old beast, and certainly not something that's easy to summarize. I'd like to use an example from a House episode I just watched to help make some interesting points. First, the moral dilemma. An 18 year old kid has to raise his 11 year old sister and 8 year old brother after their parents die. It is revealed he has a genetic disorder that has destroyed his immune system, leaving him unable to care for the kids. His only hope is a bone marrow transplant from his younger brother, which he refuses to have on the grounds that his brother isn't old enough to make an informed decision. However, House with his trademark wisdom convinces the kid to admit he's only refusing the surgery because he's sick of dealing with the kids. Foreman rags on the kid for abandoning his siblings and says the kid is going to regret his decision for the rest of his life. There are two moral dilemmas here. The first is the most obvious, keep the kids and raise them, or pussy out. Then there is the second, less obvious. Is keeping the kids really best for them? Would they be better with the child services, or with their under-paid, over-worked brother? As with the best moral dilemmas, there really isn't a best answer. It depends whether you value biology and family, over taking a chance that the kids might be better off being raised by strangers. Personally, I think the kid made the right choice. Personally, I've never really been one for biological connections. I've been brought up to rely on and enjoy the traditional family aesthetics, but this is something that's been taught to me, not something that I was born with. Not only that, but the kid is barely making enough to support himself, let alone two others. Yes, it might sound selfish, but why should someone have to throw away everything because of some random bad hand dealt to them by fate? They often saying doing good is hard but personally rewarding, whilst doing "evil" is easy and fiscally rewarding, but makes you unable to sleep at night. But at the end of the day, morals is an imaginary construct. It is something taught or learnt, it is not a biological imperative. We are not born with a moral compass, or an understanding of right and wrong. It's why crime exists, why people can murder and rape and send others to war for stupid, made-up reasons like invisible weapons or non-existent overly-racist omnipotent sentient beings. Our morals come from our friends, or family. They come from our teachers and bosses. But at the end of the day, somewhere at the very beginning, the concept of right and wrong, of absolute good and evil was invented but a single individual. So perhaps the oldest, most controversial moral decision is - is it morally correct for one person to decide what is right and wrong for everyone? Huh, I guess I've stumbled onto one of those impossible questions. Well, this whole article has just gone nowhere. I've written myself into a black hole. There's no escape.

Shit.