Moral blindness is where you do not face up to the wrong you do. You are mostly just fooling yourself – everyone else sees you for the scumbag you are, whether they say it to your face or not. Meanwhile, you are doing nothing to set things right – either with those you have wronged or within yourself.
Moral blindness is important for telling if someone is guilty, lying or truly sorry. It is also an important part of racism and other abusive patterns of behaviour. It is common in people whose self-image is so fragile that admitting to themselves they did something evil would threaten their very being – which in turn makes them more evil, not less.
Signs that someone is morally blind:
- They make it about intentions. This moves attention away from the harm done to whatever was in their heads when they did it. Which is great for them because there is no way you can know what they were truly thinking – though nine times out of ten it is not hard to guess.
- They blame the victim. Common for rapists, wife beaters, racists and institutions.
- They make it about the accuser. Note that this is different than getting angry at the accuser. Anyone falsely accused would do that. But what the morally blind do is move attention away from the wrong done.
- They say everyone does it. As if they are eight years old, as if that makes it right. Some use this as a cheap excuse, but unfortunately some do truly believe in it.
- They point out that someone else did the same thing or something worse. The Arab Trader argument. Or: What Would Genghis Do?
- They point out all the good things they have done. Common but sickening. Think Joe Paterno.
- They point out how the victim benefits. Like Africa from Western colonization or Black Americans from Western slavery (“Go back to Africa!”).
- They distance themselves from the wrong done.
- They deny they benefited.
- They say it was an accident or blame circumstances.
- They play it down.
- They change the subject.
- They tell you to get over it, to move on.
- They want something for changing. Meaning they do not understand (or care) that what they did was wrong.
The morally blind do have some behaviours in common with the falsely accused, like disputing the facts. I did not list those. The beauty of this list is that they give away the person’s feelings of guilt since there is no reason for the falsely accused to use any of them.
Field study: Talk to a White American about slavery. You would think they would just condemn it no uncertain terms but many do not. Instead they do many of the things listed above. While no white person alive took part in American slavery, nearly all of them benefit from it in some form. That puts them in the position of a Mafia boss’s daughter. Deep down they know this since otherwise there would be no need to be morally blind.