Black, White & Grey

Ever heard the cliché “Nothing in this world is black or white. It’s all shades of grey…”?

White is supposed to mean good. Black is associated with bad. And grey is for those who vacillate between good & bad depending on the circumstances.

Good & bad are relative terms. All of those whom we can categorize under “bad” will have a perfect explanation for being so. Even a heinous crime as a murder might have a very genuine justification in the motive of the murderer. The act is fair in the animal world, where the question is of survival. Unfortunately mankind is bound by a rule book that bifurcates good from bad.

A good deed done with a just motive may prove to be a disaster for others. Exposing a scandal will be viewed as a bad act by the guilty, so much that they are willing to impart a punishment as severe as death.

The above examples might sound crazy, more like extreme. But if you remove the element of morality it perfectly fits the logic of relativity. Morality is not a ubiquitous phenomenon. As mentioned earlier, apart from the law book, there is no other entity judging action based on morality. (We will avoid wandering into the world of Heaven & Judgement day as nobody has been there & returned to narrate a first-hand account of what exactly happens) And as we know some laws can be bent & others broken. Anyways the so called long-hands-of-the-law have limitations in reach.

Of course, there is one more obscure body which has a say in a person performing “black” or “white” deeds – the conscience. But then the conscience is something which is contextual – that inner voice is so volatile that it keeps shifting stands depending on the external stimulus. One’s conscience may not be sharp enough to be capable of making a person uphold his principles…

Now then, who falls in the category of grey?

The people who do not have a stand. Those who wear masks. The ones who commit a crime & then try to hide the deed. Or the ones who do good in order to earn brownie points in the eyes of people, but when given an opportunity don’t fail to capitalize on their shortcomings.

Thus when conscience is unreliable & morality is not universally accepted, the real distinction of black, white & grey can be made only on the basis of Integrity. This simply means taking full responsibility of your deed or action. If you have done something, be it good or bad, & you are not comfortable with people pointing fingers at you, it is a clear indication that you lacked integrity in whatever you did. When the Taliban takes ownership of bomb blast, it simply speaks of their integrity – they stand by what they believe. Please note that we are not diluting the concept here by bringing in morality; which may take the discussion into a totally different avenue of good & bad.

When you start inculcating integrity in your life, you automatically refrain from doing things which may put you in an awkward situation sometime in the distant future. In short, it will empower you to deal with the things in a much better way than just going with the herd mentality or giving in to the trick of the mind or hormones - some of the poor victims we tend to put the blame on for our misdeeds.