Too Little Remorse and Too Much Remorse - Comment on the callousness of morality

Actually written JUNE 10, 2023

I have stressed my worry that moralism can insulate us from the remorse we might feel from harming others, thus allowing us to harm others all the more.

One might get the idea that I oppose anything that would insulate us from remorse. This is not so.

There’s a point beyond which the intensity of remorse hinders our ability to relieve suffering.

If a doctor had to perform surgery without anesthesia to save your life, would you want the doctor to be so overwhelmed by remorse over the pain they inflict upon you during that surgery that they cannot focus on the job?

If a police officer or soldier had to save your life by killing someone who was about to deliberately kill you, would you want that cop or soldier to be so overcome with remorse for having preemptively killed the killer that they could not focus on that task?

Remorse can destroy the discipline needed to relieve or prevent greater suffering, much in the same way my own chronic sadness destroys the discipline I need to relieve or prevent my own suffering.

So I’m not totally pro-remorse. I’m pro-remorse when it reduces suffering, and anti-remorse when it allows or causes more suffering.

I rather wish we humans could control our remorse as needed for maximal relief of suffering with a kind of “volume knob”. Or, while I’m fantasizing here, that we could feel intense remorse without getting distracted from whatever we need to do to relieve suffering.

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