During an interview with New York Times reporters, President Trump responded to a question about whether there were any limits on his power. He said there was one thing that constrained him. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
What does it mean to say that you are restrained solely by your own morality, by your own mind?
The conscience is often described as an inner voice telling us what to do when others may be opposed. A moral compass is that which distinguishes between right and wrong, good and bad. Our conscience, our moral compass, sets the groundwork for doing the right thing.
This begs the question, though. What are the principles that guide us, and to whom are they of value? A conscience or moral compass can be a useful guide, but it can also be mistaken, misinformed or delusional. Inner voices can lead disturbed minds to murder and a faulty compass can point in the wrong direction.
Not everyone’s conscience or moral compass is as valid (good) as any other. While some consciences are aligned with the values that are embedded in religions and in the philosophies of ethical thinkers everywhere, such as the importance of compassion, gratitude and justice, others are not. A person who is indifferent to others or is cruel or lacks a sense of reciprocity or acts unfairly doesn’t have a moral compass worth honoring. How a person’s conscience is enacted in any given situation may vary, for example due to mitigating circumstances, conflicts in values or an ambiguous context, but the fundamental framework of ethics doesn’t alter.
If the stakes of our actions are low, we can rely upon ourselves and no one else to decide, but when the consequences are significant, such as potentially harming others, then checking our moral compass with others whose judgment we respect, who may have thought longer and harder than we or who aren’t biased, is vitally important.
Making important decisions based on our own morality alone is a violation of another universal ethical value, namely, humility.