Civic Essay 1: After "Whatever Is Not Forbidden by Law Is Permitted"
Note: This article is intended to challenge the moral bottom line of contemporary Chinese society. Please read at your own discretion.
Hot events in the field of public opinion often eventually turn into public trials of private morality. Yet noise based on individuals' subjective standards is doomed to be a meaningless zero-sum game. Is there a more rational path to resolution?
The premise of discussing morality is to define the scale of measurement. If mental activity is counted as part of measuring moral level, then it becomes impossible to judge whether anyone in the world is moral, because we can only infer another person's psychology through their behavior and words, and can never know what they truly think. Therefore, effective moral examination can only be based on objective behavior, not subjective mental activity: so-called "judge by deeds, not by hearts."
Some may object: whether in law or moral judgment, how could one possibly abandon consideration of subjective motives? The same act resulting in death is characterized entirely differently depending on whether it is intentional or negligent. Is it not mechanical and unrealistic to forcibly strip away subjective intent and look only at external behavior?
This objection ignores that, in judicial practice, the determination of subjective intent is still essentially inferred from objective behavior. Even when the law considers subjective intent, it does not rely on reading minds out of thin air, but on a whole set of objective evidence such as surveillance video and behavior (even determinations of mental illness have objective standards such as medical tests). Moral judgment likewise cannot rely on guesswork; it must speak through objective evidence. For example, determining emotional infidelity requires solid evidence such as chat records, and cannot be based merely on the other person's guilty-looking eyes. Besides, is it appropriate to compare criminal cases with severe social impact to moral violations? Even within the law itself, ordinary violations are often result-based: running a red light is punished the same whether intentional or not. Morality, of course, cannot be treated as identical to criminal law either.
As long as external behavior is controlled and proper, saying one thing while thinking another should not be judged immoral. As long as external behavior still meets one's own moral requirements, one should not blame oneself no matter how dark one's inner thoughts may be. But if one acts in violation of one's own moral principles, then deep reflection is indeed necessary.
If this is true for self-examination, is it also true when examining others? The unavoidable reality is that moral standards are highly subjective. Take "choosing to conceal a serious illness from a loved one" as an example: some see it as a well-intentioned lie, while others see it as deprivation of the right to know. The same objective event can form self-consistent logical loops from different positions. Since standards differ from person to person, making moral determinations about other individuals in public space is essentially a self-righteous transgression. Its subtext is nothing more than: "Since I can do it (and some people cannot even do it themselves), it is reasonable to measure others by the moral requirements I impose on myself."
Is it really reasonable? Taking the most controversial issue, sexual morality, as an example: an individual may absolutely regard their own moral bottom line as "higher," refuse hookups and one-night stands, and screen partners strictly. But that is merely inward self-restraint. If, in public, they harshly condemn other individuals (such as celebrities) for failing to meet their own private moral bottom line, this may look righteous, but is in fact absurd in the extreme.
Suppose a person "Ta" who has had premarital sex with an official partner publicly and solemnly evaluates another person with hookup experience as "dirty" and "out of control." Then Ta is admitting that it would be reasonable for someone more conservative than Ta to make the same moral judgment about Ta in public on the grounds that Ta has had premarital sex. Ta may be able to accept the existence of conservative statements such as "I think premarital sex is immoral," as long as Ta can disagree with them; but Ta obviously would not want to be singled out as an individual and subjected to moral condemnation such as "Ta is very immoral." Following this logic step by step, no individual should proudly claim to be a moral model and believe they will never become the target of moral witch-hunting. If moral trials against individuals are allowed to develop unchecked, some animal-rights advocates may put you on Xiaohongshu for moral judgment after you step on a cockroach. Put yourself in others' shoes: only by reaching some kind of consensus can every individual in society avoid worrying that one day they will sink into the mire of moral witch-hunting.
At this point, someone may ask: when I criticize others for conducting moral trials and use words such as "transgression" and "absurd," even specifically mentioning "some animal-rights advocates," am I not also using my own moral standards to conduct another moral trial? This needs to be clarified: this article has never opposed abstract criticism of "immoral group behavior"; it opposes public characterization of "specific individuals."
Since moral evaluation is so subjective, does society have any recognized "absolute immorality"?
The answer is yes, such as random killing or acts that seriously disrupt social order. But note that when a certain behavior triggers overwhelming resistance from all society, it leaves the realm of "morality" and should instead be handled by law. In fact, modern society has long had the consensus that "whatever is not forbidden by law is permitted." Article 5 of the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen clearly states: "The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Nothing that is not forbidden by law may be prevented, and no one may be forced to do what the law does not require."
Some will say that "whatever is not forbidden by law is permitted" is a freedom granted to citizens in jurisprudence; if even actions not prohibited by law (such as cutting in line or betraying trust) cannot be condemned, will society's trust mechanism not collapse? But this is a misunderstanding. I am not forbidding condemnation of actions such as "cutting in line" or "betraying trust." Rather, society should reach a consensus: bottomless public attacks on the "individuals" who commit such acts are unreasonable. Condemning behavior can maintain public order and good customs, but judging individuals may brew tragedies far beyond the harm of the behavior itself. For instance, people subjected to cyberviolence often commit suicide because they cannot bear the humiliation; in essence, these are one group murder after another.
"Whatever is not forbidden by law is permitted" has a long history, and is a social consensus that emerged as early as the Industrial Revolution. Going further, in the twenty-first century modern society should reach the following consensus in order to clarify the boundary of moral evaluation:
Before the individual, morality can only ever be a mirror for inward examination, and its only legitimate domain is self-restraint. Toward other individuals, the only reasonable tool for moral evaluation is the law. Under such a consensus, when evaluating other individuals, one should no longer think in terms of "whether someone is moral." Simply use "legal/illegal" instead of "moral/immoral."
Once society reaches a consensus denying the reasonableness of morally judging other individuals' behavior, do individuals still have the freedom to express their own moral standards and pursuits in public, and to criticize behaviors they regard as immoral? Of course they do; they simply need to be careful with wording. After society reaches such a consensus, if one wants to discuss and express moral ideas, one should not use specific individuals as positive or negative examples, but should instead describe a class of behavior or a group abstractly. For hot events that happen precisely to individuals, moral judgment should target behavior and introduce abstract discussion of causes and systems, while trying to avoid discussing the individuals themselves.
Some may think that behavior is carried out by specific people, and that asking the public, when facing a specific egregious event, to strip away the parties involved and engage only in abstract systematic discussion is an anti-human bookish fantasy. Moreover, in the internet media environment, such desubjectified discussion seems extremely difficult to practice. However, the subtext of this objection is nothing more than "the masses = a mob," and it essentially hides an elitist arrogance. The public currently indeed cannot reach rational consensus in some events, but this precisely shows that there is still much room for improvement. Rationality is by no means a mode of thinking possessed only by a small number of elites. A public that has received higher education and philosophical education on a large scale is entirely capable of rationally analyzing social events, criticizing behavior rather than individuals, and understanding that the criterion for punishing egregious behavior should be appeal to law rather than imposing private moral punishment. Taking a step back, we must never abandon the call for abstract discussion and rational thought merely because practice is difficult; otherwise we put the cart before the horse. The public's civic consciousness should be gradually cultivated through long-term modern education, such as campus debates and salon activities, rather than compromising with real-world frenzy and giving up on building a modern civilized consensus.
When individuals try to interfere with others' freedom through private moral standards, they are excessively expanding the boundaries of power. If society tolerates public trials based on private morality, it will inevitably slide toward the tyranny of the majority. If a society generally considers a certain behavior (such as sex work) extremely vile and believes it should be rejected by all society, yet existing local law has not punished it, the rational modern solution is absolutely not to launch moral witch-hunts against specific sex workers in the public-opinion field. The only reasonable, decent, and effective path is to improve the legislative process through proposals, appeals, and voting, formally bringing it into the scope of legal prohibition.
When encountering others' behavior that does not conform to private morality, before formal legislation, one must respect the social consensus that "whatever is not forbidden by law is permitted." After formal legislation, state coercive organs may sanction it according to legal procedure. At all times, crossing the boundary of law and conducting trials in the name of morality is a destruction of the modern civilized order and should not be tolerated by modern society.
--- Digression ---
I have tried to write this article rigorously, but it still has shortcomings: in communication studies, stories without "people" rarely attract attention. If the specific "bad person" is stripped away, discussions of "bad acts" often receive little interest; this is worth further discussion. At the same time, this article mainly emphasizes moral judgment directed at individuals and does not oppose violence directed at groups (regional discrimination, gender antagonism), but these are obviously unreasonable behaviors as well. Because of limited length, I may further consider or update this later. Other loopholes in this article are welcome to be criticized and pointed out.
Writing to this point, I remembered that in the essay "China: Gender Issues and Patriarchy 3 - Tethering-Monkey Studies", which I posted on WeChat Moments and on my personal website, I forgot to anonymize the social-media account in the accompanying image. Although I had no intention of morally judging the "tethering-monkey camp," but was instead evaluating its "fragility" and "stupidity," I still sincerely apologize to the owner of the individual account that was not blurred. At this moment, some strict readers may ask: "If judgment of an individual is a transgression, why is it reasonable to package a group of people together for negative evaluation (even using derogatory words)? Is the boundary between the two not very blurry?" In fact, there is a very large difference. Packaging a group of people together for negative evaluation both expresses one's viewpoint and leaves the opposing group room to rebut and contest it. When a fragile, specific individual is attacked by all society at once, the destructive pressure they bear is far greater than that borne by a collective (even a small collective of only a few people). The original intention of this article is to protect individuals from harm by group violence, not to prohibit all negative evaluations. On the contrary, I also advocate criticism and self-criticism, because only the exchange and collision of ideas can truly promote social progress. Based on this, this article does not oppose moral criticism of groups or classes of behavior; but when evaluating groups in public, whether or not it is moral evaluation, individual privacy should be protected. I deeply reflect on this and will update an anonymized version on my personal website before the end of today. Because WeChat's functions are too backward to allow modification, the WeChat Moments version has been taken down. In "China: Gender Issues and Patriarchy 2," the focus is on criticism of patriarchy, and criticism of Xiao as an individual occupies a relatively small portion (the last three paragraphs), but I should also reflect on it.
Law is enforced from the day it is promulgated; consensus takes effect from the moment it is established. Today I call on society to reach this consensus, and in the future I will pay extra attention and try to avoid criticizing other individuals' private lives in public. If my other public writings violate the consensus advocated in this article, I also sincerely ask readers to remind me to revise them.