I had become a murderer.
One could probably argue that my first kill, the assassin who was trying to kill me, was self-defense. Taking out the Miami mobsters that were trying to kill me in that warehouse probably was not self-defense, for at that point I was well-aware of and quite comfortable with my immortality, but on the other hand I could call it an instinctive reaction to those who meant me and those close to me immediate harm. My subsequent elimination of much of the rest of that mob world-wide wasn’t even intentional – that was the moment I learned I even had that ability. And, of course, killing myself, Joyce, Gabriella, all the people on the bridge, and the Mayfair employee didn’t count as we all came back.
But killing Michael was different. Very different.
I chose to kill him, deliberately – I could not argue that my self-control had snapped.
One could reasonably argue that while the man had done terrible things, his ability to continue to do them was already at an end, having been publicly outed. Oh, I could pretend that I killed him to make sure he could never again harm anyone else, but I had to admit that the likely scenario if I hadn’t killed him was that he would have been taken into custody, charged with crimes, and probably sent to jail for a very long time. When I entered his office, he knew his time as a free citizen was over, I’m sure.
There were two reasons why I had to murder Michael, and two reasons alone.
I demanded a promise from him that no matter what, he wouldn’t make the same choices again. Why did I make that demand, since I already knew that if I let him live he would spend most of the rest of his life in jail unable to hurt anyone?
Because I wanted him to change. I demanded it. My requirement for those who have done evil was that they convince me that they were abandoning in their heart those ways. And that is why he wouldn’t give in. My demand of Archangel – Michael – was that he live as the kind of person I wanted him to be, regardless of his beliefs, which I found repugnant.
When he called me a bully, he was not wrong. I threatened to murder him for not agreeing to behave the way I demanded, and when he refused to comply, I made good on my threat. That’s the truth.
And there’s another reason I chose to murder this man.
I was committed to making the world a better place, and in order to do that sooner or later I was going to have to coerce and influence a planetful of people. If they saw I was too hesitant or squeamish to hold people accountable for disobedience, then more people would defy me – and then I would have to kill them too.
That’s why it was all or nothing. If I wasn’t willing to see this through all the way, if I wasn’t willing to embrace completely my capacity to dictate to humanity what they were and were not allowed to do, then I shouldn’t try to do it at all – I should instead “retire” and stop getting involved, letting the planet continue to do what it was doing.
But if I was going to become the Arbiter of Life and Death utterly and for real, telling people what they must and must not do, then anything I did that emboldened more people to resist me would mean eventually ending more lives.
I had an ongoing responsibility to never make choices that would in the short-term save some lives, but in the long-term cost so many more.
Murdering Michael made a clear point and, I was pretty sure, would prevent me having to make the same point as many times as I would have needed to if I had let him live.
As the Arbiter, I had to punish defiance of my orders with swift death. Doing anything else meant murdering a lot more people later – or giving up completely and making all the murders I had already done pointless.
So I was a cold-blooded killer who had chosen thoughtfully to end a harmless man’s life because he defied me, and because I needed to make a clear example of him.
I was a murderer.
Sigh.
I can imagine a hypothetical interviewer going for the jugular: “I understand how murdering this man was in line with your goals, but it’s just wrong. What gives you the right to electively kill anyone? Or do you not believe in right and wrong, sir?”
Well, that’s what an interviewer would have asked me if I hadn’t just finished scaring the world shitless. And it’s a valid question that I am obligated to answer.
There are two things I have known for a very long time, long before getting powers. The first is the truth about morality and right and wrong.
Figuring out what you believe is right or wrong is simple: what choices, especially made by others, disquiet you? Or upset you? Or outrage you? These demonstrate your beliefs of what is moral and what is not.
Morality serves two related purposes; it guides us in making our decisions, and more frequently it is invoked when we wish others to modify their behavior. Morality is expressed as an untethered ought. (A tethered ought is like the sentence “If you want to have more money, you ought to either spend less or get more, or both.” This sentence is not an opinion but a fact, since the “ought” is tethered to the if-clause. However, saying that “You ought to spend less money or get more money or both” with no if-clause is an untethered ought and is an opinion, not a fact.)
So if I express a statement of morality like “one ought to always tell the truth”, this statement has two uses – to be employed by myself to guide my own actions, or it can directed at others to attempt to influence theirs. Pushing one’s moral position on oneself is not going to be resisted for obvious reasons, but pushing it on others may very well be.
Which is why we have the central moral question: are there any (untethered) morals that one can prove that others ought to follow, whether they want to or not?
But the source of all morality is how we feel about things. If someone throwing litter from their car window outrages us, that becomes a part of our morality – but without the litterbug sharing the same sentiment (which they obviously do not) there is simply no way to convince them that not littering is their moral duty.
So yes, all morality is made up – but does this mean that our morals don’t matter?