Out walking the dog this morning I started thinking what I would do should I discover a wallet full of cash. I concluded that if the wallet had no form of ID then I'd have no qualms about pocketing the money for myself, whereas if it did I'd hand it in to the police. I don't think the quantity of hypothetical money would have made any difference.
Reflecting on this moral quandary it seems to me that morality is largely dependent on knowledge. As a species we actually find it perferable to live in a state of ignorance. Children are forgiven their indscretions more easily on the grounds that 'they don't know any better', but most of us would gladly change places with them, retreat back to Rousseau's primitivism. Callous as it may sound, the truth is that even friends don't really want to know about your problems, because once they are they're encumbered with a moral obligation to help in some way. Likewise, we find it easier to ignore the suffering of others when we don't know them. By that rationale you can see how citizens in Nazi Germany 'chose' to be ignorant about the holocaust.
Reflecting on this moral quandary it seems to me that morality is largely dependent on knowledge. As a species we actually find it perferable to live in a state of ignorance. Children are forgiven their indscretions more easily on the grounds that 'they don't know any better', but most of us would gladly change places with them, retreat back to Rousseau's primitivism. Callous as it may sound, the truth is that even friends don't really want to know about your problems, because once they are they're encumbered with a moral obligation to help in some way. Likewise, we find it easier to ignore the suffering of others when we don't know them. By that rationale you can see how citizens in Nazi Germany 'chose' to be ignorant about the holocaust.