There's a difference, of course, but it's not one most of us think about much. A moral person is wise and compassionate; a moralistic person is a judgmental prig. The crux of the difference lies in that being moral requires an ability to suss out what the right thing to do is–it's a matter of conscience, and conscience is one of those things that gets stronger the more you use it. Being moralistic involves no sussing–it's simplistic indictment-by-superego.
Superego is a Freudian term, and despite Freud's descendancy, it's one that everyone should be familiar with. It's essentially the cultural download that we receive when we are children–but also later in life when we learn the codes of any group we join. We absorb these codes mostly unconsciously, and the code determines what attitudes and behaviors are ideal, and which are vicious. To the degree that they unconsciously shape our judgments about what is right and wrong, we are moralistic.
So there is social utility in moralism insofar as it establishes ground rules for people to be nice and get along in any group, but the tyranny of the superego has very little to do with being truly good, because it is not at all acquainted with wisdom and compassion. People who are unconsciously in thrall to their superegos repress the parts of own psyches that the superego has programmed them to see as vicious, and this act of repression usually results in projecting what is repressed in oneself onto others in a way that tends to demonize them. The more severe the repression, the more violent the negative judgment of others. Call it Beam-in-the-Eye Syndrome. It's been long understood. It's why we are instructed by the gospels not to judge.
Why should we not judge? Because the guilty are in no position to judge the guilty. "But I'm not guilty", you say to yourself–"I did nothing wrong; that other guy did, I faithfully follow the code, and anybody who transgresses must be punished." But what you mean to say is that this transgressor has not been able to keep the darker side of his psyche repressed as effectively as you, and your punishment is simply your method for getting that darkness stuffed back into the psychic basement where it should be kept under lock and key. That's what you've been able to do so well, and so everybody should live a righteously repressed life just as you have been able to do. This results in whited-sepulcher syndrome–clean and pure on the outside, but a rotting mass of fetid soul death inside.
Most people think that from a social utility point of view it's better to be a moralistic prig than to be a monster, but they are two sides of the same coin. Monsters are people who have been captured by–or who have surrendered to–the dark, amoral, chaotic forces within all of us that live out of sight beneath the line of self-awareness. In extreme cases monsters are destructive, ruthless, violent predators. A moralistic prig is someone who thinks that the dark, amoral forces in us only live in other people, and in extreme cases they are ruthless, violent, purity-obsessed inquisitors who love a good witch hunt.
There's a difference between confronting somebody about his or her destructive behavior or attitudes, and demonizing him or her for them. Monsters must be confronted and contained, but moralistic prigs need to be confronted and contained, too. Both are in thrall to the power of the dark unconscious. If we are in thrall to the dark unconscious and we are incapable of confronting it and taming it ourselves, we need an intervention. And if the intervention does not succeed, then we need to be ostracized. A moralistic prig skips the intervention and moves directly to ostracize. But the incorrigibly un-self-aware prig is in just as much need of being ostracized when his judgments have a destructive, repressive effect on other people.
Most of us, if we are human at all, have done monstrous things at one time or another in our lives, and most normal people feel ashamed to have behaved so. But we have also made cruel, unfair judgments about other people, too. And we should feel equal shame for that. Shame has its social utility, but being well behaved has nothing to do with being truly good. There is little benefit to the individual or to society if shame leads us to shove this moment of transgression back into the psychic basement in hopes that it was an aberration. It's not aberrant; it's unrepressed, and just to repress it again is no cure. The more severely repressed, the more it grows in power and is likely to explode again in another monstrous act. And one of the most monstrous things we can do is see our own monster in someone else rather than to own it and make the effort to domesticate it. You can't do that if it's repressed–pushed into a basement corner out of sight.
Sitting Bull is reputed to say “Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.” I"m not sure starving the mean dog is the best approach, but at least it is acknowledged. The beginning of real moral development is recognizing that the mean dog is real, that he's in each one of us, and that it's ok, kind of. It's ok in the sense that its presence in our soul makes us human, but it's not ok to let the dark dog run wild. And it's equally not ok–maybe worse–if you pretend you don't have a dark dog and that only certain categories of people do because they have not repressed their dark dog in the same way you have.
The dark dog is Prospero's Caliban, and the good dog is Ariel. Caliban symbolizes the part of each of our souls that needs first to come out into the open where he can be disciplined and whose energies can at some point be reintegrated at a higher level. Until then he controls us more than we control him. Ariel is the part of us that knows and seeks to serve the Good. He also needs to be brought out into the open, i.e., into our conscious awareness. Prospero achieves this first in his liberating him from the witch Sycorax's spell so that he can be put to work. I see him as the symbol of the awakened conscience, and until awakened this part of ourselves is unable to help us to do any real good in the world. It, like Ariel, serves us but only respects us if we put it to good use. If Prospero’s goal was not to effect a work of creative mercy in the end, then Ariel’s service would have contradicted his fundamental nature.
There's a story I heard years ago, and I'm not sure I have the details quite right. But it involved two Christian monks who lived in a monastic community in the Egyptian wilderness. They had to go into Alexandria on monastery business, and one thing led to another and the next thing they are at an orgy having a wild, debauched evening. The next morning the two wake up naked and hung over, and they both feel deeply ashamed. One of the monks is so horrified at learning that he had this debauchee–this dark dog–hidden within himself that he thought himself unworthy to continue in his monastic vocation. He never went back to the monastery but stayed instead in Alexandria, surrendered to the dark dog, and drank himself to his death within a few years. The other monk went back to the monastery, humbly confessed his transgression to the abbot, lived a long life, and developed a reputation for wisdom and compassion that drew many to him for advice.
Each of us has an inner dark dog; each of us needs to confront and tame it. And we're not able to do much good in the world until we do. History is full of moralistic prigs–inquisitors and Robespierres–who have destroyed the lives of so many people thinking they had God or Justice on their side. They didn't. The guilty are not in a position to judge the guilt of others until first they've owned their own guilt and have found a way to look at everyone else with some degree of wisdom and compassion.
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