Ques­tions of moral­i­ty are often deeply sub­jec­tive. And yet, the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple would prob­a­bly con­sid­er them­selves to be gen­er­al­ly moral by their own stan­dards. We believe every­one can ben­e­fit from tools to help impart moral clarity.

Let’s assume that we want to build a fair and moral soci­ety that does not favor cer­tain groups at the expense of oth­ers. How can this be done when our under­stand­ing of fair­ness may vary so dras­ti­cal­ly? The “veil of igno­rance” as a con­cept has been dis­cussed for cen­turies, and more recent­ly revis­it­ed by philoso­pher John Rawls. The idea is laid out in a thought exper­i­ment, exam­in­ing the delib­er­a­tion of polit­i­cal deci­sions from behind a men­tal veil. Imag­ine a deci­sion-mak­er who oper­ates in com­plete igno­rance of their own rel­a­tive sta­tus with­in a prospec­tive future. The decision-maker’s own attributes—such as eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der, eco­nom­ic class, health —are com­plete unknowns to him or her. In this way, the deci­sion-mak­er could well find them­selves on either side of any rela­tion­ship with an ingrained imbal­ance of pow­er. Unless this par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual is a gam­bler, the the­o­ry upholds the expec­ta­tion that this deci­sion-mak­er would take great care to craft a tru­ly fair soci­ety, expunged of exploita­tion of any kind for fear of poten­tial­ly being the vic­tim of their own design.

The veil of igno­rance shares a cer­tain ele­ment at its core with the Gold­en Rule. Found in some form in count­less reli­gions through­out the cen­turies, the Gold­en Rule can be expressed: “do unto oth­ers as you would have them do unto you” or, in the neg­a­tive, “do not do unto oth­ers as you would not have them do unto you”. Both ideas rely upon the sense of self as the most effec­tive arbiter of moral action. If some­thing feels intu­itive­ly desir­able or unde­sir­able to us, we can assume that this is true for oth­ers as well. With this barom­e­ter to gauge right from wrong­do­ing in place, we can become less sus­cep­ti­ble to poten­tial­ly ruinous risk-taking.

As a thought exper­i­ment, the veil of igno­rance reveals the role of bias in deci­sion-mak­ing. In the real world, those with the pow­er to make major struc­tur­al deci­sions are like­ly the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of cer­tain struc­tur­al favor­a­bil­i­ty. Those who con­scious­ly prac­tice moral action are already geared toward the pur­suit of fair­ness. The veil of igno­rance would be most effec­tive as a way of redi­rect­ing the intu­ition of one who is nor­mal­ly inclined to act exclu­sive­ly in their own self-inter­est toward deci­sion-mak­ing that would be more equi­table for all who are impact­ed by the effects of that individual’s decisions.

Ulti­mate­ly, there is no short­cut to moral­i­ty. There is no set of hard and fast rules we can use to deter­mine what are the right things to do. Build­ing a new vision for the future requires that we ven­ture into unknown spaces. What we find there will neces­si­tate entire­ly new kinds of think­ing for which estab­lished ide­olo­gies may not have the req­ui­site tools to nav­i­gate. But we can adhere to sim­ple prin­ci­ples in our jour­ney to this future: don’t hurt peo­ple, be kind, and don’t seek to con­trol oth­ers. These guide­lines can cre­ate a gen­er­al field for us to play in, but they are not a sys­tem in and of them­selves. The world is messy and unclear, and that cer­tain­ly isn’t going to change. We should not look for a prepack­aged solu­tion to moral deci­sion-mak­ing. Rather, we must learn to be able to decide for our­selves what is fair and just. By employ­ing guid­ing principles—like the veil of igno­rance and the Gold­en Rule—we will have a much bet­ter chance at ensur­ing that the deci­sions we make will not cause harm. It is nev­er too late to start being empath­ic and com­pas­sion­ate. With­in inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships, as much as in pol­i­cy-mak­ing, we are well served when we con­sid­er the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of our actions beyond our own self-interests.