On Moral Licensing (Ep 1)

People sometimes become more tolerant to themselves. For example, I'm only 6 kilograms heavier than 7 years earlier. I lost around 20 kilograms in 3 months when I was 12 years old. I was seriously obese back then, and felt the need to lose weight. But during that time, I had uncountable quick pangs to eat hamburgers, chicken, ramen, et cetera. I was very dedicated to lose weight back then, but now I have a higher muscle percentage so I have a higher basic metabolic rate. This makes me want to eat high calorie junk food. I justify my eating with all the exercise that I had done when I was young, and I still eat 3~4 times what others eat when something compelling comes out for the menu. As Gladwell puts in his podcast, when a door opens for an outsider, it usually just “gives the status quo justification to close the door again”. It happened in Gillard’s case, says Gladwell, when her election as the first female prime minister of Australia was followed by an unbelievable and unstoppable display of blatant misogyny. It happened in the case of the Nazis’ love of poet Berthold Auerbach, he explains, “because they think they’ve demonstrated their open-mindedness by loving this one Jew, they feel free to act in the most despicable way to other Jews.” And it happened after Barack Obama’s US presidential election, where for many, having elected a black president gave free rein for racism. In this part, he asks the question, when does doing good lead to good, and when does doing good lead to bad? I believe that it depends on the person's experience in life. They are weighing the risks they are willing to take, and the choices they would regret. A child cannot grow without trial and error. Similarly, moral licensing is natural and isn't something that is to be looked down on.