Moral Ambiguity

 

There is a particular comfort in believing that people are either good or bad. It simplifies things. It allows for quick judgments, clean conclusions, and a sense that the world is, at its core, understandable. But that clarity rarely survives proximity. The closer you get to people, to systems, and to yourself, the more unstable those categories become. What looked like principle begins to resemble convenience. What felt like integrity starts to shift under pressure. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, “right” becomes less about what is true and more about what works.

Simone de Beauvoir, in The Ethics of Ambiguity, resists the idea that morality is fixed or easily resolved. That human beings exist in contradiction, capable of both freedom and harm, intention and compromise. Not in dramatic, philosophical ways alone, but in the quiet, everyday decisions that rarely feel like moral choices at all. Because most of the time, they aren’t framed that way. They look like survival.

In a Kenyan context, morality often presents itself as something deeply understood, even enforced, through religion, family structures, and community expectations. There are clear ideas of what is right, what is respectable, and what is unacceptable. But lived reality tells a more complicated story. At work, for instance, competence is rarely the only currency. Proximity to power, to influence, and sometimes to whiteness shapes outcomes in ways we all recognize but rarely name directly. Opportunities circulate within networks that are not always merit-based, and participation in those systems often requires a quiet negotiation with one’s own sense of fairness. You learn quickly that being “good” is not always rewarded, but being strategic often is.

In some offices, this looks like watching someone less qualified move ahead because they are better positioned, better connected, more palatable, and easier to place in certain rooms. Everyone notices. Few say it plainly. Instead, the language softens: they’re a good fit, they understand the culture, and they present well. And slowly, the line between merit and convenience dissolves, not in confrontation, but in consensus.

In friendships, the language of loyalty can blur into selective morality. We excuse behavior in those we care about that we would condemn in others. We justify silence when speaking would be inconvenient. We defend, not because something is right, but because the relationship matters more than the principle. There is a particular kind of betrayal we learn to rename as understanding. A silence we frame as maturity. An avoidance we call peace. And in doing so, we maintain the relationship but shift the moral line just slightly to accommodate it.

Even in larger social dynamics, like colorism, for example, there exists a collective awareness of its presence, alongside a continued participation in it. Remember when Lupita Nyong'o pointed out how growing up in Kenya she never met beauty standards because of colorism, and the entire country descended on her, but we say things like "rangi ya thao" and "yellow yellow." Preferences are framed as personal, aesthetic, and harmless. But they follow patterns. They reinforce hierarchies. And still, they are defended, softened, and explained away. Not because they are morally sound, but because they are socially advantageous. And proximity to whiteness complicates this further. It opens doors, reshapes perception, and grants a certain kind of access that is difficult to ignore. It is rarely acknowledged as a moral compromise; more often, it is framed as an opportunity. But the adjustment happens nonetheless: in how one speaks, how one presents, and what one tolerates. Not always consciously. But consistently enough to form a pattern.

And then there is the idea of karma, often invoked as a kind of moral balancing system. That good is rewarded; that harm returns to its source. But reality does not always support this. Outcomes are uneven. Consequences are inconsistent. What persists instead is a quieter logic: not of justice, but of positioning. You begin to notice that outcomes are less about who was right and more about who was strategic. Who aligned themselves well. Who moved carefully. Who understood the system enough to work within it or around it. Which raises the question, if morality is so easily negotiated, what is it for? Perhaps it exists less as a fixed guide and more as a language. A way of explaining decisions after they have already been made. A framework we reach for to make sense of actions that are, in truth, driven by a mix of instinct, pressure, desire, and circumstance.

Because the justifications are often ready. It was for the greater good. It was necessary. There was no other option. They would have done the same. And sometimes, beneath all of that, something quieter: I wanted to. This is not to suggest that morality is meaningless. But it may be less stable than we would like to believe. Less about fixed principles and more about constant negotiation. A kind of strategic ambiguity, where boundaries shift depending on what is at stake: relationships, money, survival, or pride.

Personal vendettas, for instance, rarely present themselves as such. They are reframed as justice. As accountability. As setting the record straight. But often, they carry something more intimate, something unresolved. And morality becomes the language through which that feeling is made acceptable. The same action, in a different context, would be judged differently. The same decision, made by someone else, might be condemned. But when it is ours, it becomes understandable. Necessary, even. People, then, are not easily sorted into good or bad.

They are responsive. Adaptive. At times principled, at times self-serving. Often both, at once.

And maybe that is the discomfort at the center of it all. Not that morality fails, but that it bends. That it adjusts itself to context. That it makes room for contradiction. That, more often than not, it aligns itself with what is possible and calls it right.