The Nature of Moral Identity and the Logic of Human Simplification
One of the most problematic and substantively misleading constructions of Western self-help culture, as well as of many mystified derivatives of Eastern philosophies, is the persuasion of individuals into the belief that they can freely and sovereignly define their own identity. Since this belief directly influences how people, at the corporate level as well, understand the compatibility between their personal value hierarchies and those of the organizations to which they belong, this article approaches the topic from a strictly rational and analytical perspective.
Identity as the “Shaper” of Behavior
At its most basic level, the cognitive construction of human identity can be understood as an answer to the question: Who am I? This has been one of the central pillars of self-help culture for decades.
It is a construction according to which my identity — how I understand and define myself — determines my actions and behavior, sets limits on them, and thereby shapes my life outcomes, which in turn reinforce and stabilize the existing identity.
This construction is appealing and easily monetized for one simple reason: it is partially empirically true. Most people who have achieved significant changes in their lives have also adopted a different self-conception and speak about themselves in new ways.
It is precisely here, however, that a dilemma emerges — one that philosophers and thinkers have analyzed for millennia: the problem of ontological and epistemological coherence.
In its most brutally simplified form, this dilemma consists in the following question: what is the actual causality at work in this phenomenon? And more precisely — to what extent is it even possible for a person to define their identity merely through a decision?
Let us examine this causal chain step by step in order to reach its fundamental point of origin.
If actions — such as regular exercise, avoidance of addictive substances, professional loyalty, or stability in intimate relationships — are treated as behavioral outcomes, then a large part of contemporary self-help culture links their possibility directly to a person’s identity.
Actions are, as it were, permitted or prohibited according to “who a person is.”
When we analyze the presuppositions of this view, we usually arrive at the logic according to which identity — as a set of core convictions — can be adopted through an act of decision. In other words, a person can decide who they are and then begin to behave accordingly.
It is precisely at this point that self-help discourse effectively comes to a halt.
The axiological — value-based — foundations of such decisions are always present, yet engaging with them is significantly more complex and often more uncomfortable than most people are willing to acknowledge. For this reason, the idea of “freely defining” one’s identity generally remains superficial and unresolved.
The Fundamental Basis of Major Decisions – The Crossroads of Four Paths
Decisions concerning one’s identity, as well as major life choices, are almost always driven by two interconnected factors: fear of the negative consequences of continuing along one’s current path, and attraction toward something brighter and more positive. This also applies to identity-related decisions — insofar as they can be called decisions at all.
In my view, this moment of decision is essentially crossroads-like: not yet in the Christian sense, but as a point of origin from which it is possible to move in four different and often mutually contradictory directions.
I will now describe these four fundamental logics from which, in my assessment, most people’s major decision-making processes originate, including choices related to identity.
1. Utilitarian Logic
According to utilitarian logic, a person pragmatically evaluates which option is most beneficial to them at a given moment, often from a game-theoretical perspective. Depending on an individual’s capacity and willingness to anticipate the future, this may partially coincide with broader social utility.
The central limitation of this approach, however, lies primarily in external factors: the source of morality is the state, institutions, or some other authority. A person would often be willing to violate rules but refrains from doing so out of fear of negative consequences. They operate within boundaries in which they can take rationally justified risks.
Within this framework, relationships become predominantly transactional and are guided by the maximization of self-interest in a manner that allows for sustainability.
2. Nihilistic Logic
Nihilism essentially consists in acknowledging a rule about the absence of rules.
According to anarchistic logic, no objective value system exists to which one must submit — except submission to nihilism itself as the final form of protest.
From this perspective, all value systems are mere constructions and fundamentally equivalent. If no system is superior to another, hierarchies disappear. When hierarchies disappear, only their destroyer remains — the individual.
Yet the individual is thereby rendered as indeterminate and potentially idiosyncratic as Kant’s noumenon. Consequently, major decisions are made through protest against external norms, in accordance with personal preference.
Here, the source of morality is awareness of its absence.
3. Hedonistic Logic
Hedonistic logic seeks a maximally pleasant, pleasurable, and “harmonious” life.
Paradoxically, this logic is followed by a large portion of Western self-help culture as well as much of contemporary spiritual discourse: yoga and mindfulness practices, café spirituality, neo-Taoism, popularized Buddhism and Hinduism, and the general “all-is-one” worldview.
These currents are often united by an insufficiently examined assumption: that the limitation or denial of free will justifies a focus on short-term subjective well-being.
If everything is ontologically one and no ultimate distinction exists between the self, others, love, and God, moral hierarchies become illusory. Right and wrong no longer derive from dogma or norms, but from individual feeling.
Here, the source of morality is subjective experience. Absolutes are absent. Everything depends on what “feels right” and “works well” in a given situation.
4. Dogmatic Logic
The dogmatic approach presupposes the existence of moral absolutes and their integration as the fundamental basis of decision-making.
Compared to the previous approaches, this logic is significantly more demanding, stricter, and often in tension with short-term well-being and instrumental rationality.
Unlike nihilism, it acknowledges the reality of value hierarchies. Unlike hedonistic postmodernism, it does not assume that morally correct decisions automatically lead to greater happiness.
Often, the opposite is true.
Moral absolutes exist, and the ultimate source of morality is not legal authority but a natural-law or metaphysical foundation.
The vertical hierarchy of authority does not end with the upper limit of utilitarian logic — conventionally represented by the state — but extends to that which even the state itself is subject to. Within this framework, the state is, in a sense, a fiction whose legitimacy depends on a higher normative order.
Identity as a Function of the Source of Morality
Based on the foregoing, we can see that identity — even when treated as the outcome of decision-making — arises from an individual’s internal orientation toward one of four fundamental directions.
In other words, the idea that identity can be freely shaped merely through an act of decision is, in its essence, artificial and naïve.
In the first case, the source of identity is systematic self-interest; in the second, absolute freedom from norms; in the third, pleasure and subjective well-being; and in the fourth, a dogmatic normative structure.
When identity is understood in this way, it becomes possible to arrive at notions of “right” and “wrong,” but always only within the framework of a single specific logic. Generalization without internal contradictions proves to be essentially impossible.
If we reduce utilitarian and hedonistic approaches, in principle, to morally constructed norms created by human beings themselves — whether at the level of the individual or the state — three fundamental logics remain:
moral choices do not exist, because norms are relative;
human beings create their own morality in the form of laws and rules;
there exists a hereditary and temporally enduring existential truth that defines morality.
When contemporary self-help culture is examined critically, it largely falls into the second category. This is due to highly pragmatic reasons: only in this form can it be explained to individuals and presented in a programmatic, economically sustainable manner.
The individual is portrayed as the source of their own morality.
Nihilism appears chaotic and dangerous. Religion, by contrast, is portrayed as tyrannical and restrictive of subjective happiness.
It is precisely here, however, that a problem emerges — one that most proponents of Western self-help and Eastern-inspired hedonistic “all-is-one” worldviews fail to acknowledge, at least publicly.
Such an approach functions only within relationships, environments, or micro-social systems in which all participants operate according to the same logic.
Let us consider a simple example: infidelity in an intimate relationship.
If both partners proceed from the spiritual assumption that no ultimate truth concerning right and wrong exists, and that infidelity is morally wrong only when it conflicts with one’s “own truth,” the phenomenon inevitably becomes relativized. It is no longer evaluated through absolute categories, but situationally.
The same applies to lying.
If right and wrong are defined solely through an individual’s inner world and subjective perception, it becomes impossible to maintain consistently that lying is always morally wrong.
Here we arrive at a fundamental problem: an ideological collision between two moral logics.
One party proceeds from dogmatic moral absolutes.
The other assumes that individuals are capable of establishing their own values concerning good and evil, right and wrong.
The tension between these two positions is not accidental, but structural.
As Shakespeare has Hamlet say: “There’s the rub.”
The Eternal Core of Value Conflicts
In our consulting practice, we consistently observe that the core of conflicts that appear irresolvable does not lie merely in differences between value hierarchies. Naturally, divergent value structures underlie most serious conflicts, but this is a symptomatic rather than a substantive phenomenon.
The fundamental question once again proves to be the same as in the case of identity: whether a person can themselves be the source of their moral values.
If both parties agree that this is possible, a structural precondition for compromise and mutual agreement is established. In such cases, conflict no longer revolves around the objective existence of right and wrong, but around the reconciliation of identity-based interpretations through processes of balancing and negotiation.
As an aside, it may be noted that for the same reason, ideologically grounded conflicts cannot persist indefinitely when both parties recognize the same dogmatic and morally absolute normative structures.
In such situations, conflict resolution becomes primarily a communicative rather than a metaphysical issue. Decisions concerning right and wrong are effectively delegated to a vertical authority rather than remaining with the parties themselves.
Incidentally, this very mechanism has also constituted the substantive foundation of many genuinely religious — rather than utilitarian — conflicts and wars.
When, however, a conflict arises between two individuals, one of whom believes that human beings can be the creators of their own values and moral structures, while the other proceeds from a hereditary, temporally enduring, and experientially “embedded” framework grounded in moral absolutes, a distinctive form of confrontation emerges — one that is rarely discussed openly.
This is, in effect, a confrontation between the individual and religion as a phenomenon in its entirety.
Such a conflict — whether occurring between individuals, organizations, or institutions — can always be interpreted as a confrontation between the relative and the absolute.
For example, in a dispute where one party considers human beings capable of constructing their own values and moral norms, they represent themselves. Their counterpart, who proceeds from moral absolutes that religion articulates and mediates (though does not directly construct), represents an eternal normative structure that has been transmitted through both parties into the present moment.
Empirical experience and numerous practical examples confirm that, in the long run, it is precisely this eternal logic of human continuity and survival that tends to prevail in such confrontations.
Two Fundamental Conceptions of Identity
At this point, we return to the question of identity. Identity can be understood in two fundamentally different ways: first, as a phenomenon independently constructed and defined by the individual; and second, as participation in something that arises from a person’s substantive conviction in the moral foundational structure of life.
In the first case, the individual is, in principle, alone in shaping and describing their identity — even if they believe that “all is one.” In the second case, the individual is intrinsically connected to others who share the same foundational principles of identity formation.
This distinction is most easily illustrated through the family.
The nuclear family, as a unit of identity, is placed above individual identity, especially when supported by a dogmatic moral value structure. Consequently, a hierarchical approach is immediately established: the individual’s identity is subordinate to the identity of the family as a whole, and both are vertically subordinated to an absolute normative foundation.
Within this framework, family members share a horizontal physical and existential bond (for example, the unity of parent and child) as well as a vertical moral identity.
For this reason, many attempts to construct blended families contain significant internal incoherence and psychological strain — particularly when one party considers it possible to construct values independently and the other does not, and when their moral absolutes differ radically. Such arrangements tend to disintegrate over time.
One may go even further: in a certain sense, it is also morally and logically problematic when a family, as an identity unit, holds divergent political values or even makes opposing electoral choices.
In other words, in the first case, identity is something that the individual continually constructs and reformulates. In the second case, identity is participation in something greater.
Most identity conceptions emerging from Western self-help culture and from Eastern-inspired philosophies fall predominantly into the first category. “Everything-is-one” thinking implies the disappearance of boundaries and the dissolution of opposition.
Yet boundaries are indispensable for cohesion and endurance.
Therefore, a stable human identity can rest only upon a clear understanding of what one aligns with through moral absolutes and where the ultimate boundaries lie with respect to that which one is prepared to oppose when necessary.
Everything else is merely a temporary semantic framework presented under the label of identity.
Moral Identity as the Foundation of Human “Simplification” in Long-Term Relationships
Identity is, in itself, a construction that becomes clear to a person primarily in retrospect — through the conclusions they draw from their past actions.
When this identity is grounded in moral absolutes, a significant advantage emerges in both personal and professional relationships: over time, and in proportion to the weight of one’s decisions, a person becomes increasingly understandable and predictable.
The more existential and life-defining the issue addressed by a decision, the more reliably one can anticipate the choice a person will make.
This aspect is often underestimated in both corporate and private contexts. In reality, its meaning is simple: a person becomes temporally coherent. Who they are today aligns with who they will be tomorrow and in the future.
No other model of identity produces this kind of internal continuity.
The more deeply leaders and relational partners have reflected on this, the more accurately they have been able to assess the practical and strategic value of moral identity.
Everyday enthusiasm cannot be sustained without clarity in long-term foundational values.
When these are relative — whether due to utilitarianism, disbelief in the existence of value structures, or the volatility of subjective “intuition” — the experience of enthusiasm tends to be short-lived and dependent on external conditions.
A person may consciously generate certain positive states, but without a long-term framework of meaning, this becomes an extremely energy-intensive endeavor.
Our experience in both individual consulting and organizational work shows that an awareness of trans-temporal meaning emerges only through moral identity — as a normative structure that determines when a person is even capable of experiencing life as meaningful.
It should not be underestimated that becoming “simple” and predictable for others is merely a consequence of becoming simple for oneself.
Decision-making logic thus becomes principle-based and absolute. For this reason, many decisions made by such leaders are often perceived, in the short term, as incomprehensible or even harmful.
This reaction is not mistaken. In the short run, many moral decisions are indeed instrumentally disadvantageous. Yet they serve the long-term interests of moral identity, both personally and organizationally.
In the same way, private-life decisions may produce temporary suffering and reduced subjective well-being while supporting long-term personal moral coherence.
Happiness and alignment with moral identity may occasionally coincide, but this is a byproduct rather than a goal. They cannot be treated as autonomous objectives if one wishes to preserve the normative force of moral absolutes.
Individuals whose identity structure lacks a sufficient dogmatic element are able to “make themselves happy” more easily in the short term, but at the cost of long-term predictability.
They know that performing action A leads to outcome B, yet they lack a categorical moral framework that defines the permissibility of an action independently of its result.
This becomes especially evident at the level of so-called “white lies,” which are often presented humorously but in fact constitute symptoms of moral relativism and indicators of identity instability.
Lying to and deceiving others is always connected to lying to oneself. Substantive deception is trans-temporal: one deceives one’s future self.
The most tragic aspect of this is that one no longer knows what kind of person one will become.
At this point, identity is no longer stable.
A stable identity consists primarily in the predictability of one’s future self to oneself. From this emerges, and into this converges, a person’s reliability in the eyes of others — partners, family members, and organizations alike.
