Madness, To Be Continued

Is it impossible to be conscious and act without morals? There is something I can't quite put my finger on, a dissent to this idea that so many have proposed. I find myself asking "Can I be conscious without morals?" So many would say no. Because, to paraphrase: Morality is knowing what choices to make, and therefore takes knowledge to attain; knowledge is gained through experience and self-awareness to a certain extent, or higher consciousness. I asked my sister what the opposite of morality was, and her first reaction was someone afflicted (for lack of a better term) with psychopathy. A person who simply acts, without thought, without reason, pure chaos. This seemed logical, but again, it didn't sit right with me. Is morality at it's core just rules? A simple code we follow? But I came back to that point--- "without thought" --- circling back to the notion that ethics are a result of higher consciousness. If ethics are rules, to some extent, then when people act without them, are they acting truly without any notion of morality, or directly disregarding them... to clarify, I mean, for example, if someone was told not to steal a car because that would be evil, would they steal it without entertaining the imposed morality of the action, or would they steal it to act against what they were told? There is a difference to be distinguished, between Immoral (people who understand right and wrong but choose wrong), Nonmoral (when morality is not applicable), and Amoral (knowledge of right and wrong, but act with no regard to one or the other).

So, I asked my sister one more question; what the opposite of ethics was- of both good and evil, and she responded with, "A rock! A plant! A plant doesn't act according to what's good or bad, it just grows and pollinates then when it gets old enough it dies, and then a new plant is born." Plants, rocks, and other things would be considered nonmoral, given as far as we know they cannot think and have no sense or care of what is right or wrong.

But that begs another question, that if a true lack of morality, in the sense of nonmorality, is the counter to morality itself, then that means (as many have concluded) that morality, ethics, consciousness, cannot exist without one another. Essentially, without ethics, we have no purpose. 

A few sources:

A delve into ethics and choice

Merriam-Webster definitions