Fireflies
Thoughts that glow after the light fades.
Fireflies is a little corner for late–night reflections, soft thoughts, stories, and learnings that come alive when the world is quiet. It’s like those unhurried moments after the day is done, when ideas flicker gently and remind us we’re not alone in what we feel. Each episode is just a small light for the darker hours, a space to pause, breathe, and listen.
Fireflies
The Algorithm of Human Conscience
Walk with me as we explore how human conscience works like a personal algorithm, unique to each of us, shaped by the stories we absorb and the experiences we carry.
In this episode, I dive into how narratives build the foundation of our ethics and morality, and how the power of storytelling is constantly used to influence what we believe to be real.
Welcome to Fireflies, where I share thoughts that glow after the light fades. Tiny sparks that make you think. Hi, I'm Anushree, and this is episode one.
Anushree:Conscience is not universal. I came to this rather uncomfortable realization a few years ago, and honestly, it has been one of my biggest life learnings. This realization that what we call conscience or ' Antaratma' in Hindi is not uniform or universal. I mean it's not in our DNA, it's not in our factory settings, it's not in built in us. And honestly, this thought has helped me see the reason behind people's actions, their motivations, and why they are doing things what they are doing. And it has brought me a certain level of peace. And I believe this would help you also too.
Anushree:How I see it, conscience is more or less like an AI-powered Alexa. It is algorithm-based, it is dependent on external influences and information, it has loads of built-in biases, and is highly impressionable. That inner voice of conscience that we all know about, that we have read in literature, well, it exists, but it's not the same for everyone. Let me explain.
Anushree:In simplest terms, conscience is a person's moral sense of right and wrong, good or bad, that directly impacts their actions. Alright, let's take this a step ahead. There are two parts of this definition. First is your understanding or intention behind the action, which can be good, bad, right, wrong, the moral and the ethics part of it. And the second part is the action in itself. Now, every religion and a big part of the civilized world teaches us that every human being is primarily good at heart. The problem with this belief is the fact that the baseline of what is considered good changes with every culture and country. There are a bunch of examples for this. Like kissing and hugging in public in land you in jail in certain countries is considered very immoral, whereas it's harmless in other parts of the world. Consider polygamy, unethical for modern societies, but an ethical choice for the millions of the world population. What could be considered learning or learning a trait or a skill early in childhood is considered child abuse by others. It's 2025 and still countries are fighting hard and making laws to stop child marriage. I mean, by now the human civilization should have learned that it's wrong for adult men to marry younger brides. I mean, usually that's the case. You get the point.
Anushree:What is absolutely unethical and wrong for one part of the world could be just fine for another. Since the benchmark of good, the foundation of human conscience, keeps on changing from culture to culture, the concept of conscience is rather a moving target. Morality, ethics, good and bad are so subjective and so personal that assuming what is ethical for you would be the same for the world at large is, in my opinion, quite naive. Your concept of a good deed, a morally correct one, could be starkly different from that of your closest loved one. You have just not been tested yet.
Anushree:Every time I try to explain this concept, I start with this question. When was the last time you looked at someone and wondered, in shock and or heartbreak, that how are they okay with what feels like hell to me? Well, in the polarized world that we live in, I'm sure you must have experienced this moment when you encounter people who seem absolutely wonderful, kind and sweet, who check all the boxes of being a good human being, acting cruel, or defending people doing cruelty, defending heinous crimes. Throughout history you would easily find good people being completely alright and rather happy, doing something deeply horrible and unjust. I mean they burned women alive as witches, right? Slavery, colonialism, the list is endless. Do you think the oppressors were not happy? Of course they were. Do you think there was a voice in their head, their voice of conscience, telling them that what they are doing is morally wrong, that they are they're scarring generations to come, that they should stop and not act on it? Absolutely not. They genuinely believed that they were doing the right thing.
Anushree:A few years ago, our family knew this gentleman. He used to live in our housing society. In my head, he was one of the nicest people I know. Very kind, cultured, soft-spoken, from a good family, an ideal citizen. Then the COVID-19 lockdowns hit. We all were cooped up inside our homes, and the only point of communication were those WhatsApp groups. One day there was an incident involving a certain community in India. And this kind and sweet man went on a complete rant on the on one of the WhatsApp groups about how the entire community that was in the news should be killed. And most importantly, and I'm paraphrasing that their children should be poisoned so that there would not be another generation of them. I was shocked. Well, nobody in the group opposed it or asked him to take down the message. They simply turned the conversation in another direction. And that night I was sitting and I was thinking that if this man can think, articulate, write, and post in a WhatsApp group very well knowing that hundreds would read this message, he definitely believed in that thought. It was not an angry tyrant, it was a statement. And if he is okay with justifying killing even one child, where does his ethics stand? Though he may never act on it, but his thought process gives me this belief that he would support the people who would act on it.
Anushree:So where does his ethics stand? Is he a good man? Does he have a conscience? And how is he perfectly happy with so much poison in his head? He seemed perfectly happy.
Anushree:A rough answer to this question came from Immanuel Kant, the famous 18th-century philosopher. Kant argued that true happiness comes not from pleasure or external rewards, but from living in accordance with one's moral duty. By the way, when philosophers talk about happiness, it's it doesn't usually mean euphoria or joy. Most of the time they're talking about the baseline of being okay with your life. Coming back to Kant, the key word here is one's moral duty. The focus is what you consider to be moral. You are the judge of the morality that you believe in. Well, the hypothesis here is that your happiness is dependent on what you consider to be ethical. And the question here is, then who decides what is ethical? The answer is you do.
Anushree:How much I understand, ethics are built on your perception of truth. The good or bad, right or wrong are primarily how you see the truth. There are two parts of this argument.
Anushree:Let's understand this from a thought experiment. So imagine you walked into an old library, you're bored, and you just want to spend some quiet time before heading out for dinner. You walk into the quietest child and you start rummaging through a few books and ultimately pick up a leather bound book with the littering of the spine completely wiped out. It's a boring book about chemistry, but before you put it back, you notice an old paper clipping tucked inside. The date on the clipping was 12th January 1917 and the headline read Copper Town rocked by a scandal. The story was that of a 35-year-old widow of one of the richest merchants of the town. She was caught in a compromising condition in a public garden with a 17-year-old boy. This 17-year-old boy was a member of her own staff. The story ended that she was going to be jailed and would most likely lose control of her properties to her nephew. You chuckle at the news clipping and you put it back. Then you turn around and you see someone standing at the end of the aisle in the shadows. A woman steps out. She looks tired and she simply stares at the book in your hand and says in a soft tone She was framed and leaves. You feel uneasy and you just leave the library.
Anushree:Now I want to ask you a question. What do you think of the scandal? You would most likely say it's not even a scandal. Apart from the age gap, there was not much to even think about. At most, you would feel a bit of sympathy for the widow because she was going to be jailed. Now what if I tell you that the widow was married when she was fourteen and her husband died at war when she was twenty? They hardly lived together. Your sympathy for the widow would increase a bit, right? Now what if I tell you that the 17-year-old boy was courting her for months and she was in love with him. You remember what the woman in the library said about this widow being framed. You would feel a bit bad for her, right? Now let me add one more point for context. They were not having sex in a public place. They were just holding hands and laughing. The boy was planted by the merchant's nephew, and he was the one who sent the police, who accused her of public indecency and jailed her. Yes, the police was bribed.
Anushree:What do you feel now? A general question. What do you feel now? Outrage, anger, sympathy? You feel bad because of the injustice handed out to her. Now I'll ask you, would you argue in her support? A simple question. What changed? What do you feel now? Outrage, anger, sympathy. You feel bad for the widow, right? What changed from the moment you found the newspaper clip to this very second? Your emotions went from indifference to something else. Maybe anger, maybe sympathy, maybe something else, it all depends on you, but your emotions change towards her. Why? Because I gave you context and the words of the of that woman in the library gave you a reason to believe in my context. The facts remain the same, but your connection to it has changed. The context gives you a reason to justify your anger and outrage, making defending the widow morally and ethically right for you.
Anushree:Now this was a very harmless example, but I want you to apply this to any incident that comes in your life. Let's say you read about a drug dealer, you read about the thousands of lives his business has harmed, the people that got killed because of him, and you hate him. But then a few years later, a series drops on Netflix, starring some of the biggest names in the industry. And then slowly you see his troubled childhood, his heroics, his antics, and suddenly he is much more digestible than ever. His crimes are the same. He did all of that. Nothing has changed. But now the drug dealer is a morally grey character and not the villain you once believed he was. His crimes has not changed. Your perception has. Has your ethics or moral code changed? You would say no, not at all. But since your perception of truth has changed, so is your opinion.
Anushree:This is a common tactic across global politics. When the goal is to change your perception towards a disliked, rate criminal, political figure, you would suddenly start hearing more stories about him. These stories are specifically built to a create doubt or confusion, or b give context to their actions. The confusion or doubt creating stories are curated to make you question the facts you have in your hand. It makes you soften your stand and give one extra thought to it. These stories are usually on the lines of what about Tri? What about the other leader? What has he done for this problem? Or it could be that he is innocent of all his crimes and he's being framed. The goal is to create doubt in your perception. I'm not taking names, but I want you to think about all the fastest leaders or dictators and just see how they weaponize water boundary and how their crimes are never their crimes alone.
Anushree:The second type of story is written to give context to their actions. They will always have a strong why. A reason so strong that it justifies their most heinous crimes. Theft becomes an act of defiance, murder becomes protection and defense, and genocide becomes protecting your country. I mean, there's an active genocide happening in the world. Still, a large number of people around the world are completely okay, or rather supporting it, mainly because the narrative is built strong enough for them to justify it as morally correct. They have a reason to believe that their morality is on the right side. They truly believe that what they are doing is the right thing. Everyone in the public relations for big movie stars and even government does this.
Anushree:I mean, a known abuser who was convicted by the law a few years ago became popular again using the same tactic. First, he created doubt in people's minds about his actions, and then he followed through with a strong why. He gave a why he did this, why he was violent. And voila, he was popular again.
Anushree:Now, if I ask you that, do you support domestic abuse? Your answer would be no. But do you support this abuser? And you would say yes. It's because your perception of him has changed. You have the context, you have the stories. The truth, what you believed, is of a different color now. Stories give you context to complex ethical problems. And as long as the context is convincing, your conscience would be completely fine with it.
Anushree:So the hierarchy is this that stories impacts your perception of truth. Your perception of truth impacts your ethics. Your ethics impacts your conscience. And your conscience or your moral code ultimately impacts your happiness. Every action of your life is based on your perception of truth. Not the actual fact, not numbers, not statistics, but what you see as truth. That's your worldview, and that's your algorithm. If you understand this hierarchy of stories, of perception of truth, its impact on your ethics, your conscience, your moral code, your actions, and ultimately your happiness, you would understand how the algorithm works, how the algorithm of your conscience works.
Anushree:This has a flip side also. This also means that you cannot change anyone's worldview. You can feed them information and context and hope that they see your side of the story. But people will act according to what they personally believe is right, what matches their perception of truth.
Anushree:I see personal ethical and moral cord more or less like a pool inside your brain. You know, a natural pool surrounded by rocks, not definite borders, but still contained within a certain space. The edges of the pool are like your non-negotiable values. For example, if I know that someone who has sexually abused his child, that person stops being an entity for me. That person stops being an entity that deserves my empathy. For me, that person in modern terms is cancelled. I would not offer them any connection or feel bad if something wrong happens to them. Those are my non-negotiable borders. Whereas the insides of the pool are deep moving and constantly shifting. The more I learn about the world, the more my pool of ethics expands or shrinks. For example, the sexist jokes of the 90s TV make me cringe and slightly upset me now, whereas I used to laugh at them back when they were aired. My pool of ethics has expanded to understand that a lot of these jokes were racist and you know classist and misogynistic.
Anushree:My learning has impacted my perception and it has helped me build my own personal moral code. And it happens with everyone. Everyone's personal code expands and shrinks depending on what information they're absorbing. How is the algorithm being built for them? I can go on and on about this perception of truth, how we allow our thoughts to be manipulated, the power of stories, but that's all for this episode. But before I leave, let me share one last thing.
Anushree:Our perception of truth determines what we consider ethical, and our ethics impact our worldview, and all of it is influenced by individual life events. So how on earth can we believe that the conscience, that our conscience, is uniform or universal? When everyone's morality, understanding of ethics, of good and bad are so different and so personal, how can conscience, which is a reflection of all of this, be the same? The algorithm is different for everyone.
Anushree:So, next time when you see someone act out in a way that doesn't make sense to you, or they hurt you, or support something you consider deeply unethical, remember they are acting from their own perception of truth and they genuinely believe that they are doing the right thing and they are happy. This assumption of ours that if you're doing something wrong, then you are not happy is baseless. People choose their actions as per their moral code, and then if they act accordingly, they are happy.
Anushree:You just cannot change their worldview, so save your energy.
Anushree:This is all for the first episode. I'll be back next week with another topic that will make you think that will glow like a firefly in the darkness. This is Anushree. See you next week. Bye.