Is It Wrong If No One Gets Harmed?
The writer examines a common modern moral principle—that an action is wrong only if it causes harm—and questions whether this framework is adequate. Drawing on Malcolm Gladwell's recollection of childhood trespass, the piece traces a cultural shift from rule-based morality to consequence-based ethics, then argues that we have become blind to the inner harms of unchecked thought and desire.
If you are an active social media user, you have probably seen this statement; "Do whatever makes you happy as long as you are not hurting anyone." How do we decide whether something is morally wrong? Is it possible for an action to be wrong even if no harm results? Does there have to be harm for something to be considered wrong?
In previous generations, it seems that wrongfulness and harmfulness were two distinct concepts. Right and wrong were clearly defined, and whether or not actual harm resulted was highly irrelevant.
The author, Malcolm Gladwell spoke about this in a recent speech at the New Yorker Festival, sharing a story to illustrate.
As kids, Gladwell and his brother sneaked into a neighbour's cornfield and built a fort. His father discovered the fort and was furious. Although they had done only about a dollar's worth of damage to the cornfield, they had trespassed and defaced another person's property, and therefore their actions, to their father were immoral regardless of their consequences.
Gladwell argues that we don’t make moral arguments this way anymore. Instead, whether an action is right or wrong is determined solely by the harm that results.
There are pros and cons to this change. So much moral teaching can feel arbitrary. Churches in particular have loaded countless moral burdens upon their congregants that seem more about power and control than about either true wrongdoing or indeed harmfulness.
Being able to see a clear harmful outcome makes it more palatable to accept something as 'wrong'. Killing people is clearly wrong, the harm is beyond doubt. Adultery too: who can deny the harm resulting from an affair? What about lust? Or anger? Jesus, the first-century Jewish teacher, thought so, making a clear link between lust and adultery and anger and murder. But culturally today, we find this hard to accept.
It seems though that there are two measures of harmfulness. Our culture has shifted our focus to the harm we can see. But what about the harm we do to ourselves when we become angry or consumed by lustful thoughts?
Western society has shifted our emphasis to the externals. It’s all about ‘looking right’. Being seen to do the right things. We measure right and wrong simply based on external harm that does or doesn’t result from our actions. But our inner life matters. Lust and anger may not lead us to commit adultery or murder, but they can eat away at our lives, robbing us of so much. Slowly but surely, allowed to fester, these kinds of thoughts can begin to change how we see others; we can end up de-humanising those we continually think negative, inappropriate, or unhealthy thoughts about.
How many of our society’s horrific attitudes and behaviours like rape stem from unchecked lust and anger? And yet we shy away from calling these things ‘wrong’ because the link to any resulting harm is only indirect.
I realise I have shifted somewhat from Gladwell’s original point. He is arguing that today, we only see something as wrong if it is harmful. I have argued that perhaps it's less about requiring harm from something to be considered 'wrong' and more about us having become blind to the inner harm of our thoughts and behaviours and putting the emphasis instead on whether or not anyone else is harmed.
Let’s say two people who are genuinely in love and are faithful to each other in a relationship having sex but are not married. What if there is neither internal nor external harm? Can something like the example above that literally has no harmful outcomes be considered to be wrong?
I’d love to read your thoughts.
- Delight Alombah.
The piece speaks to a moment when social media had made pithy moral maxims ubiquitous, and when inherited religious and cultural frameworks were increasingly tested against secular, harm-reduction logic. It reflects a wider cultural conversation about authority, permissiveness, and what grounds moral judgment in an era of rapid social change.
The writer makes a dignified case that modern morality's exclusive focus on external harm may obscure real damage—damage to the self, to one's capacity for empathy, to the slow formation of character. This remains urgent because the tension between rule-based and consequence-based ethics has not resolved; if anything, the question of what we owe ourselves, and how inner life shapes outer action, has only deepened.