Morality is a complex thing, though this fact is lost in an age in which debates are reduced to exchanges of snarky remarks on social media. Morality is complex because it deals not in what is but in what ought to be, and what ought to be is invisible to the eyes. How ideas about what ought to be came to exist has kept philosophers and scientists occupied for thousands of years.

And this may account for a good deal of the blind desperation with which people seek something or someone who will tell them how to act. For those of a speculative mindset, reaching definitive conclusions is less a priority than exploring possibilities.

But most people feel the urgent need of external guidance. So some give themselves over to group leaders, others adhere rigidly to an ideology or religion. And those with a more woo woo view of life turn to oracles.

But divination is not a good judge of what’s morally right. If you want proof, when was the last time you laid out a spread that gave you advice that was based on moral principles completely incompatible with your own?

Having the stamp of approval of whatever projection we may make onto pretty bits of cardboards is not that good of an idea. It is a surefire way to delude ourselves and it can rob us of our agency and of our responsibility to think for ourselves.

Divination is good at telling us what is, or was, or has a good chance of being in the future. What ought to be is for us to make up our mind about.

MQS