Is morality binary?

I do not even think that morality lays on a line; rather, it lays on the space of infinite dimensions. Humans naturally divide things into "better" and "worse" as a result of evolution (in order to survive, one needs to learn to make such judgements), but things do not have to be confined to such a simplistic classification in principle.

There have been many attempts to properly classify the variety of human moral behaviors. I quite like the simple system used in Dungeons & Dragons: Good-Evil on one axis, and Lawful-Chaotic on another - and these terms are not subjective, but describe quite precise traits. A Good person cares deeply about others, and an Evil person cares only about themselves; a Lawful person cares for order, and a Chaotic person cares for freedom.

Yet all of these attempts miss a lot of fine details. Take, for example, the common characterisation of "good" as "caring for others". Well, there are many ways to care for others. First of all, the place from which caring comes can vary significantly between individuals. Some care for others because they want to share their happiness with others. Others care for others because this provides a way for them to cope with their insecurities. Others still simply were told by their parents, society or religion that caring for others is a good thing, but do not understand why this is so. There are also people who care for others, because they see this caring as a useful tool to achieve their selfish goals. There are many other types of caring, and most individuals exhibit many of them in different proportions.

Caring for others can also manifest in different actions. One could argue that Mother Teresa, Pol Pot and Joan of Arc all deeply cared about others, yet the actions they took were so different, and they had such drastically different impact on those they cared about... Or consider different parenting styles: I doubt there are parents who absolutely do not care about their children, since we are wired biologically to do so - but some parents employ harsh parenting style with a lot of abuse, believing that this is the only way to discipline a kid, other parents spoil their children with endless presents, which is not necessarily helpful to the kid in the long run, other parents still teach their children responsibility by giving them a lot of freedom, but expecting them to earn everything on their own.

Then, of course, there are those "X or Y" questions that even a person with deeply thought out morals often struggles to give an answer to. The example you brought up, where one has to choose between two negative outcomes involving other people (such as "Should I commit an atrocity to prevent another atrocity?"), is a good illustration of that. In such cases one has to employ some sort of a quantitative, rather than qualitative, judgement, and those are very tricky, because we do not typically think of morals in quantitative terms. Indians have the concept of "karma" that attempts to do that, but even that cannot be properly described, say, in mathematical terms.

In conclusion, morality is certainly not binary, and even more so, it does not lay on any properly defined multidimensional compass. It seems to have an infinity of shades.

@xlJ_dolphin_473

This is not quite accurate, as far as I know. While there are certainly some evolutionary benefits for putting oneself first, virtually all mammals live in groups, the individual members' survival depending on each other's actions. The individual that puts themselves first at the expense of the group endangers the whole group, and most mammal species discriminate harshly against such behavior in various ways - among wolves, for example, a wolf that does not share its prey with others can very well be torn apart by other wolves, or cast away from the pack (which in most cases equals slow and painful death in the wilds).

The communal instinct goes far further back than we like to think, and has existed in various species for dozens millions years, as far as we can tell. Morals naturally arise from it, and in some sense morals have existed for as long as macroscopic animals have.

I think what is different for humans in particular is two things. The first is that we have the ability to reason, which allows us to come up with our own morals, rather than instinctively accept the morals of the pack (which we still do a lot though). And the second is that we have surpassed all other species in terms of quality of life by orders of magnitude, and nowadays we can afford to be individualistic and pursue our individual passions, even if they do not directly benefit the rest of our community. We do not have the evolutionary pressure to conform with the group any more, and chances are that conformity instinct will gradually fade away and we will become truly free individuals one day.

@xlJ_dolphin_473

Well, one could see the entirety of human history as, in essence, a struggle between individual and selfish considerations. Pure selfishness can be beneficial in many situations - however, it does not seem to be a viable long-term strategy. I would say that humans strive to act in a way that allows them to fit in the collective, and once this initial prerequisite is satisfied, then they start looking out for themselves.