On disgust: A moral warning

Disgust is a strange emotion. I don’t feel it often, but when I do, it’s unmistakable in its power. Anger flares and fades. Sadness softens. Disgust lingers. It doesn’t argue; it rears its head again and again.

Lately, I’ve felt it more than I expected.

Reading about corruption, exploitation, and the hidden abuses of powerful people has unsettled me in a way that anger never quite does. It’s not just outrage. It’s a kind of moral nausea, a sense that something sacred within me has been violated.

What surprises me most isn’t just the wrongdoing itself. It’s how easily I once assumed that exposure would fix things. I believed that if evil were brought into the light, accountability would follow. That systems would correct themselves. That people, when faced with clear harm, would reject it.

I’m less certain now.

As I get older, I’m confronting a harder truth: doing the right thing is often inconvenient. Sometimes costly. Systems don’t automatically reward integrity. In fact, they often reward the opposite.

I was raised to believe that order leads to goodness, that those who rise to the top do so because of merit, discipline, even virtue. I don’t doubt that good people exist. I believe we are seeing examples of that even now. But I’m questioning whether power structures reliably preserve goodness, or whether they quietly erode it.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely” used to feel like a historical observation, a quote meant for different people in a different time. Now it feels personal. If power without accountability corrupts, then the real question is not only what powerful people are capable of, but what any of us might become if we’re insulated from consequence.

I sometimes wonder whether we are witnessing the logical conclusion of our own belief system, that the richest deserve their dominance, that success signals virtue, that authority implies righteousness. I believe there may even be a connection between our cultural idea of God and this moment: a belief that domination, control, and supremacy can build a world that feels safe.

When we equate success with moral worth, we shouldn’t be surprised when the powerful begin to believe they deserve everything.

But that safety is an illusion. Supremacy creates security for the few while leaving the many exposed, and history shows how brutal that imbalance can become.

Disgust, I’m beginning to think, is not simply revulsion at others. It’s a warning. It tells me what I refuse to become. It’s my moral system checking in and whispering: look what you are capable of, look what you can become.

The danger isn’t feeling disgust. The danger is growing numb to it. The danger is letting cynicism replace conviction. I’ve seen how easy it is to shut down when everything feels overwhelming, to detach, to scroll, to look away. I don’t want to become that person. I want to remain awake, even when wakefulness is uncomfortable.

If I can sit with the discomfort instead of escaping it, maybe it clarifies something. Maybe it sharpens the line between the kind of world I want and the kind I fear we’re drifting toward.

Maybe disgust is a moral boundary trying to hold.