"Their morals, their code: it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these, uh… these civilized people, they'll eat each other."

- The Joker

That's his point of view, but is he actually right?

Let's say that we would remove all governments throughout the world, and that all money would lose its value. There ended up being complete anarchy everywhere, mixed with starvation, useless/nonexistent health care and no way of buying food, among several inevitable issues. Would we still live by our morals by that point or would we actually ignore them and do whatever it takes to survive (even if that means stealing and killing will be necessary to help our family and friends)? Would morals have an actual purpose even by that point or would they be unmasked as the actual joke they really are?: A "bad joke" used only to benefit from the situation, which can and will be disregarded once that situation changes.

Or let's put it in a more simple and completely different way: If you ask people who claim to live by strict morals if they would ever steal from others, their answer would probably be, "No. Stealing is wrong". Put them on the streets and all of a sudden they will ignore all that and start taking whatever food and supplies they can get their hands on, possibly shamelessly. In another scenario you could ask almost anyone if they ever would kill an innocent person, and the answer would, again, obviously be, "No. Killing is wrong, especially when innocents are involved". Kidnap their wife/husband and kids and tell them that their only chance of getting their family back alive is to kill a random person, and suddenly one single random dead man or woman may actually not look so bad after all.

So, my question is: Do morals actually have a purpose or are they just a bad joke, like the Joker says? Is there anyone at all who would live by his/her morals no matter the situation?

I'm pissed off with morals and moralistic people. It's been taken too far these days to the point where you have to feel guilty about every joke remark or for speaking certain truths which can be perceived as racist, homophobic or misogynistic. Today you feel bad for putting your trash in the wrong trash can for christ's sake. I thi k certain things are wrong and I hope I never do them ie murder or personal theft but I think the moral police need to shut the hell up and live a little. Wow I didn't know I felt so strongly about this till I saw this thread...

Individuals? Yes.

But as a society, those strong individuals who stick to their morals would die out by others who have no morals, leaving only the salvage and anarchy. (See: Lord of the Flies)

What do you mean by the question, "do morals have a purpose?" That's a very vague question and I can't really answer it with much confidence. Some people believe morals are there to keep society stable. Others believe morals are directly from their religion. Etc. I'm not sure what you mean by a "purpose" though. Again, it's very vague. I guess one could say a person's morals are to ensure that they are a good person (whatever a person's definition of good is). But in the situation you described, being 'good' is not more important than surviving. If being good prevents you from surviving, then of course being good is not a top priority.

I also don't see how you could label morals as a "bad joke." Obviously, morals exist. Will they be used in the extreme scenario that you presented? Probably not. But that doesn't mean the morals never existed. It just means morals take a place below survival and basic needs. I'm not seeing how they can be seen as a "bad joke." You should use more clear and specific language.

I don't think anyone believes morals overrides a person's basic needs for survival.

By "do morals have a purpose?" I asked whether they result in a better world (which I believe is supposed to be their main purpose), or if they can actually end up making more people suffer. Lots of people stricty live by morals to make the world a better place, but morals would, at least in my opinion, lose its purpose if following them resulted in more suffering (such as a family dying rather than one random person).

Well, you will need to ask Chris Nolan about the use of "bad joke". But I think it's supposed to reflect how you claim to live by morals but then simply ignore them "at the first sign of trouble", which is supposed to be laughable, yet boring. At least that's my take.

Edit: And I believe every religious person is at least supposed to let morals override their need for survival.

simply put: In some cases morals do serve a purpose and in others they do not.

Occasionaly yes, in some instances they are a bad joke, and I do believe that in a lot of areas they would be dropped at the first sign of major trouble.

Overall I'd say the Joker certainly would've had a good point with that statement if it was IRL.

Morals are a large part of what keeps people from eating one another, both figuratively and even literally under dire circumstances.

The statements made by Nolan's Joker were most likely culled/derived from the central theme of Alan Moore's Killing Joke in which the Joker explains his mental condition by having quite literally (from one memory even as he freely admits he is an unreliable witness to his own life story), the worst possible day he could ever have in which both his wife and unborn child are killed in a freak accident and he is strong armed into being the fall guy for a simple heist gone terribly wrong that he only agreed to participate in the first place to earn enough money from his cut to raise his child anywhere but the slum in which he and his wife were living. After the trauma of being in a shootout, being confronted by Batman for the first time (when he was just a simple failed comedian), and jumping into a chemical waste pool to escape what he thought God Himself had sent to punish him and finally his chemically induced skin bleaching/burning after almost drowning, he simply snapped.

His point was that one really bad day was all that any sane person was away from going completely batshit crazy as a defense mechanism.

The killing joke was that one crazy man, made insane by similar circumstances, was attempting to help another crazy man take a leap of faith on the road back to salvation.

It was less about morals and more about the glue that holds society together and allows people to function on a day to day basis despite all the unjust and often vile things that are both beyond our control and in other instances, are the direct result of our own actions.