No Stupid Questions

But it does exist; preaching is persuading or guiding others to follow your own beliefs. If no distinction existed then we would be mechanically bound to preach what we believe, and we're not, so it's a choice.

Let me clarify: there is no such distinction where it pertains to determining the morality of an action. Preaching a value or holding it privately only impacts the perception others have of your transgression, not whether something is a transgression.

Everyone is a hypocrite to some degree.

Everyone who doesn't reexamine their morality to match their actual values and/or does not have a spine will inevitably become a hypocrite given enough time.

If when faced with a moral quandary you actually examine why you are finding yourself in this position of wanting to do something that, by your own moral standards at that point, would be evil, and you stick to an honest self-critique (as in, if it is indeed a moral failure you own it and correct your behaviour) you'll rarely stay a hypocrite for long.

In OP's case, what is happening is one such moment, and they've got nothing on either the re-examination nor the self-critique end. They're like looking to a crowd of strangers for moral absolution to do something they themselves consider immoral/evil.

That is the truest most cut and dry state of moral void, where the individual ignores their own conscience because they were given a pass to do so by someone else, as if anyone has such an authority.

It comes from the fundamental principle of harm minimisation

LMAO get that consequentialist bullshit outta here.

Consequentialism is a fundamentally useless moral framework, you would need to be prescient for it to be in any way useful to you and it can be used to justify literally any action regardless of held principles.

'Thou shalt not kill' is a biblical commandment, not a principle.

You are high if you think any human society was ever cool with murder, (the 6th commandment is more correctly translated to 'thou shall not murder', which tracks given how much killing happens to be not only fine but sanctioned by god himself in the old testament) given how it's almost definitionally wrong to murder.

Also even more ludicrous that you'd think this is somehow something introduced by the torah when we have mesopotamian written laws with explicit punishments for murder and even unjust killing regardless of motive or premeditation.

Humans simply don't want to be killed willy-nilly, this predates the written word and possibly actual coherent language.

It's morality for babies

You're the one who brought in consequentialism, don't blame me for making this conversation basic.

Morality is never that simple.

Nor did I ever state it was.

You think I am claiming it's that simple because you seem to think I'm coming from a place of disagreement with the OP and that's why I argue they're a moral failure.

The problem is that OP is in a place of moral failure to themselves, which is why they're asking for moral license to break their principles instead of doing the arduous work of self correcting, whether by shedding a moral principle they don't actually believe in and accepting their past self being wrong, or by standing firm and accepting the inconvenience that comes from sticking to their principles, and that their present self is wrong.

Regardless of your moral framework, this is the peak of amoral behaviour, as it renders any moral framework fundamentally optional and useless when faced with outside approval.

It makes you a definitionally amoral agent because not only are you susceptible to peer pressure (which is always true to some extent) but you actually seek it out whenever sticking to your principles becomes inconvenient enough, which means you are only ever going to be moral whenever it's convenient, which is just as good as never being moral in the first place.

OP is like an alcoholic looking for enablers, when they know they should be calling their sponsor.