Mistaking self-righteousness for morality

Recently read a brilliant essay by Joan Didion and sharing a few excerpts-

"I followed my own conscience. "I did what I thought was right. How many madmen have said it and meant it? How many murderers?--what could be more arrogant than to claim the primacy of personal conscience?

You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code what is "right and what is "wrong, what is "good and what "evil.

Of course we would all like to "believe in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home.

It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with "morality. Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble."