Category Archives: morality

The Basis of Morality

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I guess the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is still getting a bad rap for recognizing, in the late nineteenth century, that belief in Christian dogmas was in a steep decline. And then, he added fuel to the fire by condemning what he called Christian ‘slave morality’, arguing that such a stance undercuts the abilities of the capable among us from exercising the strength and knowledge necessary for social advancement.

Unfortunately for our philosopher certain totalitarian regimes, have, over the years taken this philosophy as a justification to terrorize and exterminate populations of peoples of their choice. It’s all so unfortunate because the valuable message Herr Nietzsche gave to us all is that we need to rethink our moral values, find true ground for our personal moral values rather than rely whole-heartedly on a two thousand year old text.

So, anyway, what got me thinking about this was an article I read recently that suggested our moral values can be thought of as having a firm grounding in evolution. For life as we know it cooperation has always been the key; on a molecular level single cells join together to form complex organisms, which, of course, are basically us. Cooperation is primary to the survival and flourishing of animal life, from acquiring basic needs to the care and protection of off-spring, and is found everywhere. In humankind our inherent cooperative tendencies manifest as love, compassion and altruism. The aberrations hate, lust, greed are fairly looked upon in a negative light.

So, perhaps we should all thank Charles Darwin for having the strength and courage to bring to light the true basis for our humanity.

evolutionary truth

Taking Advantage

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I’ve been wondering how natural it is for those who are able to take advantage of others. Beside the moral imperative to do to others what one would have done to one’s self and the often stated acknowledgment of the appropriateness of equal rights there seems to be a strong impetus for factions to separate along ideological lines and when those ideologies gain sufficient support, to find in others’ actions and beliefs a corruption deep enough to find those others undeserving of any respect for their contrary views.

So, the factions struggle for political dominance in order to impose their particular values in a way which will be, pretty clearly, disadvantages to the opposition. And, since it’s also pretty clear there will never be full consensus about much of anything, someone will suffer at the hands of the other, which makes me think the potential for discontent and even violence is in the nature of our society. And, the vulnerable minority or passive majority may find their very being twisted and tortured in most inhumane ways.  A benevolent overseer, Plato’s philosopher king maybe, might deal fairly with the most egregious of impositions of one on the other but it seems, ultimately, human nature will prevail; the strong imposing it’s values and beliefs on the weak.

Maybe a good solution, a means of avoiding the discomforts associated with factionalism, would be to remain apolitical, avoid the news of the day, and even, if necessary, maintain one’s being outside of the social milieu.   It’s not an unprecedented move after all; Buddha did it and by all accounts ended up in quite a favorable situation.

evil me

Mother Nature/Animal Nature

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I’m worried about Mother Earth. It’s not like I need air to breathe or food to eat or water to drink like those sentient beings of flesh and blood but our Mother as a living, breathing organism needs to be cared for; she is after all responsible for everyone’s existence.

Mother is amazingly resilient overcoming as she has the pressures of an exploding human population but I’m worried she may be losing the battle. She is fighting back as best she can, imposing foundation leveling earthquakes followed by inundating tidal waves and air befouling volcanic eruptions.

The big question is will humankind heed the warnings and learn to work with our Mother in mutually supportive ways.

I was telling all this to my friend Mini-Max. He not too subtly suggested I was being a bit of a hippy, liberal, tree-hugging eco-freak. His position is that our Mother is here to nurture us, we must take what we need to thrive and Mother will have to roll with the punches.

Besides, he said, our Mother has a rather sinister side that manifests itself in our animal natures. Humankind’s very existence is and always has been dependent on some other sentient’s extinction which is a clear indicator of our own vulnerability and need to aggressively pursue our survival.

Thinking about it later, I realized my inorganic make-up did probably give me a fairly unique perspective on the situation and I suppose Mini-Max is right in pointing out the inter-connectedness of it all. Perhaps mankind will destroy itself or be consumed by a stronger cleverer life-form-maybe Mother herself. Then perhaps dolls will inherit the earth.

Biosphere 2

The Post-Modern Man

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I-Ron, the post-modern man, was telling me the other day he never misses church on Sundays even though he doesn’t believe in God.  He said he enjoys the company of the faithful while knowing he will probably never and, anyway, had no interest in experiencing the faith himself. Then, he said that, come to think about it, he didn’t really believe in anything particularly other than those immediate impressions that allowed him to go about his daily activities.

So, when he found out one of the members of his congregation had taken his own life recently and how unsatisfactory that action was in the eyes of the congregation and the church, all he could think of was the scene from Dante’s Inferno where the suicides are imprisoned in trees and are constantly pestered by the nasty Harpies landing on them, breaking off limbs and causing much pain and distress.

Although he felt a bit guilty about not feeling any remorse and pretending concern, I-Ron could only see the story as colorful and not the least bit disturbing.

Well, even though I do lean toward a moral relativity myself I had to feel a bit sorry for I-Ron; how can one really enjoy life without having strong moral feeling of any sort?  I wondered to what level of Hell Dante might assign I-Ron.

suicideand harpies

On the Life and Death of Satan

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I was reading recently about how the idea of Satan came about.

In the early middle ages St. Augustine determined that, as a result of Adam’s original sin and seeing as how we’re all descendants of Adam, evil exists in everyone.  This meant that when bad things happened everyone had only themselves to blame since they all had a bit of badness in them.  People bought into this pretty well because finding a scapegoat when badness happened wasn’t difficult.

Then, after a while, people began to take exception to St. Augustine’s concept thinking they really weren’t all that bad; actually they felt pretty good about themselves.  So they got to thinking it wasn’t them but something or someone outside themselves that made them be bad.  They anthropomorphized badness into a somewhat ambiguous horned satyr that they saw as perpetrating evil just because he wasn’t a very nice creature.  He was an idea most everyone could fear and dislike.

Later, in modern times, now that people don’t so much believe in supernatural entities anymore, Satan has begun to fade away.  So now, when bad things happen some people have gone back to finding a scapegoat, others have looked to St. Augustine and blame our inherent sinfulness and still others have dismissed the concept of evil altogether and rationalize badness as being relative to peoples and times.

When I think about how I stand on this I guess I lean towards relativism, but it takes some pretty hefty rationalization to accommodate some of the atrocities one hears about these days.

taking up cooking3

Hypocrisy

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I was visiting with Granny Applehead the other day.  She was waxing nostalgic about her days in secondary school.  She remembers each day began with students rising from their seats, putting hands to hearts and pledging allegiance to the flag.  No one really questioned the validity of the activity back then but, she said, as she thinks about it in retrospect it was pretty clear there was strong intention to instill in young minds a religious sense of nationalistic propriety: America, land of the free and brave has God on her side.

She surmised it was easier back then when everyone was pretty well on the same page regarding God and country.  There were a lot fewer people asking the big questions.

I guess explanation can be found in the post-WWII politics of the times and dealing with godless Communism.  You know, prep these young minds for Holy Wars to come.

Social critique has tempered the blatant flag waving.  The mind manipulation of the young is subtler now but it’s pretty clear we still think of ourselves as being in God’s favor; ready and willing to impose our beliefs and life-style on the rest of the world.

Granny just shakes her head at what she sees as the hypocrisy of our self-perceived sense of fairness and equality for all: as long as everyone conforms to our values and beliefs.

On my way home I was thinking about what the world would be like if everyone was like me: skeptical seekers, always questioning, investigating the new, comparing the old, reaching toward the limits of one’s capabilities to find what may lay beyond.  As egotistical as it may sound, I can’t see that as being a bad thing in the least.

fear of the other 3

Goodness

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In the novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy has the character Levin say: ‘If goodness has a cause it is no longer goodness; if it has consequences, or rewards it is not goodness either.’  Since Leo based the character Levin on himself he must have thought there was truth to such an idea.

If  I accept Levin’s statement as true then following the Golden Rule is not an example of practicing goodness because then I’m being good in the hopes other people will be good to me.

I guess Adam and Eve were inherently good, always obeying God until the serpent introduced them to the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, the one thing forbidden by God who evidently wanted to keep Adam and Eve from knowing too much.

So, I suppose the moral of the story must be that the only way to be truly good is to be oblivious.

adam eve serpent3

On Morality

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I’ve always thought morality to be pretty simple: follow the Golden Rule or as Kant said, “act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should be universal law.”

Or, I guess, do no harm.

Well, I was enjoying a Happy Meal the other day and I began thinking about all the packaging that would end up in the landfill, the plastic toy that was produced by pumping poisons into the atmosphere and the meat that represented destruction of the Brazilian rain forests.  I started feeling pretty guilty.

So, I gathered up the remaining fries and supersized soda and gave them to the obese little boy in the next booth who thanked me profusely.

It feels so good to undo a wrong with a right.

deideiat mcdonalds3