Moral Origins

In the last two posts, I argued that the Ten Commandments and the Christian and Hebrew Bibles are really not the origins of our moral values, although they are sometimes cited as rhetorical support for what we already believe is right or wrong.

The Ten Commandments Fail

The Ten Commandments fail as a source of morality in the 21st century because (1) they focus so heavily, in terms of total wordage, on how to properly worship and respect God instead of how to deal with other people, (2) they fail to prohibit several key human relations violations, such as violent assault short of murder, sexual assault, dishonesty other than maligning your neighbor, and disrespect toward anyone other than your parents, (3) some of them (the wordiest) are almost universally ignored or regarded as relatively trivial, such as the graven image commandment, not working on the sabbath, and not cursing, (4) they are blatantly sexist, treating a wife as the property of her husband alongside his ox and his ass, and (5) except for the very wordy first four commandments (three in the Catholic version), which deal with respect for God, they have virtually nothing to say that isn’t already a part of the common social contract of any reasonably civilized society of any religion. You can’t kill, steal, screw your neighbor’s wife, perjure your neighbor, fail to honor your parents, or even covet something that belongs to your neighbor. Other than that last, which prohibits a state of mind rather than an act, these are just an incomplete and rather arbitrary subset of the rules of conduct in any society, regardless of religion. Not useful as a moral code. See Post # 6, October 27, 2006: The Ten Commandments: A Moral Code?

The Bible? Nope

As for the Christian Bible as a whole, it fails to convey any reasonably consistent moral philosophy, primarily because it combines two sets of documents — the old and the new testaments — that have very little in common in terms of moral philosophy. I won’t here repeat the discussion of the gross inconsistencies spelled out in Post #7, November 3, 2006: The Bible as a Source of Moral Values. The outcome is that the old testament, which is also essentially the Hebrew Bible, is unacceptable as a moral guide for today, although the new testament isn’t bad. But Christians don’t admit to selecting some parts of the Bible and rejecting other parts as the foundation of their morality, because their religion doesn’t usually allow such arbitrary selection. And that isn’t how they come up with their morality, anyway.

The truth is that the moral values of Christians, like those of atheists and adherents to other religions, generally come from inside them, not from some arbitrary incomplete selection of Bible passages. Christians merely cite as a “source” whatever they find in the Bible that conforms with their internal sense of right and wrong. In general, most modern Christians find that the new testament, more than the old testament, expresses a moral philosophy that comports with their internal moral compass. The Bible is actually a versatile rationalizing tool, consistent with many divergent sets of moral values, not the source of a single consistent set of moral values. Refer to Post #8 for a more compete discussion of that.

Compassion is One Source of Morality

Where did our individual internal moral senses come from, then? I propose that there were two basic sources. The first was discussed extensively in Issue 2: Economic Liberals and Premature Birth, and Issue 3: The Love Potions: Oxytocin for Her, Vasopressin for Him. In a nutshell, when the full development of flexible brainpower required that offspring be introduced to the world while their neural connections were still being formed, and therefore when they were not yet equipped to fend for themselves, the parents, and especially the mothers, had to acquire, for the first time in the history of the world, a deep parental love that would compel them to protect and nurture these worthless creatures that the mother had expelled from her body. The neurotransmitters oxytocin and vasopressin were “invented” by the genes to accomplish that behavioral manipulation, and they, together with the brain structure that utilizes them, were then expanded in scope of application when pre-human animals formed social groups, because that emotion of love, or “compassion” in its wider and less intense form, became a useful social lubricant that helped individuals to care for one another and minimize conflict. Thus, compassion, originally invented to permit “premature birth,” became one important element of our morality. We don’t hurt one another without good cause because even the thought of someone else being in pain causes us emotional pain by proxy. That’s the effect of empathy, which is the basis of compassion, and it started as maternal love.

As pointed out in Issue 1: Kinds of Liberals and Conservatives, the modern economic liberal, exemplified by the bleeding-heart liberal who champions the poor and powerless, is motivated in large part by such compassion. (I exclude from the ranks of the true economic liberals those who lobby for liberal policies, but for self-interested reasons rather than moral reasons.)

Rules of the Game Provide Another Source

The second source of our internal moral sense, I believe, also arose as a result of the formation of social groups, but in a very different way. Social groups can be very advantageous to their members, but to function effectively they require some rules of conduct, because we can’t rely upon compassion alone as a social lubricant. Conflict among members must be minimized, cooperation must be fostered, and there must be a way to ensure that each member does his or her part in working together. Those who would be free riders must be corrected or expelled.

Simple rules (a “social contract”) must be agreed upon, implicitly if not explicitly, and there must be a mechanism to enforce them, perhaps as informal as a whack upside the head. As the society grows in both membership and in variety of functions, the simple and informal evolves toward increased complexity and formality. The increasingly flexible and adaptable brain is put to use for learning the rules and, more importantly, how to work within those rules to advance one’s own interests without engendering resentment and possible punishment or social ostracism. In other words, how to win friends and influence people. Social skills are developed, including knowing when to be truthful and when to lie, when to be assertive and when to be sweet and nice, when to cooperate and when to compete, and generally how to get what you want without engendering retribution from others.

The tension between selfish behavior (serving one’s own interests) and prosocial behavior (serving the interests of the social group) lies at the root of morality. The morally “right” or “good” is usually defined as the unselfish, prosocial behavior, and selfish behavior is regarded as “wrong” or “bad.” Individuals usually dance back and forth between the prosocial and the selfish, and commonly like to call attention to themselves when they are on the prosocial side and try to avoid being noticed when they occupy the selfish side. Social skills, again. Some are better at it than others. The key to success is to pursue one’s self interest aggressively, but either within the rules or close enough to the rules to avoid getting whacked upside the head too often. It helps if you are also good at managing your public image.

It can be pointed out that, as also discussed in Issue 1, the modern economic conservative, exemplified by the advocates of relatively unrestrained free enterprise and the virtues of competition, typically defend the methods of the socially skilled and successful, and decry efforts to keep them from “taking advantage” of the less successful.

While none of us are pure types — we all exhibit a variety of characteristics, although in different proportions — nevertheless there is a clear distinction between the motivation of the ideal compassionate economic liberal, who behaves prosocially because of empathic pain-by-proxy when others are hurting, and that of the ideal socially-skilled economic conservative, who behaves prosocially by competing within the rules defined by the society.

The Conscience

This discussion suggests a question for next time: Where does a sense of conscience fit in? You can’t discuss a moral sense without recognizing the role of conscience.

Next Friday. Same time, same station.