What is morality? Most people pay only cursory attention to the somewhat intimidating philosophical concept called Morality. They erroneously presume that a precise examination of morality is the domain of philosophers.
Most people acquire a somewhat vague sense of morality, a sense of how we should or should not behave, from their parents, their social group, their political environment or their religious affiliation. They believe that they have a sufficiently clear understanding of morality to meet their needs and they do not try to analyze a subject that is seemingly fraught with contradictions.
Why should we analyze the concept of morality if every human being knows that it is immoral to kill other people or to steal the property of other people, except under special circumstances. As adults, we act intuitively with regard to morality. We absorbed fundamental aspects of morality during the early days of our youth. Do we really need to know more about morality?
Most persons have acquired the basic tenets of their morality from others and have accepted them as true and valid, without further questioning. However, how will we know if an unexamined idea, imposed on us by others, is actually true and beneficial to our well-being? Can we improve our lifestyle, including our interactions with others, if we enhance our understanding of the nature of morality?
Knowledge is power and the extent of our knowledge of Objective Reality directly determines our standard of living and our happiness. Our happiness is determined by our degree of alignment with Objective Reality, with truth, The more facts we have at our disposition, the more closely we can align ourselves with reality, the fewer conflicts we will have in dealing with reality and thus, the more happiness we will reap. How does morality really work?
The term Morality covers the vast arena of human conduct that examines our interaction with other human beings. Morality touches every aspect of our life, every moment of our life. Our morality governs all of our contacts with members of our family, with our co-workers, with our church, and with all aspects of our government. Morality determines our attitude to politics, to war and peace, to our children, to our parents and to spiritual questions such as life after death.
When we discuss morality we do not talk about an obtuse philosophical concept, we talk about the totality of our everyday existence. If we want to be effective in our interaction with other human beings, it behooves us to understand the concept of morality with all its nuances and implications. A clear understanding of morality is of extreme importance to all of our interactions with our environment and thus, to our attainment of happiness.
The more precisely our thought processes and our emotions are aligned with our environment, the more advanced will be our ability to avoid painful conflicts with reality and the more enhanced will be our ability to achieve happiness. We will not find much happiness if we do not understand the basic nature of man and the ebb and flow of human interactions as governed by human morality. If we do not fully understand what morality is and how morality affects human beings, we will encounter many conflicts in life
Human beings are constantly interacting with two principal spheres of their environment. The inanimate world, such as trees, houses, cars, is distinctly separate from the domain of human interactions. Morality does not concern itself with our inanimate environment.
Neither does morality refer to the interaction between man and other animals. Human beings have no social contracts with other animals. Other animals, aside from fellow human beings, exist solely at our pleasure. We kill animals for sport, or we eat them at our pleasure and convenience. If other animals, such as mosquitoes, bother us in any way, we poison them in vast numbers.
Morality concerns itself exclusively with interactions among human beings. The human concept of morality has been the subject of controversy and has provided fuel for many heated philosophical discourses during the entire range of human history. Morality provides the rules by which people love each other, fight with each other and interact with each other in every conceivable way.
Many people have killed each other, fighting over the alleged superiority of their respective morality, without a clear understanding of what they were fighting for. What is morality? In order to address this question, we have to go back in time about 4 billion years.
All living organisms, including bacteria, fish and human beings have developed from inanimate matter through the process of evolution. Evolution, and life itself, is due to the ability of a complex chemical compound to sense a threat to its continued existence and to react upon such impulse with an attempt to negate any incipient threat. We know this instinctive, automatic interaction with the environment as the survival instinct.
This instinct must be present in all living things and is the basic emotion from which all other emotions evolved. Over eons of time, man has enhanced the survival instinct imbedded in his genes, by developing complex emotions, such as love, hatred, hunger, despair, fear, joy and many other powerful feelings. The nerve centers dealing with these ancient emotions are physically located in the deepest layers of the human brain, particularly in our brain stem, our so-called reptilian brain.
Deeply imbedded instincts and emotions govern all animal behavior, including human behavior. However, during the past two million years of hominoid development, man has developed a new mental faculty that sets him aside from other animals. This ability superimposes rational, logical thought processes on our primitive emotions.
Our rational mind applies a thin veneer of logical thought processes over the raw emotions that govern our interaction with our environment. Emotions control the preponderance of basic human needs and behavior patterns. Emotions determine when we are hungry, when we feel sexually aroused, when we are afraid, when we feel a sense of well-being.
The evolution of our newly developed rational mind greatly facilitated interaction among human beings. Our instincts and our emotions still initiate the human sex drive but our rational mind imposes beneficial restrictions as to the circumstances under which the sex drive can be satisfied.
Unlike dogs, humans do not meet their emotional sex drive by copulating at street corners. Instead, humans go through a rational mating process that enhances the survival of the offspring that often results from sexual activity. Thus, rationality greatly enhances the survival and perpetuation of rational, intellectual beings.
Our rational mind has similarly enhanced many other human interactions, such as our ability to influence or to manipulate other human beings: We have learned how to cause other people to do what we would like them to do. All of human existence is a constant process of manipulating or influencing other persons with different degrees of subtlety. The degree of subtleness usually depends on the respective intelligence of the manipulator and the manipulated person.
The arena of morality is one of the primary spheres where human beings utilize their rational mind to manipulate other human beings. We may refer to another person as evil in order to prod him to mend his ways and to modify his behavior to our liking. We may also refer to another person as evil if we wish to prevent other persons from emulating him or associating with him.
We may even go further and refer to another person as evil in order to justify depriving him of his property, or to kill him. This manipulative strategy is an integral part of propaganda during periods of war or during religious conflicts.
We frequently obfuscate the term morality by the clever use of words. Morality becomes somewhat more transparent if we replace the emotion-laden word morality with the emotionally neutral synonym Code of Conduct.
In this context, it becomes clear that our discussion of Morality revolves around the manner in which persons conduct themselves in relation to other people. Morality pertains to concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral. Our morality tells us how to act under specific circumstances.
It is important to differentiate between morality and related terms such as ethics and legality. We may apply the term ethics synonymously with morality but this word may also refer to laws or to quasi-laws, such as the ethics of a particular profession. Some varieties of ethics may convey merely an informative context, such as the lack of ethics of a politician. Other designations of ethics have the force of laws. The ethics of the legal profession, if flaunted, can result in disbarment.
The term ethics can be ambiguous and it is best to avoid it in the context of moral issues. We should also avoid any potential confusion of morality with actual laws, either common laws or codified laws.
Morality and laws are definitely not synonymous: A specific act may be moral, valued and lawful in one country, while the identical act may be punishable by death in another country. This disparity in moral values is evident in many conflicts arising from divergent religions. Salman Rushdie discovered this truth when he published the "Satanic Verses".
A society of persons, in the sociological context, is the conglomeration of individual human beings who have come together for their mutual protection, welfare or communality of interests. All such individuals search for individual happiness in their own way, as is the nature of all individuals.
One person may wish to pursue a tranquil lifestyle; another person may be intent on accumulating wealth. In order to function smoothly, society must apply common denominators, common values that large numbers of people share, in order to achieve order, safety and predictability for all of its members. The emotional and physical well being of a society and its members depends on a common code of conduct, a common morality among all of its members.
It is not necessary for all members of a society to subscribe to the identical morality. However, it is important for all individuals to be aware of any differences in conduct that may exist among various groups. This consensus enables individuals to cope with, not only other individual members of their own society, but also with groups of non-conforming persons beyond their own society.
In the interest of the internal cohesion of a society, it is imperative that all individuals and groups within the society adhere to fundamental rules of moral conduct, which we will call the Three Natural Laws of Morality. We call these laws natural, not because they are immutable Laws of Nature, but to indicate that these laws have evolved from the innate nature of man.
The most fundamental law of the Three Natural Laws of Morality is the dictum: All persons within a society must refrain from killing or injure other members of the society, except in self-defense. This law is so simple and self-explanatory that all societies throughout human history have adopted it and vigorously enforce it. The other two natural laws of morality are set forth in detail in subsequent sub-chapters. These laws are concerned with the right of all members of society to be free from enslavement and to hold property.
In an attempt to consider all relevant issues associated with the all-pervasive impact of morality on human affairs, it is helpful to view this subject from several different perspectives. The basic issue that divides all discussions of morality revolves around the question, is morality an evolutionary human concept? Is Morality a relative and subjective concept, or is morality imposed on humans as an absolute, universal and objective imperative?
Originally Posted by Breedingvariety
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