Morality Visited

3.23.05
I am starting this page as a place to hash out this whole morality thing. This is only a start of a developing document for me to work out my thoughts. Please leave comments and I will incorporate them into the document. Maybe we can get a discussion going. –Montag

What is morality? What is the nature of morality? I am not sure how to phrase the question. I would seem a useful area to delve into on this site for the reason that this site has become almost entirely propaganda. We (at least I) have been dealing with the politics perhaps too much; which wasn’t really intended to be the exclusive function of this so-called “blog”. Perhaps things will change, but I seem to get angered at least once a day about what our leaders are doing seemingly with impunity. Most of my disgust with their actions is that I see their actions as immoral.

Now I’ve heard, and I actually believe that morality has an important place in politics, or at least in informing us on what we should be doing as a civil society in terms of governance, and how we conduct ourselves in the world. I’m not convinced that our leaders are governed by any sort of moral compass. Even the leaders who start out as idealists, if they are able to rise to any advanced level of power, they succumb to the allure of power itself and answer to it even sometimes above morality. They may rationalize it by saying “How can I effect the changes that my morality dictates if I don’t have any power?” Eventually the pursuit of power becomes all-consuming and nothing ends up getting done in the way of ethical governance. (This is an aspect of the ‘Great Machine’ I like to refer to, that has developed by design; where the political apparatus has been flooded with money and corrupted the power-seekers. I digress.)

For us on the outside (of politics) looking in, our morality informs us more about what is going on in terms of how we interpret our leader’s actions, and how we conduct ourselves in terms of political activism, or simply how we decide to vote. There was great to-do after the last election about the (questionable) poll results that indicated that a lot of people listed “moral issues” as their impetus in voting. I don’t disagree with that finding, just the way in which it was framed: that one side’s issues were more moral than the other side’s and that is how they “won.” They are all moral issues. That is, all of our actions as a civil society have moral implications, such as using military or police might, using the force of law to govern, or even in negotiation, diplomacy and aid with others in the world.

This is why it might be useful to delve into and discuss morality as a subject.

IS MORALITY OBJECTIVE OR SUBJECTIVE?
My own sense of morality has changed lately, and it was kind of earth shattering and unsettling. I had always had an intuitive sense that morality is absolute; or if not absolute, at least objective. That is, that there was some sort of universal moral code embedded in every person, and that with a little reflection, anybody would instinctively know whether an action, or lack of action, or mode of thought, or use of power through action, words or thought control, etc. was moral or not; a sort of embedded knowledge of the true nature of good and bad, or right and wrong or whatever. I have come to think differently, and this shift in thought has been, as I said, unsettling.

I was thinking one day about morality and politics and power and why people do the things that they do even when the things seem totally abhorrent to my sense of right and wrong. I figured there was something more to this “morality” than I had fully considered. I tried to attack the problem with logic. I have to use my intuitive sense of logic as I lack the intellectual training of advanced college study, so bear with me if I’m not so logical. In fact, tell me where I fail the logic test.

First, as a humanist, I reject the idea that morality comes from any kind of higher power, which is a chink in the armor of my prior notion of an objective morality. Even allowing that there might be a higher power out there, I still hold a firm conviction that we possess free will; and free will certainly does not preclude a subjective morality. Furthermore, if there is no free will, then it is pointless to discuss morality, as we aren’t culpable for our actions if we do not truly have a choice. I would further suggest that a higher power (God) can be removed from the discussion of the nature of morality based on Bertrand Russell’s argument in his essay Why I am Not a Christian. I am going to butcher the quote for concision (click the link to read it in context):

..[N]atural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave.. [therefore] ..you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because.. ..”Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?” If you say that he did it.. ..without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law.. [and] ..if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law.. ..You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver.

Ok, so my morality doesn’t come from God, and I have free will. Accepting these still does not preclude an objective morality, since with free will I can act however I choose even though I know my actions may or may not be morally right.

Morality changes over time. As a civil society, our perceptions change with the times as does our morality. Maybe it has always been wrong to kill another person, but there are exceptions to the rule. Today, if you are in a war and following orders, or if you are defending yourself, it’s ok to kill somebody. In the past dueling to the death was acceptable. At one time it was acceptable to stone people to death for adultery. So over time our morality regarding killing has developed. In the future perhaps the acceptable parameters for killing someone will narrow further. The death penalty, for instance, may no longer be acceptable one day.

So if morality changes over time doesn’t that favor a subjective morality? I doubt that people were somehow deficient back then. They probably didn’t have lower IQ on average, nor were they just generally less moral. The difference must have to do with ease of survival, and the type of society they were living in. So it would seem that morality is molded to suit certain conditions. In the beginning our sense of morality must have been geared more toward individual survival; later it would become geared toward societal survival (there are still tribes in the world, maybe some factions in the mid-East that are still at this stage of morality); going forward morality will have to be geared toward global survival.

Other indications of subjective morality, that are yet another step away from the logical approach, can be observed in the actions of other people. I think it’s wrong to kill another person unless it is in self defense, while others think it is ok to kill to advance society’s interests; for example preemptive war (not self defense) or the death penalty.

There are plenty of examples that indicate that morality changes over time and that different people have different views of morality. This leads me to conclude, although not definitively, that morality is subjective.

Pages: 1 2 3