So, is there a universal morality?
Sep. 21st, 2008 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerObviously not in the sense of a morality that applies to viruses and quasars and anteaters and glaciers. The only function of morality is in the interaction of sentient beings. That's what it's for.
I've spoken about individuals having moral compasses, and about religions having them. The basic notion of a compass is as something that points to something outside itself, a standard which is of some use in navigation. Whether we choose to recognise the fact or not, we all use our moral compasses as if that is what they were doing, as if there was something called "morality" beyond our own selfish wants and fears which we could use to govern our actions.
But if there is, as some say, no one right morality, or if right morality is forever beyond our understanding, then it doesn't matter. Nobody's compass is worth a damn. Whatever your particular group evolves to help it function more successfully is right, and when it comes up against another group's morality, the one which can destroy the other will be right, and so on. Morality is decided by the winners, like history.
I reject that absolutely. Whether morality comes from a god or gods, or from us, there is right and there is wrong. I don't agree with all the moral values of the society I live in, or any other society, but that doesn't make them all the same; some are closer to "right" than others, and I believe that "right" is attainable. And I believe that, however they may fall short in other respects, the religions of the world have been performing the important function of aligning people's moral compasses in some degree towards something that is "right" for a very long time. Each religion has a moral code of its own, and YES, damn it, they all have bits in with which we no longer agree, which we now see as unnecessary or downright wrong. They all stick pins in the compass to stop it swinging where they don't want it to. That does NOT make the religion itself immoral, or mean that it cannot contain anything of rightness, and I'm so tired of knocking down that particular straw man and seeing it bob up again.
A minimal "right" morality might start with something like:
An it harm none, do what you will.
Gosh, that sounds almost like it came from a religion.
There is, of course, much more to it than that. The various key words ("harm," "none," "do" and the rest) need to be defined, and one could come up with specific examples like "thou shalt not kill," "thou shalt not steal," and so on. (That sounds religious too.) There may even be exceptions, which would have to be dealt with, and one could mix in useful maxims like "two wrongs don't make a right," to prevent our ideally moral society, say, sanctioning the killing of someone who had killed someone else. And even as I add in these elements, I can feel the compass shifting, the swings of the needle narrowing, getting closer to true north.
If there is no true north, then killing and stealing and all manner of nastiness can be justified in terms of one's own notion of morality, and that is what many societies do, usually for strictly secular reasons. If there is no true north, then the dream of "an ethical society" is just that, a dream, because without some external justification, no moral or ethical principle can be maintained. It is in precisely this case that a religion of some sort comes into its own as a potential force for unity and moral consensus. An ethical society without a universal morality is an impossibility, unless the morality is imposed by appeal to some outside authority.
So, either there is a morality that is "right" for all human interactions, or there is a crying need for religion. One or the other. I'm happy to have both, but then, I'm a belt and braces kind of chap, or I would be if I could find any braces that fitted. I would not wish to live in a world with neither.
My next post will be about something else.
I've spoken about individuals having moral compasses, and about religions having them. The basic notion of a compass is as something that points to something outside itself, a standard which is of some use in navigation. Whether we choose to recognise the fact or not, we all use our moral compasses as if that is what they were doing, as if there was something called "morality" beyond our own selfish wants and fears which we could use to govern our actions.
But if there is, as some say, no one right morality, or if right morality is forever beyond our understanding, then it doesn't matter. Nobody's compass is worth a damn. Whatever your particular group evolves to help it function more successfully is right, and when it comes up against another group's morality, the one which can destroy the other will be right, and so on. Morality is decided by the winners, like history.
I reject that absolutely. Whether morality comes from a god or gods, or from us, there is right and there is wrong. I don't agree with all the moral values of the society I live in, or any other society, but that doesn't make them all the same; some are closer to "right" than others, and I believe that "right" is attainable. And I believe that, however they may fall short in other respects, the religions of the world have been performing the important function of aligning people's moral compasses in some degree towards something that is "right" for a very long time. Each religion has a moral code of its own, and YES, damn it, they all have bits in with which we no longer agree, which we now see as unnecessary or downright wrong. They all stick pins in the compass to stop it swinging where they don't want it to. That does NOT make the religion itself immoral, or mean that it cannot contain anything of rightness, and I'm so tired of knocking down that particular straw man and seeing it bob up again.
A minimal "right" morality might start with something like:
An it harm none, do what you will.
Gosh, that sounds almost like it came from a religion.
There is, of course, much more to it than that. The various key words ("harm," "none," "do" and the rest) need to be defined, and one could come up with specific examples like "thou shalt not kill," "thou shalt not steal," and so on. (That sounds religious too.) There may even be exceptions, which would have to be dealt with, and one could mix in useful maxims like "two wrongs don't make a right," to prevent our ideally moral society, say, sanctioning the killing of someone who had killed someone else. And even as I add in these elements, I can feel the compass shifting, the swings of the needle narrowing, getting closer to true north.
If there is no true north, then killing and stealing and all manner of nastiness can be justified in terms of one's own notion of morality, and that is what many societies do, usually for strictly secular reasons. If there is no true north, then the dream of "an ethical society" is just that, a dream, because without some external justification, no moral or ethical principle can be maintained. It is in precisely this case that a religion of some sort comes into its own as a potential force for unity and moral consensus. An ethical society without a universal morality is an impossibility, unless the morality is imposed by appeal to some outside authority.
So, either there is a morality that is "right" for all human interactions, or there is a crying need for religion. One or the other. I'm happy to have both, but then, I'm a belt and braces kind of chap, or I would be if I could find any braces that fitted. I would not wish to live in a world with neither.
My next post will be about something else.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-21 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 10:21 pm (UTC)I would like to point out, and hopefully it will be at least somewhat reassuring, that it isn't always the morality of the people with the biggest guns that wins. Morality works as a meme, and the guy who gets killed can infect his killers' society with his concept of morality before (or indeed as) he dies.
Trouble with that, of course, is it works both ways -- and corruption of morality can be passed around just as nonviolently.