The Rise and Fall of Morality

What's the point of life..?

Well, if you buy into the currently advertized model - it's all about living a moral life, or at least as near to one as you can, praying all your sins be little ones, and popping your clogs with a clean conscience. To be whisked away to heaven for a eternity of mana sandwiches and ambrosia on toast.

There's a catch however - If Saint Peter is any kind of lawyer, he can get us all on technicalities... Heaven is empty.

"What..? You haven't killed anyone..? - Did you sell your house and send the proceeds to Africa..? - Thought not - Down you go sunshine."
"Never lied..? Even when your poor, recently bereaved Aunt Mable came round for Christmas dinner wearing that wig..? And asked you what you thought..?"
"Never stolen..? Weell what about that pirate DVD you watched once, round at your friends house..? And, can I have a look at your I-Pod..?"

Universalize any of these morals, and it gets stupid quickly. The "thou shall not kill"ers start not taking antibiotics, in case they bop some poor innocent bacteria on the head. The "Thou shall not steal"ers start worrying seriously about the whole question of 'ownership'. The "Thou shall not bear false witness"ers sew their lips shut, and cut off their fingers just in case they point them in the wrong direction. Impure thoughts - get a fucking lobotomy. We are bound to fail if morality is inviolate.

Might as well throw up your arms, say "Screw this", and decide to blow the morality test big rather than knock yourself out only failing it a little: Shoot your neighbor, shag his wife, steal his ass, deny the whole thing ever happened, and work only on Sundays making really funky idols for the masses to worship, whilst swearing... Loudly.

"But Tab, Tab - God told us it's wrong..."

Then - Where is the divine bugger anyway..? He's very coy, at least since the Old Testament finished - you couldn't go through a week without an Angel coming down and knocking off you firstborn in those days... :roll: Divine graphetti everywhere, burning bushes, rains of frogs and kitchen-sinks - God was an everyday occurence. Then suddenly - Poof!!! Gone. "Seeya folks - Here's my wishy-washy son, be nice to him... Oh, er, you seem to have nailed him to a piece of wood."

Perhaps we pissed him off.

Let's face it - God is just our Dad. And morality is just a tricked out version of "Hey kid - you play nice now - or I'll whup your ass." Perhaps with the promise of ice-cream thrown in somewhere.

All these donkeys and sticks and carrots - It seems a very "Childrens' starter-pack" meaning of life to me. When do we graduate to the adult version..?

Let's find a new meaning to life, one that requires a little more of us, one that requires us to do something other than "not fuck up too much before we die".

So - Where did this bloody morality come from anyway..?

Like all things - it came from necessity.

You don't see animals moping around the forest, with their heads in their paws, worrying about what a bad creature they are. They are such that they cannot do 'bad' - the evolved system of behavioural checks they have is rigid, pre-programmed in their genes right out of the chute. Most, if not all animals are, by their own criteria, extremely 'moral'.

Being a member of a co-operative species in competition with others is all about group cohesion - about 'trust'. And you cannot trust what you cannot predict. And what you cannot trust, you really have no choice but to attack, just in case it decides to try to kill you on a whim. A species without a predictable behavioural 'morality' is by force - an isolated one. Which is okay as long as you don't reproduce sexually. So then in any social species there are universal, hard-wired reactive behaviour patterns, specific to any given interactive stimuli and not deviated from. An internal morality. Predictable, trustable. A morality of action, not word.

In a lower species, the number of behavioural responses to a given stimuli is few. Insects - in mating rituals - responses are pretty much limited to "Fuck them" or "eat them", or both.

As we go up the complexity scale, the number of instinctive responses gets bigger - rejection, acceptance, alliance, submission, physical conflict, domination displays, bluffing, escape... But all remain within the scope of the animals in question to instinctively predict. To trust. And group cohesion is maintained.

Higher still, and creativity comes into play, behaviours can be modified, strategy applied, even whole new sets of behaviour can be discovered and learned, and passed down through the generations. No wonder that 'intelligence' also evolves with this creativity - a greater set of behavioural variables requires more processing power to predict.

Then we reach us. The species whose creativity for behaviour finally outweighed it's ability to predict responses instinctively in others. The internal handbook ran out of pages. How then to trust..? How then to maintain group cohesion..? Tribal cohesion..? Racial cohesion..?

Easy - a communicated, externalized, abstract, and most importantly - universally accepted and enforced - morality. Rules of acceptable behaviour. Obey or be isolated, obey or be killed.

There was no other way... Then.

Good, old-fashioned, common-sense morality.

In these days of cheerful intellectuality we run into trouble with things like "Thou shalt not kill" we procrastinate about definitions, agonize over vegetarianism... But in the old days, when morality was first invented, I presume it was assumed that everyone would mentally add a clause or two - "Thou shalt not kill [another human] [of our social group] [without a damned good reason]" - perhaps the only real morality boiled down to "Thou shalt not disturb the integrity of the group." Hell, perhaps it still does.

All our current couplets of "Thou shalt - " these days miss their unspoken counterparts:

Say there's a fight going on, someone's winning, and someone's losing, losing badly. Who do you shout "Don't kill him" to..? The victim..? Or the guy who's doing the 'beating-to-death' bit..?

The active component of course. Where are the moral guide-lines for the victim..? The ones that might have stopped him becoming such..? As it stands now morality is nothing but an admonishment to those who are on the brink of commiting an 'evil' act. To anyone naturally 'good' aka 'victimish' aka 'integral in society' morality is no guide at all. In those days - "Thou shalt not kill/steal etc..." was a new idea.

In those days it was probably taken for granted that the inverted form was just common sense.

The inverted form of "Thou shall not kill" is "Thou shalt protect your life". In those days, it was almost expected for somebody to try and kill you at some point. The inverted form of "Thou shall not steal" is "Thou shalt protect what you value". In those days, you only truly owned what you could defend. The inverse of "Thou shalt not covet." Is "Thou shalt not parade objects of desire lightly." In those days - jewelry, fine clothes, a nice wife - meant something other than just "I've got a shitload of cash and a nice personality" it also meant "And if you try to take it sunshine, I've got the power to to turn your ass into mincemeat." Just like the poisonous tree-frog, with its garish colours - the visible signs of wealth were also a warning. Nowadays, they just shout "Please mug me." because we have forgotten the inverted form.

Pre "Thou shalt not kill" - there was no murder, only a failure to protect your life. Killing your would-be murderer was a virtuous act. Pre "Thou shalt not steal" there was no theft, only a failure to protect what you valued. Thwarting the 'thief' was a virtuous act.

Why then - did we forget the older, inverted forms..? Because they became too taxing to support. Say "Thou shalt protect what you value" is the only moral. Then to be moral what does it entail..? A little self-defence. In the dawn of morality, this was easy: I have a club and some muscles, you have a club and some muscles. I have allies to hand, you probably less so. I know the lay of the land, you probably don't. The advantage was likely to be to the 'victim'. But then the population expanded, different social groupings - now expanded to tribes, began to bump up against eachother, competition for resources increased, and therefore the frequency of infringements upon your "circle of protection" became more frequent, and more well armed. So people built stockades, strongholds; started employing personal guards... The moral began to become unworkable. The amount of effort expended in protection became prohibitive.

So the Moral inverted, and the onus of morality fell upon the violator. "Oi!! You!!! - yes you tough-guy - THOU SHALT NOT KILL !!!"

But then - how do you get some thug with a 3-foot sword and a bad attitude and no real fear of death to obey this new-fangled morality..?

A-ha... You invent religion.

God says so.

So, you can't keep Thug in check with his Dad, because he probably killed his Dad over the last plate of stew last Winter. You can't even check him with a Tribal-Leader, because the headman is only human, and perhaps on Thug's to-kill list somewhere near the end. The ancestor-worship bit is no good, cos they were all great-warrior types, whom thug-boy is trying to outdo with his hair-trigger temper. The whole Shamanistic business isn't cutting the mustard either - the shaman's really only a healer/curser, and thug is pretty determined not to die in bed. Nope - to keep Thug in the comunal tent, pissing out, rather than the reverse, we'll need something a little more impressive.

A God, or rather a whole bunch of them - The AEsir, Jupiter, Mars and Quirnius, the Greek Pantheon, Shiva - you name it. Big, loud and not to be fucked with. Thug respects that.

So - With the new morality now in place, the carrot of some kind of afterlife in a really nice place, with girls in skimpy night-gowns, dangling over the populaces' heads, and the stick of eternal damnation in some dark dingy cave with fire and guys with pointy sticks and too much time on their claws hovering above their bottoms, your group/tribe/fledgling nation can expand.

"You're just making this up Tab."

Okay - let's get serious. Why would a group with a prohibitive morality promoting group cohesion - and a religion to enforce it, fair better than one without..?

Quick answer - conservation of energy. Say you've an expanding group, and resource problems. Competition within the group heightens, niggling disagreements blow up into fueding, the whole group's cohesiveness is falling apart - the headman saying "Cut it out folks" isn't working like it used to. You begin to need 'police' to impose some order. That takes energy from the tribe en-toto, and expends it internally. Wastes it. It also drives a wedge between the fledgling 'state' and its populace - no-one likes some guy in a uniform telling them not to do what they want to do. Okay, it works, but it's inefficient.

Better to have the group's aggression channelled externally, without an active expenditure of energy - ie: get them to curb their own behaviour with rules handed down by the almighty [and bloody terrifying] Gods. This also gives the headguy the luxury of still being 'one of the guys' - at any time he can throw up his hands and say: "Hey - I understand mate - you wanna decapitate your neighbor and shag his daughter... But, tch - the Gods don't like it - What can you do..?". The same benefits and more of a police-state, with almost zero effort, a few sacrificed bullocks, big deal. As an added bonus, your warriors all believe they'll go to 'heaven' - and become ravening embodiments of destruction, with no fear of death - just point them at something, and watch them flatten it, possibly just with their teeth. Afterall - the preists can be generous with heavenly blessings, they're amazingly cheap.

Which group, in competition over time, will do better..? Yes - I thought so.

So anyway, back to business. You've expanded, twatted all your irreligious neighbors - time to settle down a bit. Time to change your God for a bit of a calmer one. Monotheisim. Morality is already well established in the group-psyche, and passed down from father to son, no need anymore for constant stick-waving. Just so long as everyone believes without question in the existance of God.

But then we went and fucked that up, didn't we..? Us philosophery-types, started asking the big questions. Didn't get any answers, but simply asking them was enough. Religion's like Fight-Club - the first rule of God-Club is you do not talk about God-Club. You just accept it on faith. Back in the old days some guy in tweed asking "So - do you really think there is a God..?" Would have got the abrupt answer of "Die Heretic Die!!!" and a free-cremation.

The philosophers chipped away at the concept, and the scientists got on with the business of explaining the big, scary, unknown things. Along the way they found no soul, a whole bunch of dinosaur bones, astrophysics and lotsa neat stuff. They also out-performed God on the mundane-miracle front. They did so well that people stopped asking the priest why-questions, and just took it on faith that the white-coats would work it out and stick it on the discovery channel sooner or later.

The unknown gone, religion staggered. God's existance cast into doubt, it fell. When priests started buggering the choir-boys, it rolled over and died.

Morality lost its stick, and technology has better carrots.

So now, we have a huge power vaccuum in the West at least - a big God-shaped whole in the collective mind. What is filling it..? In the USA, I'd say it's the popular-media. Bono, Angelica Jolie et-al are the modern-day pantheon, doing good works. The Dalai-Lama..? - He's just some weirdo in a Yak-Hat. Right and wrong for the kids of the states has become 'what's in' and 'what's out'. 50cent says: "Pimp out yo bitch, take a few caps in yo ass, walk wiv a limp, become a rap-star etc. "Buy kids, buy - you deserve it, you're special..."

In England - It's the government, cameras on every street-corner, all-seeing. Monitoring of cell-phones, all hearing. Identity cards... All knowing. You must admit, they're well on the way toward omniscience - Be good, big brother is watching you...

I almost miss the big-white-beardy-guy upstairs... Don't you..?

So - What's left..? Imposed morality rose out of a need to shunt human behaviour into a narrow enough range to enable trust and group-cohesion, then emphasis shifted to the current format and religion rose to give it some context and energy-free enforcement. Now religion is in decline, and imposed morality losing its hold further with each new generation.

It's a bit scary, but I think perhaps, if Humans are to evolve further, both individually, and as a society, it needs to go.

The fine-print of accepting current morality.

Current morality's a very negative credo, a whole bunch of don'ts, and very few do's. Here's the first pitfall: Someone says to you "Thou shalt not kill." You say "Er - gee, okay." What have you done..? You've admitted that you have it in you to kill someone. You've admitted you're a could-be murderer. No-one says "Thou shalt not kill" to a Chiwawa, because it's incapable of killing, well not unless it takes some serious steroids and buys a gun.

But - Simularly, no-one says "Thou shalt not kill" to a shark either, because that would be stupid. Sharks kill stuff, that's what they do, and that's all they can do. No choice. One thing you can say for morality, it at least accepts that the recipient has the power of choice. Choose to kill, choose not to kill.

The trouble is, it then tries to take that power of choice away. If you accept "Thou shalt not kill" then you allow the choice to kill or not to kill to be lifted out of your hands. You'll never know what you would have done, if left to your own devices.

There is a 'do' - "Do unto others as you would be done unto you." This is a cheeky one too. It looks quite benign, just sitting there, but it's not. Say I'm a masochist, and I beat you to within an inch of your life, as far as I'm concerned, I just did you a good turn.

"Do unto others" tries to make you admit that we are all pretty much the same, what's good/bad for you, is exactly what is good/bad for me. It assumes a homogenity - a conformity to an imposed form. What's so bad about making us all the same..? Well - taken very literally by someone with a lot of power and no brain - It leads to holocaust. If all humans are essentially the same, then differences in form and capability all become comparable, and some humans become demonstatively better than others. And if some humans are better than others, in times of crisis... You are tempted to ditch the crap ones. Wether we like it or not, most of the sources of conflict in the world are over resources - and these trifling logistical problems could be solved in a trice if we "Quality-controlled" the entire human population. You could even rationalize it on balance as a "reducement of total suffering" and erect monuments to the noble sacrifice of those that failed the grade...

Each moral accepted blindly as right, is a puppet string - accept enough and you eventually become, like the shark bound by it's genes, just another organic machine, bound by memes.

A Pinnochio, when you could have been a real boy.

Not good. So, what can take the place of imposed morality, to keep us all from going social-supernova..? But still allow us freedom to evolve individually.

Might 'Might make right'..?

Short answer - no. Although becoming a "might makes right'er" is the completely understandable reaction of someone who is fairly confident in the logic of their worldview and assertive or powerful enough to impose that view on others (for their own good of course), it is doomed. It's utopian for a start - and one man or woman's utopia is always hell to someone else, more likely, a lot of someone elses - every utopia ever imaginable will always end up having a bunch of big guys with equally big sticks in their hands going through the crowd asking "Hey you are happy, aren't you..?" It is the human condition to always want more, or less, or something else entirely from what they are given. Utopias are by definition inflexible, static, which is anathema to us.

Also the "Might makes right'er" isolates him or herself. They fall into the 'I am better than you' trap. And to be able to stomach the unconscionable things they will find they have to do to impose their will and maintain it, they will find they only widen the gap between themselves, and those they wish to lead, kicking and screaming by necessity, to a 'better place'. The masses they lead will become inhuman to them, and what once was an rationalized act of almost 'noble' self sacrifice, a 'If someone round here has to be a bastard, I'll [sigh] do it...' for the future betterment of all... Becomes only an exercise in the automatic preservation of power - Because the 'might-makes-right'er' has become a species of one, and cannot find anyone they deem worthy to pass the reigns too. And so rather than relaxing his grip, he ever-tightens it... For the good of the people of course. A vicious circle.

And finally, it is the tyrant's folly to expect gratitiude from those he oppresses. And his vice to crush those who express discontent.

So where does that leave us..? Alone with only ourselves to govern.

Did I say alone..? Silly me.

Body Vs. Mind

However much we may like to believe we are purely our own creations; we are only ever half -right, if that.

Complexity from simplicity - your face and form, the way you move, your tone of voice - govern most of the initial reactions of others, which in turn effects your personality either positively (people like you/are attracted to you) or negatively (people drive you from the village with flaming torches). The myolination of your neurones and overall connectivity of your brain effect your 'intelligence' and memory, which in turn effects the schools you (can) attend, the people you mix with if education is streamed, the jobs you can apply for later... Fine motor control, balance, all geneticly initiated and limited, sex-drive, potency, even sexual-inclination to an extent... All genetically hard-wired. Very well - the fine detail is left up to you, and what you do, but the broad brushstrokes are already there from birth.

It seems customary to proclaim body and mind are one, dualism is out of fashion, but I think a constant war is waged between the mandates of the flesh and the dictates of the mind. A symbiosis sure, but one of dynamic equilibrium, a Dolittle's 'push-me-pull-you' tug of war.

At some point in our evolution our genetic puppet-masters let slip many of our strings, but many they still have in reserve. Despite our much celebrated rationality, our ironically named 'free-will' the checks and stop-gaps and spurs to behaviour that we see operate clearly in our furry-friends remain, dillute perhaps, quiescent - but still powerful - leviathans beneath the little boat we sit and think on. We ignore them at our peril. Our emotions are our vestigal tails, by which our genes, with their core precepts of self-preservation and replication try to tug us along the age-old path of life.

Despite the fact that we as a species have overrun the world, we still wish to make more people. I've helped make two. Why..? Why really..? Ego..? "I'm so fucking great I must copy myself..?" :lol: Yes and no - But really it never crossed my mind not too. Some people do choose not to procreate - they are met with blank looks of total uncomprehension. It's near anathema to us, not just as humans but as lifeforms. Logic be damned, that overcrowding will eventually bring disaster if we cannot get off this mud-ball be ignored - we must have kids.

The raw, unrefined emotions, anger-lust-fear - in animals drive and facillitate reflex action with nothing to mediate it. No separation. The emotion and the action are concurrent and essentially the same thing. An angry snake does not think, it strikes reflexively - no flexibility, a hardwired path between perception-reaction. And these are still our default settings. We only learn to warp and dampen and control them as we grow, but we never fully escape them. When we get tired, the beast snaps at those we love. I once had a class of 8-year olds, early in my career as a teacher, and after the umpteenth time of telling the same kid not to come up to me while I was teaching, and he came up again - I found my hand had slapped him, hard, without any conscious thought, premeditiation or awareness of it was going to happen before the sound of it was already in the air. I was 29, he was barely out of shorts.

We are paint-thin.

Should we even attempt to go against our small gods; now that we have deposed the big..? They bring us nice things afterall, love and affection, friendship and tears of joy. They bless us with euphoria in accomplishment and boundless bliss in physical endevour. All we have to do is keep them happy. Not deviate too far from the plan.

Mr. Spock or Dr. Mackoy..? Cold logic or compassion..? What is it to be really human..?

Aladdin's Path.

By happenstance or 'design' Life-plural gave us a mind, with the potential of free-will, but it did not fully trust us not to go against it's prime-directives. So it hedged its bets and left in place control mechanisms that though not fully binding are hard for us to overcome without constant self-awareness and control. In this way it ensures that those that are 'lazy', or simply content to follow the path of least resistance through their spans, keep the species alive, whatever others may employ their power of choice to do.

Gene-led behavioural/emotional checks and goads try to limit our range of expression and action, conserving a predictability of thought and deed with the 'goal' of promoting group cohesion/trust, and indirectly its fecundity.

The creative mind attempts to refine and diversify thought and deed, with the goal of promoting individual effectiveness, and only indirectly, the fecundity of the group.

Through this partnership we have covered all the Earth. And before you quibble - Stuff the cockroaches.

But now things are changing, and changing fast, and genes are glacial compared to mayfly meme. With technology's Daedalus wings we fly ever closer to the sun - like it or loathe it - our mundane flesh is simply chemistry and even physical immortality may not be far from our grandchildrens' grasp. Will we be able to afford our nostalgic lovers, our little haters, our little discriminators and intolerators then..? Can we even afford them now..?

What promoted cohesion in isolated and genetically-related groupings, allowed free-reign in the majority, will only promote dissention, fear and terminal conflict when all groups are shoulder to shoulder. A Godless rationality, a cold-hearted determination to turn the other cheek even when the last was gouged to the bone and still hold out your hand, even when your entire being screams out for revenge, are all that will save us in the crush.

We must teach this to our kids, and by example to the kids of those who would hate us, whatever the cost.

Those that would seek to fully explore the potential of what we are capable of becoming, walk the thin line of Aladdin's path, temptation abundant on either side. They are almost impossible to resist, but sooner or later, if we are to evolve at all further as beings we must all set our eyes firmly on the lamp, and the genie who may well turn out to be ourselves unstoppered.

We must cast off the bonds of mindless love and hate that at once make us human and at once damn us to becoming nothing more.

Individual realization through community.

All sounds a little cold so far, doesn't it..? Don't worry - it's not all bad. What is part of the problem is also part of the solution. We are an animal, despite our airs, red in tooth and claw - but luckily, we're a pack animal, and cannot realize ourselves individually without contextualization from our fellow monkies. Without equal mirrors in which to follow the changes from without, there can be no changes from within. Without trust there can be no true dialogue between individuals to facillitate realization, so if we are to put only ourselves at the heart of ourselves, we will come to accept that we must put others there too, and self-regulate our actions with this goal in view... In a perfect world at least. :lol:

Love..? Love will still exist, but it will be the mature kind, the kind that is peacefully quiet, the kind not given to empty romantic display, the kind that does not demand constant re-affirmation to support its shortcomings...

The kind that lasts.

And what of God, divested of the go-between of religion..?

God's no good to us. He doesn't have any face at all. If he exists he can't show himself to us. If he doesn't exist he can't show himself to us. If/When we meet him we will do so as equals. We must have no judge but ourselves. God does not matter.

Only we matter - each and every one of us. It is this we must understand.

Epilogue - Tab'sWorld™

I hope none of you have been reading this in expectation of a miraculous punchline... Some grand scene where Tab staggers down from the mountain-top bearing a newly-chiseled 10 commandments - what wisdom I have I cannot give to you, that's the point. Take a leaf from Depeché Mode and be your own personal Jesus, there are no saviors for you other than the one in the mirror.

I can tell you what's worked for me so far.

To quote Dune: "Fear is the Mind-Killer": I was a fearful child, fearful of travel, of heights, of strangers, of strange places and woefully asocial. Over time what I feared I sought out, and faced alone. Now I am free. Action not words, action not thought.

In learning another living tongue in its cultural context I learned how the language you think in effects you as a person, as a race. In teaching my own tongue I learned that words are the mundane flesh of ideas, and it is our duty in communication to lend them an irresistible beauty. In living somewhere else entirely I learned the true worth of my place of origin - One piece of soil is as good as another. One man or woman, irrespective of colour or credo, is as good, or as evil as another.

I believe very much that to truly be able to stand on your own two feet that at some point in your life you must take a leap. A blind stage-dive into the world, without any way of knowing wether the crowd will support you or let you fall. Thanks to my dive I now know that I can survive and prosper anywhere in the world. I am at once homeless, and perfectly comfortable, wherever I may lay my hat.

I also believe that you must at some time put away childish things, the sooner the better. By that I mean re-invent yourself as an adult, whatever your age. This is not easy. Your friends carry your old form in their heads, so you must put them aside. Your parents carry what you will be in their expectations, so you must smash their dreams. Your surroundings echo with your childhood cries, so you must travel somewhere where you cannot hear even their whisper.

Naked into the wasteland you must go.

...Continued...