...At least of the sort I saw yesterday. While being on an intercity bus, I had a neighbour, a girl from high school or something of the sort. She was reading a book. A schoolbook. Looked like some sort of religion thing really, put into "objective" terms.
I was taking a peek into the thing, being curious and all - it's interesting to see what the growing generation will be having in their heads. And my, my, my... My curiosity was rewarded.
Morality is an innate and inherent feature of human nature.
I was slightly shocked by this revelation. I mean, yeah, morality is part of human nature. My ass. it has actually been proven that it isn't - morality is an aspect of human social behaviour, and if the human isn't subjected to the society and societal norms until a critical age (7, if I recall correctly), he or she is irreversably lost to the society - and the morality will not develop according to the regular moral code, rather on simple animal instincts of fear, lust, anger and so on. Feral children are a clear illustration of the point.
However, if feral children aren't sufficient, there's another side to the matter - the different perception of morality within different cultures. In some cultures, a certain item is absolutely a taboo, while in another, it's fine and allowed on a daily, if not permanent basis. For instance, certain pagan religions imply animal or human ritual sacrifice. To their moral code, it is an alright thing to do, and the only thing that might make someone against it is fear for their own life - which is an instinct rather than a morally guided decision. Christianity, on the other hand, abhors human sacrifice. Now, we either dehumanize the pagans or the Christians or accept the fact that morality is not a universal concept.
With that said, it should be quite clear that it's not something you are born with, either.
Anyone with a different opinion?
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No, morality isn't something people are born with. Compassion is.
ReplyDeleteCompassion is lost during the process of social conditioning (more popularly known as "growing up" or "maturing") and is replaced with a set or moral rules that are kept in place by fear. Be it fear of death or harm or fear of social sanctions, which can often be even greater.
I think most people are not born as killing machines, if that's what "morality" means to you. That said, they're not born as saints either and from my experience people generally place themselves at the top of their stack of thoughts.
That means that to get their way, people don't mind hurting others "just a bit"
This is just like the talk about evil characters vs. good characters in roleplaying we had earlier - it is very easy to succumb to personal gratification at the expense of others. It takes a conscious decision to move the "me" card down the stack and it takes willpower and strength to maintain that decree. For me, morality isn't about slaughter and war, it's about the small things in life. Slaughter and war are rather an extension of those things.
I'm not quite sure if I agree about compassion being innate either, to be honest - children as such are generally awfully uncompassionate at the pre-school and school age. On the other hand, this is also the time when their mental conditioning begins, so it could well be.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest, I agree. And interestingly enough, mentality of innate morality excuses immoral deeds towards those with different moral code rather than guarantees good behaviour.
Yes, it does. People do horrible things in the name of "morality" like abusing homosexual people verbally or physically, for instance.
ReplyDeleteI believe people are born with compassion and a good proof, I think, is the article about feral children you linked to. It describes children who have been raised by animals. Animals are not subject to mass media and they act out of pure instinct, yet they chose not to kill the children they found and eat them. I don't believe a dog can ever mistake a human baby for a puppy, but the facts are that sometimes dogs choose to care for the human babies and that is not done out of any instinct of survival. Of the contrary - the dogs risk reduced chances of survival because they have to feed an extra individual.
How does that work?
There's also cases where the animals eat their own offspring for some reason or another, or leaving them to die - or another of the same species killing the offspring of their neighbour. Seen a program on Discovery recently, a few birds, for instance, have the father taking care of the hatchlings and eggs (By the way, there goes the "female made for taking care" thing), and the nearby unengaged females are trying to pick a moment when the male bird goes from the nest, kills the "kids" and then the male is free to mate again.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, this isn't the general behavioral pattern in animals, so chances are, you're right.
Yes, I've heard of that behaviour, but it seems to me like it's something that has to be done from an evolutionary point of view and is only done if very specific cases.
ReplyDeleteEither way, very few animals kill for absolutely no reason.
There's this one thing I've wondered about - do pacifists play violent computer games? I don't know any pacifists personally, any ideas?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, they do.
ReplyDeleteViolence in video games isn't violence, really. It doesn't do more than shift bits in the computer's memory.
The whole concept of "violence getting entrenched in your mind" is bullshit.
I've been playing "violent" video games nearly all my life and I can't be considered in any way a violent person by anyone who knows me.
This brings up another question: if every soldier in the world logged on to some PvP MMO instead of going on a real battlefield, would they still say violent video games are a bad thing made by the devil himself out of kitten blood?