An Overview of Moral Evolution

Morality: Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

A very disturbing argument was made to me yesterday regarding the origin of morality. Morals, it was stated, are passed down through authority. I don’t believe I’ve been so repulsed by an argument in a while. And thus, we shall commence with the demolition of this sad idea. Morality comes about through its own evolution; it is derived out of common sense and communal experience. Authority has nothing to do with it. In fact, morality enforced by authority is not moral at all, as it is coerced, like a lie said under threat of torture.

Let us not mistake laws for morality. Let us also not mistake our governmental laws with religious laws. Most laws are meant to maintain structure in society and have very little to do with morality. Laws that do concern morality, in modern liberal societies, are usually focused around preventing absolute degradation (stealing, raping, killing) and are rarely concerned with petty moral issues (expression, manners, personal domain). However, when laws do enforce petty issues (prohibition, anyone?), they are perpetually challenged and breached by people who know fully well that they will be punished if caught. Why? Because to enforce such standards of behavior is not moral at all. And that is how we know law to be separate from morality; law itself can be immoral.

This is not to say that anyone breaking a law is just or moral in doing so. That’s just another reason why laws have little to do with morality. Breaking laws is more about evolving morality than defining it. To clarify how morality is affected by evolution, we have to think about how a moral code is formed from scratch. Take the Internet for example. Twenty years ago, this new form of communication started to get popular and we realized that the world was changing. The Internet was a lawless state and it took the government years to understand it enough to establish rules. The creators of the Internet did not issue any decrees beyond establishing the standards of infrastructure. Netiquette, as the basic code of Internet morality was called at the time, was mostly a democratic undertaking.

Today, there are laws that govern the Internet, but they either steer clear of morality or get trampled on and decried when they get too close. Morality has become the domain of the individual community, not the net at large. There are different variations (species, if you will) of moral codes that you will encounter depending on the site you visit. Individuals are able to choose which community’s guidelines best fit their desires and, in doing so, cast their vote for the survival of their chosen set of morals. In this way, morals are memetic; they undergo their own evolution over time. A thousand years from now, our current morals may seem barbaric to those of that time.

Religious laws are different from governmental laws in that they are considered to be immutable, which causes a bit of a dilemma when people consider them to be unjust. More on that in a moment. Another huge difference between common law and religious laws is that common law provides a baseline of morality, an absolute low point under which we will not tolerate. Only when one drops so far below the norm will they be punished. Religious laws, on the other hand, demand ideal behavior at all times, threatening absolutely grave and horrible punishment at the slightest mistake.

And once again, what does one do when they feel that a religious law is too strict to be practical? They ignore it. Why? Because, morality is more about common sense than it is about following directions. Christians, for example, choose entire swaths of biblical law to ignore. Depending on the denomination, you could be observing one law in the bible while ignoring the one that comes right after or before it. The bible tells you that it is OK to keep slaves, to rape, to sacrifice your children, but you find the thought of all that to be reprehensible. Moreover, you are willing to ignore the passage that tells you that all laws are immutable and still in effect because that, too, is unfathomable. Congratulations, you are more moral than the bible. And you now know where your morals come from; your gut feelings of how people should be treated. Not the authority of a supreme being.

Because morals undergo their own evolution, they will change over time. This illustrates how morals transcribed into holy books over a thousand years ago appear so archaic and are very unjust to us today. It is why immutable morals are impossible to maintain. It is why absolute authority is an ignorant position for anyone, even the supposed creator of the universe, to hold.

It is important to point out, once again, how morals and laws are separate. Laws do come from authority, but as the definition above states, morality is the distinction between right and wrong. When enforcing a law leads to being unnecessarily cruel or restrictive, people tend to decide for themselves that the law is immoral. This may cause the law to be repealed. In this way, morality determines laws, not the other way around.

Not only are laws and morality separate, it is dangerous to equate them or to have them define the same limits of behavior. In the case of biblical laws, which set the bar unattainably high, we are made to feel guilty with every slip-up. But guilt loses its novelty when it is applied too often. When we become accustomed to guilt, it no longer works as a prevention device. Guilt then becomes a solvent and the mental barriers keeping us from being even less moral begin to break down. While that sounds like a slippery slope argument, it is well documented in behavioral economics studies that people become less moral when they mentally detach from the effects of their actions.

How would you feel if your friends were only nice to you because their parents would beat them if they weren’t? You might not even call them your friends, knowing this. The idea that authority dictates morality under threat of force is just as uncomfortable a thought. I’m nice to people, not because I would get beaten up otherwise, but because I like how they treat me when I am. The key lessons here are that positive reinforcement is more influential in determining positive morals than punishment and anything done under coercion is neither positive or moral. Also, morals are more than just what you shouldn’t do; they are also about what you should do. And you should do it because you like it, not because it’s bad that you don’t.