The question of an objective morality is one that I have struggled with for many years. It's a much easier question to answer when one has an ultimate reference for it - what does God have to say, or Allah or Buddha or Socrates? Those who bind themselves to a preexisting belief system usually have no problem in believing in the existence of an eternal right and wrong. But when one denies the existence of such things, it becomes infinitely more difficult to quantify the sources of morality. It makes one wonder, is there a morality at all? Or are we all simply selfish, hedonistic little beasts, serving our own interests within the framework of society's expectations for us. Certainly there are those who might make us think so, the thieves and murderers we see on the evening news, the despots in Africa and Asia, the swindlers and megalomaniacs like Bernie Madoff and Charles Manson. But I refuse to give in to such despair. Perhaps I sound a naive idealist, but I can not deem these people to be the exemplars of all of humanity. I would be remiss to deny they exist, but the existence of a bad apple does not prove a rotten bunch. The question, of course, is where in the world do I think morality comes from? Being a rather fact-based person, I don't tend to believe things exist "just 'cause." Rather, there are a few explanations I've come to embrace, and I'm not particularly willing to say either is more true - in fact, they may be true at the same time. But I am willing to share them with you.
The first is an idea that I came across as promoted by writer Sam Harris a few years ago, and I found it attractive enough to adopt into my worldview. It is the idea of evolutionary morality - that we have evolved over time into a certain morality, an instinct that governs the ways we treat each other. The concept relies on social interaction. For instance, we support others who have fallen on hard times not because a supernatural force dictates it, but because it is evolutionarily beneficent for us all to do this. It is a form of social insurance - a group of humans who have evolved to work together and support each other are more likely to survive than those that lone-wolf everything. This also explains some of our most common, seemingly immoral choices - for instance, an instinct for lying in certain situations is also socially helpful. An instinct for discriminating against those outside of our social group would have been helpful, or at least made sense, in an era where social groups consisted of close-knit tribes, an era so long that it defined our biology even today in sometimes disadvantageous ways. Harris's point, though, was that there is a scientific and biological sense of morality, one that dictates how we choose to interact with others, and that on balance this probably makes us kinder creatures than without it.
The second is an idea I have become attached to after reading Steve Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics. It is the idea of incentives - that humans make choices based on rewards or punishments for given actions, whether they be social, economic, or otherwise. The idea of morality as a result of incentives makes a lot of sense to me then. We don't kill or steal because in most situations we know this will end to our arrest and thus a huge decrease in our quality of life. We don't act callously or rudely to everyone we meet because the social incentives against it are plenty strong to overcome our whims. Again, this system can explain evil as well. Those who are less well off are more likely to commit crimes because they have far less to lose, thus the incentives aren't working as strongly on them. The vast majority of people finding a wallet like Leah Kleppinger did would've taken the cash at least because they knew they wouldn't have been caught - thus, very little social incentive on their part. Of course, social incentives can act in non-intuitive ways. Ms. Kleppinger may still have been influenced by social incentives, even if logically they were not relevant - her training all her life in similar situations may have dictated to her to do what she did, specific situation notwithstanding. Guilt, after all, is a valid incentive - it is what gives religious institutions a huge amount of their power.
But neither of these purely mechanistic explanations can explain the higher forms of morality throughout human civilization, those that strive for morals entirely separate from their own interests. How do we explain these? I can explain it as none other than intellectual morality. This is the result of a human desire for something more, a meaningful code of living that brings us a sense of fulfillment. Intellectual morality requires the separation of morals from the self. It requires that we make an extension of those rules which we hold ourselves to based on the above two models, to situations where they are not necessary. Intellectual morality may result in actions like those of Ms. Kleppinger, who made a moral choice when it was not necessary for her own self-interest. It is also the source of my and many others' views on how humanity should interact with animals. Based on the above models humans should have very little incentive to treat animals well at all, except in situations where culture dictates reverence or respect to certain animals (see: dogs and cats in America, cows in India). I'm a vegetarian not because there is an evolutionary or social incentive to be (quite the opposite on the social end of things) but because I have made an intellectual choice to extend the moral of compassion past the point where it is expected of me. Does this make me a "good" person? Certainly not in all respects. The very concept of good and bad people is probably flawed, because in reality we all do good and bad things. Even Martin Luther King, Jr, and Mohandas Gandhi were known filanderers. But intellectual morality does explain that particular choice of mine.
I won't say any of this is any more than purely theoretical. I'm sure I'll scroll through this blog and find every post disagreeing with me in one way or another. Perhaps this is support that morality simply is subjective. I can merely share my perception of the myriad sources of human actions, admitting my own bias towards a belief that somewhere, there is a reason for us to do things that benefit each other. I only know this - humanity is not inherently evil. Maybe we're not inherently good either. Maybe those words are just completely meaningless. But I believe there is a human capability, nay, a human drive to achieve a fulfillment of moral achievement, perhaps one defined from each person to person, but a moral nonetheless. Humans are neither good, nor bad. But they are moral.
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