The Moral Instinct

I heard about an interesting article today.   It dealt with morality.  Is it nature or nurture? Is it instinct or learned?   It shifts and changes over time, but people will both kill and die because of it.   I've included a portion of the article "The Moral Instinct" by Steven Pinker at the end of this blog, along with a permalink to the entire article.

I've often contemplated the source of morality and values.  An idea is only an idea.  A thought is only a thought.  It dies with me, as do my morals and values.  Do I really pass them on to my children?  Doubtful.  They create their own reality, just as I do -- having shed many of the judgments, morals and values my parents, church, school, and culture taught me were life and death.  Fortunately, I have two very lovely children who haven't become axe murderers or pedophiles (yet).  So, I suppose I passed along something of value to them.  At least they cause only minimal harm to the environment and others. 

I was just thinking about this last night.  My mom and sister are upset with me (nothing new there).  I won't bore you with the gory details.   I simply accept my daughter's decision about something.  But my mom and sister feel that there are certain family values that should be respected.  

But, to me, those are only ideas.  I understand both sets of values being expressed and they're equally valid.  And they all come from a very deep belief in what's right and wrong.  They're just coming from differing perspectives.  Neither is bad - unless, of course, you're the person who isn't getting his or her own way. 

The situation caused me to contemplate the way families pass along their "values" and how they encourage (!) new generations to comply.  I don't know how many times as an adult I heard the words, "This isn't the way you were brought up."  Thank God!  I like to think I've improved on the original model.  These days my mom doesn't say that as much.  I think she's resigned to the idea that I'm my own person.  As for my children, I delight in the fact that they find their own morality and values.  Like me, they strive to live more authentically and less mechanically in their lives.  They give thought to how and why they do things, instead of simply going along because someone else decided it's the right thing to do.  Their original ideas have opened my mind more and more.

Morals and values can mean the difference between life and death.  Today, it's okay to like a particular group, but years ago it was acceptable to murder its members.  Which was right and which was wrong?  Measuring by today's standards isn't simple.  I might say the murder was wrong at any time.  But, had I lived during that time I might have had a different view.  Even so, my neighbor may still uphold the harsher view, believing it to be moral.  Same time, same generation, same society, different values.

Morals and values also change quickly.  Even those that are based in religious beliefs shift dramatically depending on a variety of factors.  Ideas that the Inquisition considered heresy are proved today as completely factual -- until proved to be something different ten years from now.  Still, the more things change the more they stay the same.  Today's social inquisitors are little more than meddlesome busybodies, poking their noses into others' bedrooms and boardrooms -- attempting to force others to adhere to a code that the inquisitors consider to be morally based.  Yet in their zeal they act with the same immorality they accuse of others.  It's just a different moral code that they're debasing.

In the interview today, Pinker said that we tend to consider immoral anything that is ugly, dirty or unhealthful in another person.  It's the other person who's immoral.  We're perfectly fine.  Another person eating meat is a source of moral outrage if one is a vegetarian, Hummer drivers are offensive if oneself is a Prius driver, etc.  I wonder if the  immorality we see in others is just wistful thinking in ourselves.

Let's suppose I have a problem with priviledged white males (I'm spiritual, though, so I don't have a problem with anyone.  But just suppose.....).  Oh, I'd love to enjoy their wealth and priviledge -- don't get me wrong.  But I get sorely pissed off when I'm cut off by one of them in that very same Hummer or he pushes in front of me at the grocery store.  Acting as if I'm a bug and don't have a right to exist (in my mind, anyway).  I'm a middle-aged, middle class overweight woman with no particular power or station in life.  I'm invisible to that Hummer driver.  I don't like that.  I know -- we can get into the psychospiritual ya-ya about what part of me am I not accepting, etc., but that's not my point at the moment.  My point is, I see that man as lacking a certain moral spine.  If, on the other hand, I were transported into his world as his wife (or whatever), had a great figure and could tolerate the plastic surgeon's machinations, I'd probably see him much differently.   And I'd probably look askance at the likes of me.  It's all a matter of perspective.

I thought about my son's recent wedding.  My beautiful daughter-in-law's parents are from Iran.  What a richly delicious and delightful culture!  At the wedding reception, I watched her extended family dance together.  The movements were sinuous and sensual.  There was an opulence in their joy and pleasure in each others' company.  I could see why the earlier Christians felt threatened by the culture and considered it to be immoral!  Oh -- what lust for life!  I wished that I had that kind of grace and unabashed sensuality.  There was nothing immoral about it in my view, but one who values extreme asceticism would be horrified by such behavior.

Some of my parents' values, while acceptable in their youth, are unthinkable to me today.   And my mom no longer accepts portions of the ideas that she once staunchly defended.  Did that make my parents and their contemporaries bad people during those earlier years?  I don't think so.  They were upholding the values and morals of their time.  Eventually, they pushed the boundaries that were set for them by their parents.  Considered old fashioned today, they were yesterday's radicals in their own way.  

Values change.  Life gets bigger and more complex as a result.  Perhaps that's why some will defend to the death their beliefs.  It's easier to follow along than it is to question. 

Or is it?  I sometimes think I really had no choice but to push my moral boundaries.  In 1996, I had a moment of enlightenment (of a sort).  After that, nothing was the same.  I simply could not continue to see life and interact with it in the same way.  It became harder to go along.  As a result, I have a different moral code and I value other things than I did before -- even though it runs counter to my family's preferences in many cases.  I simply accept their values as being different from my own.  I try to be respectful of them and not challenge (or defend!) too much.  It wasn't always that way.  But I found peace to be preferable to attempts at conversion.  And inner peace is my choice over loyalty.

But, what if that life-changing moment had been some kind of psychosis (and who's to say it wasn't?  That, too, is a matter of perspective)?  What if the voice inside me told me to seek the darkness instead of accepting the light?  I'd still be following a set of morals and values.  I'm not sure I agree with the spiritual caller on today's program.  He felt he had an inner moral compass and eschewed "society's" mores.  But, I have to be very careful when I'm in that quiet space and hear the voice of guidance.  I don't always easily discern that the voice I'm hearing is one of Karen's inner children rather than the voice of God.  Morality aside, we also have our psyches to intercept and interpret the moral wisdom we think we are receiving. 

There is a place wherein I think most people believe that an acceptable morality is one that supports basic life.  But why?  Are we hard-wired?  Is it our moral instinct? 

Copyright 2008 by Karen E. Kelsay.  All rights reserved.

Here are the first couple of paragraphs of Pinker's article.  The permalink to the full article is at the end:

The Moral Instinct

By STEVEN PINKER Published: January 13, 2008

Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it's an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in ''I Hate Gates'' Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?

Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the ''Green Revolution'' that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.

It's not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd's nerd and the world's richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle's eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.