Stumble it!Atheists are bad, bad people… The Conclusion!
posted in Philosophy by themaiden |I began Part I with the statement that, according to one view, “We need the boogeyman under the bed, and we need a supernatural blankie. God, the good shepherd, lures us to the straight and narrow with promises of heaven like an old man luring a little girl with candy, while promising the horrors of hell if she tells. In the absence of such bribing and bullying, the idea goes, we’ll run wild like the rabid beasts we are.” And I ended Part II with the questions: “What then, keeps us in line? Where do humans get their moral codes? Why isn’t the world full of Jeffrey Dahmers?”
So, why aren’t we all knife wielding rapists, thieves and cartoonish super-villians? Why don’t we run rampant like Dahmer, or de Sade, or like the characters in Natural Born Killers? Why don’t we, in general, run wild like was seen in Rwanda in ‘94? What holds this human collage together?
Well, “Do wild beasts run wild?” Oddly enough, the answer is “No!” Animals do not run wild. They may not follow our rules, but animals do follow rules. Sociobiology has demonstrated this over and over again. This is true certainly of mammals, but also of birds, insects, and fish, to make a short list. The social animals, least of all, run wild. But why? Why should a baboon, with knife-like canines, defer to the wishes of another baboon? Why should a lion give up part of the kill? Why not fight to the death and winner take all?
The answer is outrageously simple: Fights to the death usually mean everyone loses. The injuries sustained in those battles stand a good chance of killing both combatants, not just the loser. No group will survive very long if its members kill each other. The statement is almost tautological. That is not to say that such fights don’t happen, but only that should they become too frequent, the animals involved cease to exist. The group ceases to exist. Consequently, animals that do manage to survive and reproduce generation after generation, are also animals that deal with stress and strain in ways which, for the most part, do not involve ruthlessly killing each other. This is the very root of ethics and morality.
Of course, in some species the rules are very, very rudimentary, but others depend upon them a great deal. These are the social animals– animals in which individual members of the species cannot survive outside of a group. Penguins depend upon group mass to survive the cold. Wolves depend upon the pack for the hunt. Most primates, not the mention the huge variety of herd animals, depend upon the social group for protection. Social animals which manage to get themselves kicked out of the group loose their ability to reproduce, their ability to feed effectively and the protection of the mob. Without the group, the individual animals die. This is not a very good outcome for any creature involved.
Humans are by far the most social of the social animals, and our rules the most complicated. We’ve even taken to blaming our social dynamics on beings no one has ever seen. Still, the driving force beneath those rules is a very simple: co-exist, work together– in any of hundreds of possible ways– or die. We are social animals, we behave because the other options are pretty harsh. The calculation is fairly simple, though it lacks the metaphysical ‘kick’ provided by an appeal to the supernatural.
We depend upon each other. We survive poorly in true isolation. Even those who live in relative solitude far from other habitations depend upon the activities of other humans for food, trade, tools and the like. We have no claws, but we can make tools– many of which require cooperative effort to build and to use. We are scrawny, awkward and weak, relative most large animals, but we can organize packs like no other. Culture is our teeth, our fur, and our claws. Behavioral chaos would quickly destroy it. Rules keep that chaos in check. We don’t run wild because in general it is a bad idea.
Of course, reason will have no more effect on the insane and the sociopathic than it will have on emphysema. Religion, in general, will have as little effect. Interestingly, though, the system depends very little upon what an individual believes about morality or ethics. This, of course, is in direct contrast to the way that most people seem to conceive of ethics and morality, as conventions that depend upon thought or upon revelation. I argue that it doesn’t, and never has, worked that way– at least at its most basic level. An individual who sufficiently disrupts a community, is removed from the community– whether that means death, prison or banishment. Whatever the particular consequence, the disruptive individual is no longer in the society and that is what matters to the society.
Consider what happened to Dahmer, quoted in the first installment as asking “what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges?” Dahmer was imprisoned and is now dead. He failed to behave, and was removed from society. What he believed about his behavior hardly matters. On the other hand, a culture which allowed such behavior would soon perish or be forced to change its collective mind. Most people realize this conclusion almost intuitively. A society of unchecked serial killers would soon self destruct. Consequently, laws– rules– are made against such behavior. Other individuals following similar paths face similar consequences.
The system is self correcting, and at its core has little to do with what people believe. Violation of these rules on a large scale means collective suicide. There will always be a few rule breakers, but collective suicide means a lot of people have to break the rules, as also happens occasionally as in Rwanda, for example. But, again, that is the exception not the rule, and it proves my point that such behavior cannot continue for long.
Ethics and morality are the dynamics of human interaction, of cooperation, of co-existence, and they derive from nothing other than experience. They are collective and codified realizations about what it takes for populations of people to survive. Those rules are what we humans call ‘morality’, though we’ve dressed them in thick cloaks of religion and philosophy over the past few thousand years.
Some may argue that this does not describe a proper morality. I’d argue that this is what morality has always been. Cultures have built various religious edifices atop it, but the base or the structure has always been social dynamics and survival.
Arguing from this social dynamics core to particular moral systems, of which the world has several, is not something I intend to do here.
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