moral dessert

What I think is that pretty much all societies consider the same values, generosity, loyalty, honesty, to be virtues.  I'm not saying they act that way.  And I think this is so because it is in our genes just like our language ability.  And it's in our genes because we are social animals and these are the sort of things that make a society hum. 

But they weren't rules at the point of hunter gatherers, or laws like the law of gravity, you don't have Do unto others as they do unto you stamped across your genes, it is just kind of an inclination, a feeling, you can feel when you steal from your little sister that it's wrong.

I'm just kind of winging it here, going by what I remember of what I have read, but paganism, the worship of rocks and whatnot, is closer to science than religion.  It's a way to understand the world.  The number of deer in the valley is dependent on the rock god's mood.  And it's also a technology (I always try to separate science and technology), if you appease the rock gods by leaving rabbit droppings in front of them they will increase the deer in the valley.

There's no morality in it at first, it is just a way to get things done, like how to chip the flints to make a nice arrowhead  But eventually there got to be a hierarchy of gods with some ruling over others and you got some pretty powerful gods at the top.  You know powerful like the chief, and in a well-functioning tribe the members obey the chief.  It is a good thing.  So maybe it is not only a smart thing to obey the sun god it is also a good thing.

Morality began to enter into religion, not only did the sun god want you to sacrifice a few goats to Him, He also wanted you to be good to your neighbor, to not tell lies, etc.  I an a little weak here, I wish I knew more about ancient religions, but I'm pretty sure you will find something like the golden rule in them.  At any rate ancient Judaism had done this because you can see it in the Old Testament.

And the Greeks took it up.  Fresh from their victory over the right triangle they applied the same strategy to the right way to live.  They took those feelings of good and evil and codified them into a whole set of logical rules, many of which were later reinterpreted and adapted to Christianity. 

These are more or less the rules we follow, excuse me, the rules we are supposed to follow, but even as we follow, or don't follow, the rules we are judging them by how we feel in the heart.  My favorite example is Emmanuel Kant.  He held honesty to be a higher law, so that if a guy comes to kill your buddy and asks if he is hiding in the closet, you have to tell him the truth.  Sure it is a bad thing if your friend is killed, but it's in a higher cause so it is all worth it.  Maybe it's all sound by impeccable logic but it feels wrong doesn't it?  Certainly feels wrong to me.

My point was that we may think that we have learned morality from our mother's knee, or from the good book, or from dusty philosophical tomes, but it all really comes from the heart.


I think this all began with, I can't even remember the name now, situational ethics?  No wait, moral particularism.  I'm not sure how I got from there to here.  But I tuned into The Good Place last night and the subject was, moral dessert.  That cute blonde woman with the evil side had done a good thing and the two immortals were thinking of promoting her to the real good place but the one who is not Ted Danson was like she was only being good to get a reward, the moral dessert, but in order to be truly good, you have to good without any thought of a reward, just for its own sake, just because you yourself are good.

Maybe something to think about over the weekend.