Morality and Evolution

I was searching around the Web specifically looking for instances of exaggerated moral epiphanies arising out of pathological mental states and conditions. What I was thinking was that if Morality is self generated out of the minds of men, then it would be most noticeable when it is of exaggerated and insane proportions. I was really hoping to find some often repeated Moral Delusion, that is, some eruption of the Collective Consciousness out of which always the same Moral Content would spill (it would amount to the virtual Holy Grail of Collective Consciousness Theory). What I found, however, was that most reputable scholarly papers are password protected and available only on subscription. Nowadays, only the bullshit is free online. So much for the much celebrated Information Age. That didn’t last long, did it? Well, and of the bullshit, I found more than a few essays which were making the argument that Morality is now an innate factor, hardwired into our Humanity, owing to the workings of Evolution. The argument is that we are all Moral Beings, now, because Morality has had a strong correlation in Humanity’s collective survival.

I had to shake my head. You see, knowing a great deal about Archeology, Anthropology and History, well, one can speak of the evolution of some particular group dynamics, but these, in many cases can hardly be spoken of as instances of some Golden and Shining Morality. Of particular instance is that of Group Loyalty and Identification with the Group. The way this works in actual practice is that when Resources in a Territory become scarce, the Group that has the best cohesion through group loyalty and group self-identification is the group that survives because they are the ones who can most remorselessly kill off their competitors. But this is not Morality at all, is it? What we have here is the Barbarian Code, where the only Virtue that they find necessary is Loyalty to the Group. It is just this same Factor that now intensifies all of our Wars and makes Organized Crime proliferate as well as precipitating all the problems we have with Gangs and Gang violence.

Yes, we also hear of the survival benefit of altruism and cooperation, and, yes, I agree that there is such a thing, indeed, that the relatively few and relatively recent Civilizations could not have formed up without just such a Moral Innovation. But the problem in speaking of this in terms of Evolution is that many of the Ethnic Bloodlines that encompass our Humanity today have had very little actual intimate mix with any Civilization Blood at all. This puts me in mind of the NAZI boost only a few generations ago, that the German people were not part of some weak decadent Civilization at all, but had racing through their veins the blood of History’s worst, or in their terms, most successful maraudering Barbarians, the Aryans (when, if truth be told, actually the Mongols might have had more success on that score, that is, of being the Worst of the Worst). Here the Germans were basically correct, at least in regards to the point that Europe has had no long history of Civilization, or not enough to have solidly fixed some Moral Impulse by means of Evolution.

Indeed, another thing we should keep in mind is that, so far, every Civilization has failed. Oh, yes, and while our Species has been long evolving over millions of years, there has not been any evidence of a Civilization before only about 10,000 years ago. Of course, I admit that a lot can happen in a short time with Evolution. For instance, taking into account the most recent Ice Age, ending only about 13,000 years ago, which must have depopulated what we now think of as the Blond Countries, we can conclude that the Evolution of Blood Hair and Blue Eyes is therefore of the most recent event… so recent that we can almost count the individual generations. But then, for any comparison to be valid, we must wonder whether High Moral Social Systems are any more complex then a gene that controls a recessive pigment trait.

Also, we should find that it is of no little importance that Civilizations have been chronic failures. What does it do for us that there may be ten or even twenty Generations of Civilization that reinforce a Civilized Morality, but that when such a Civilization collapses, suddenly there is again a tremendous Survival Benefit favoring Small Group Loyalties and Group Against Group Warfare and Violence? If Selfishness always seems to win in the end, then how can we speak of an Evolving Morality?

So there doesn’t appear to me to be any Evolutionary Morality. Or perhaps they are defining Morality too narrowly. Maybe they are only arguing for why Human Mothers do not devour their young, so often anymore.

All the very comprehensive Moral Systems and Moral Cultures have been the product of Received Transmission, learning and teaching, customs and traditions. Indeed, if people would only study History they would find instance after instance of some very High Moral Cultures. But then these are ordinarily followed by a few generations of skeptics (honored for their intellectual innovations), then cynics (honored for breaking away from the dusty old Past) and then, well, rapid decline and decadence (High Culture replaced by Popular Art) followed by economic and social collapse and inundation by foreign barbarian invasion. You see, Civilization cannot exist outside the strictures of some rather high moral imperatives.

What are these High Moral Strictures? Well, at the most basic level, “Thou Shall Not Eat the Seed Grain”. Civilization’s first concern is to protect its ability to produce and then store a protected Surplus of Food Stuffs. Those who gather the food must relinquish it to those who store it, and those who store it must be able to return it when the land becomes barren. And at every Time of Planting sufficient amounts of Seed Grain must come out of storage and it must be viable. Any Selfish instance of Barbarism caught up in this Civilized Mechanism would cause it to fail – greedy producers, greedy distributors, hoarding. Civilization is fragile. Notice our recent Meltdown on Wall Street which quickly reverberated down to rock every Market in the World. It is clearly an instance where Barbarian Selfishness bubbled up causing Civilized Institutions to fail wholesale and completely. And even now on the sidelines we hear more than a small minority of Barbarians chanting that no rescue is necessary, that the Strong will Survive (that is, without saying so in so many words, “the Strong” being the very people who stole all the money in the first place), and that as far as they are concerned, there is no problem. They will be fine. And as for the people who won’t be fine, well, they don’t matter anyway – not to this elite core of Barbarians who now run our Western Societies.

Of course they are wrong about how “fine” it will be for them. What History shows us is that Collapses of Civilization are far more total than anyone ever expects at the time. The Rich always think they can weather whatever the storms that they create in order Concentrate all Wealth to themselves and totally disenfranchise the Poor, but it always goes way beyond their original intent. For instance, as an example, the Rich now think that they are safe with their gated communities and private security guards. But these things are all part and parcel of a still Functioning Civilization, where people go to work and get paid on Friday. When Civilization really collapses, and currencies become valueless, making Brute Force the Most Valued Commodity, then the Guards and Police would be the first to turn, would they not? Your own Guard is the first to come through the Gate. So far in History, the Rich People have never seemed to be able to think that far ahead.

In this great historical oscillation between Civilization and Barbarian Collapse, one can only wonder which Side evolution seems to be favoring. I think it would be better, in our short term anyway, over the millions of years it would take Evolution to come up with its own firm answer, for us to concentrate on defining a Moral System and establishing an effective and all encompassing Social Instruction. What I have noticed from History is that Civilizations fail from within, and usually because the most affluent and elite Peoples within a Civilization begin acting selfishly themselves, that is, those with the most to lose are the first to begin hammering away at their very own safeguards and protections. They have a lot, but only want more, and seem to be willing to risk everything, and everyone, to get it. They feel favored by Fate or Destiny and can’t imagine that they should fail. It all begins in Skepticism and then Cynicism, and, again, all of that starting in the very highest Social Classes. There is a chronic misunderstanding that Revolutions come from the impoverished Classes, but these Lower Classes are typically the most stable, being the very last to break, but just in time to receive the Blame from a too superficial look at History.

The Challenge for Civilization is to arrive at a Moral Social Consensus and then understand that the Poor Classes will adapt to it just fine, but that a Special Watch must necessarily be put upon the Rich and Powerful Classes, always ready to stomp out even the first trembling vibration of skepticism. If you still need an example, let’s say that should we ever again hear that Government and Economic Regulations only get in the way of our General Prosperity, then we can get some notion of what the first dangerous crack in a great Bulwark looks like.

Oh, no, I am not for entirely clamping down against every instance of Free Thought. We must keep innovating, we must keep adapting. Life does not hold still. But in coming up with a Moral Structure we need to arrive at certain Moral Guidelines even regards to the direction of our Thinking. Ideas whose only appeal is in Selfishness must be regarded as inherently Evil. A Line must be drawn between Civilization and Barbarism, and no Barbarian idea should be permitted to stand. Selfishness must be Exiled.