Morality: Part Four - No Longer All for One and One for All

In Morality: Part Three, I mused upon what a primitive society and its morality might look like. But we all know that primitive societies did not remain primitive and that somewhere along the line we got chiefs and kings. We also got religion. There are a lot of variables that take a society from simple hunter-gatherer clan-based to a "civilization". These variables, in general, lead to greater complexity of social interactions, specialization, change from nomadic to settled existence all of which eventually lead to changes in what is viewed as moral or ethical, although some moral views outlive their usefulness and remain as traditions that no one knows the reason for or origin of. What changes in circumstance caused changes in moral outlook?

In a tribal or clan society, furtherance of individual wants is subordinated to the needs of the group simply because the group would die off if all members were not contributing their fair share. One change that changed the way that people interacted was the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. Domestication of animals was the transition from hunting animals for their meat, skins and other parts, a labor intensive occupation, often occupying all the adults in a clan, to having those animals on hand ready to be slaughtered when their meat was needed. While far from a leisurely activity, tending to a herd of cows or a flock of sheep was very different than hunting the night's dinner one animal at a time. A related activity, at least in its affect, was the development of agriculture. Both of these changes spurred the differentiation of roles as some tribesmen tended the flocks, some raised the crops, some processed the animal products (skins, furs, bones) while others concentrated on preparing the produce for consumption. Bakers of bread and brewers of beer became professions. As the core of the people were no longer nomadic, following the seasonal migrations of the herds, people built permanent dwellings, which spurred more new professions. The need to have fields dedicated to the crops necessitated having a stable territory to control. Some of the hunters transitioned into warriors to protect this territory.

No longer was everyone the same. Now everyone had "their place".

Gates of Midnight

The Gates of Midnight
Lit by darkness, disluminating
Casting shadows of light
Caverns of Murk
Fog bound enwreathed
Where shadows lurk
The Gates of Thought
Chained against the winds
Although for naught

Nightmare

Creaking
chairs and wind
that speaks to ancient fear
shakes me awake
Shivering

Morality & Torture

"Torture is the act of deliberately inflicting severe physical or psychological pain and possibly injury to a person (or animal), usually to one who is physically restrained or otherwise under the  control or custody of the torturer and unable to defend against what is being done to him or her."

Torture, broadly speaking, has two main goals: to elicit confessions and to punish. In the category of punishment, most modern societies exempt capital punishment, i.e. execution, from their definitions of torture, even though some methods of execution could hardly be distinguished from non-lethal torture. In modern times torture as a punishment, at least as officially recognized, is illegal and is viewed by most as immoral. The United States Constitution itself prohibits "cruel & unusual punishment". However, retaliatory violence falls within the personal moral codes of many people as a reaction to physical attacks, theft or insults. Pope Francis' assertion that he would answer an insult to his mother with a punch in the nose is an example, albeit mild, of this. The Paris killings of cartoonists who "insulted" Islam's Prophet Muhammad is a more extreme example. Granted neither of these example could reasonably be called torture, but rather retaliation or revenge. 

Torture as a means to extract admissions of guilt or to yield valuable intelligence is alive and well not only in military situations, but also in many police departments. Torture has likely operated behind the scenes and unacknowledged over the years, but in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, torture has been redefined and utilized in an effort to prevent further attacks. Recently a Congressional Report on the use of torture was published with differing opinions shrilly expressed on either side. The ethics of torture of been debated and argued, but one thing stands out in the report, something that any expert on torture could have told you beforehand...

Torture doesn't work. 

Some of the biggest proponents of the use of torture in the "war on terror" admit that they gained no useful intelligence when torturing prisoners. Not only did torture fail to yield any usable information, but at least 25% of those detained at Guantanamo had committed no crime, were not associated with terror groups and in fact had done nothing wrong. Yet these people were repeatedly tortured for information that they did not have and pressured to admit to acts that they did not commit. 

Many supporters of torture make the case that we should not wring our hands over the rights of "terrorists", posting pictures of the burning towers or the jumpers as a visual rebuttal to those who recoil at our use of torture. These people, perhaps with full knowledge of the point that they are making, perhaps ignorantly, are asserting that the fact that a person is accused is proof enough of their guilt and that revenge is appropriate. 

These people are advocating, not torture as a means to save other lives, not as a means to determine who is guilty and who is innocent, but as a primal response to extract the pound of flesh to make someone suffer for our suffering. 

If we are going to have a debate on this subject, let's stop pretending that it is about gaining confessions or intelligence, that it is about preventing future terrorist plots or capturing those who previously conducted acts of terror. Let's make it about whether we want to sink to the level of those who would conduct indiscriminate violence for the sake of violence, whether we want to be the people who committ atrocities over real and imagined wrongs, whether we are the people who don't really care about who actually hurt us as long as we make someone hurt. 

From what I hear from many Americans, we already are those people. 

Morality: Part Three

Morality can be looked at as how we behave ourselves, i.e. the actions that we take, primarily in how those actions relate to or affect others and secondarily actions that are undertaken in isolation, i.e. having no appreciable affect on others.

When defining "others" and their relative importance to "ourselves", we can look at the degree to which another's state of being affects ours. To what extent are others included as "one of us"? Knowing and understanding this connection will help define what is acceptable behavior. "Otherness" can be classified in several different ways: similarity toward self (family, religion, ethic group), interconnectedness (residence in the same city, working at the same business), or status (hierarchical, income, social).

One way to look at morality is as an evolutionary development to ensure the survival of the group. Before the development of agriculture, not to mention cities, most people lived in small groups, small enough to not overtax the local resources, but large enough to maintain genetic diversity. What might morality look like in a small clan or tribe of a few dozen people, or at most a few hundred? Surely individuality would not be valued; there would be no tolerance for anyone who went against the norms of the clan. People setting their own rules would lead to division and imperil the continuance of the group. An expectation that everyone contribute to the group would be a requirement as well. Freeloaders would imperil the health and welfare of the group. In short, the sense of self-preservation that an isolated individual would apply to him or herself would be extended and enlarged to include the group.

Moral laws that are common today could have had their roots in these smaller societies. A prohibition on killing would make sense: killing off members of the clan would weaken the clan, although an exception might be made when an individual's behavior put the whole clan at risk. Lying could be frowned upon due to its tendency to erode trust - in a small group, similar to a small town today - everyone knows what everyone else is doing and a known, habitual liar might be ostracized. Stealing would disrupt order, although one can imagine a communal society with common ownership as well. Other analogues to the biblical ten commandments could depend on the situation and environment in which the clan finds itself. Would what we think of as adultery strengthen or weaken the clan? Rules and standards of behavior would develop organically to respond to the need for the group to survive and thrive and to keep relations among the clan members relatively smooth.

So what about "the other"? Does the neighboring tribe or clan's existance strengthen or weaken the home clan? Or perhaps it's neutral. Are they of similar strength? In a nonspecialized, hunter-gatherer, nomadic society it's hard to imagine how the presence of another clan nearby could be a benefit; at best they would be neutral, not figuring in at all. Get close enough and another clan would be competing for the same resources: game animals and access to water. It would not be hard to imagine that internal prohibitions against killing would not apply to the "other". The continued existance of the tribe would necessitate either killing the rivals, driving them off, stealing from them or absorbing them into the tribe. All of these things happened. Stealing horses was not considered wrong by many tribes native to North America. Folk migrations were very common in Europe over the centuries as peoples displaced others in a quest for the best land or in response to being displaced themselves. Wars large and small have been a fact of human existance for as long as there has been human existance. And what were wars usually fought over? Resources, including living-space, i.e land.

So, what is morality but a taking care of one's own and defining how to best live in peace with other members of the group?

But what happens when someone, or a class of someones, within the group sees an opportunity to use the morality of the group to further an individual agenda? That's for Part Four....