THE BEDROCK OF MORALITY

Darkness is the absence of light, coldness is the absence of heat, but is goodness the absence of evil. If it is then we must define evil to understand morality—defined as goodness and decency. As a biologist, I have real problem understanding where morality comes from. Is it only humankind that has morality? Mothers across a wide range of species feed and protect their offspring even to the point of sacrificing themselves. We all recognized this as good and descent.  As most as an aside, this begs the question; protecting them from what?

Classic geneticists seem confused when it comes to behavior. They for the most part refuse to accept the idea that behavior is genetic when it is obviously inherited: chickens act like chickens, rabbits act like rabbits, and humans act like people. If we inherited behavior, when did it start and where did it come from? I believe it started in primordial pools billions of years ago but that is one bridge to far for most people so lets start with the beginning of our culture. That is only 80,000, 40,000, or 12,000 years ago depending upon whatever you think culture started with the caveat that most people limit the definition of culture to people. People have culture animals do not. The great apes are at the interface with scientists crediting the Orangutan Ape with having the rudiments of culture. As to where did culture come from; it obviously came from within ourselves, like a bootstrap program on a computer. It came from our genes by adaptation. Everyone knows a genome is self-cleansing. Genes that harm our chances of survival in the slightest way do not allow the carrier to thrive therefore is self-limiting. Although people usually think of “genetic adaptation” in terms of our physical being, it applies to our mental being as well.

If all genes in the genome work together, we can refer to it as pangenetic synergy. If all genes have to be beneficial or at least not harmful to survival, then all genes working together have to be beneficial. The greatest of all senses is the sense of self-preservation—it is hard to believe anyone could argue against that concept. Survival is “good” and not to survive is “evil”. If the most primitive man learns that he or she can die and that floods, volcanoes, fires, disease, accidents, and an endless string of etceteras can cause death, then they learn to fear these things as evil. Logically, the greatest fear would be the fear of death. Like children as they mature, they learn degrees of good and evil.  If someone would go around the world and ask every man woman and child in every society what does it take to be a good person there would be 7 billion answers. If we were to sort out these answers, we would find very few common responses and many answers that occur in all of the geographically isolated groups of people. The observers would assume the few universally common answers are there because they as the result of genetic adaptation to survival. Perhaps, to kill ones self would be on the top of the list but to kill another person would be a close second. Next on the list would be things that cause strife that might lead to one person killing another person. Christian people have reduced the list to ten items—I refer to religion only because that is where the written record is.  Ojibwas have 21, others have variable numbers but always, self-preservation is on the top.

Certainly, we go around killing other people and a number of people commit suicide. However, except for mentally disturbed people, killing is a matter either of self-defense or to satisfy greed or envy (jealously). We have expanded these concepts from individuals to groups of individuals, families, tribes, states, and nations but always based on survival of the unit involved. We have trimmed, dressed, and otherwise decorated the basic concept of morality in culturally sensitive rhetoric; regardless, the fundamental theme is survival. Survival is more than the cornerstone, piedra angular, which is always a carefully hewn stone; survival is deeper than that; it is at the bedrock of humanity. We have learned to condense millions of years of survival and all it implies down to one word, that word is ‘morality’.