Conundrums of Morality

Having been born in England at the end of World War II, I was one of the people that MacIntyre, who was referred to in the previous post, was writing about in 1981 when he said that common morality grounded upon the common good was strongly embedded in the beliefs of many people.

For me, having been brought up in a Christian community those values could be construed as Christian values. This is not my perception. For me the values that Jesus, the founder of Christianity, lived by in ancient Galilee, were the everlasting values of common morality. They are the values of humanity.

I took them to be intrinsically valid not because they were demanded by a Christian God, but because the common good was the individual good and vice versa. Whether the rational ethicists of the 1980s could see valid reasoning in this or not, this is what I believed and still do.

As such, although these values have not always been adhered to reliably, they always used to be communally sought, and by many people, they still are. They are values that Jesus’ life clearly reawakened in the Roman Empire, but did not introduce.

For present purposes the values of common morality are taken to include kindness, care, moderation, fairness, honesty, trustworthiness, patience, generosity, forgiveness, non-greediness, sexual fidelity, compassion, non-violence and altruism.

Each of these, it can be observed, are values that operate in the “Now”, in the present moment. They are values we neither weigh up nor justify. They are values we simply act upon because in knowing them to be communally good, we know that that goodness will come back, also, to benefit us. Everyone gains.

The twentieth century rejection of common morality and the corresponding rise of rational ethics was commonly justified by the perception that such values were religious values and were, for this reason, intrinsically irrational, prejudiced and incoherent. Inevitably, that dismissal had a cultural context.

A key element within that culture was the ideological contest between the competitive individualism of capitalism and the cooperative, community origins of communism that had been ongoing since 1917. Rational ethics that could justify competitive individualism was, from this perspective, seen as strength and common morality, that sought communal cooperation and peace, was weakness.

Consequently, with Charles Darwin, 20th century sociobiology, nascent neoliberalism, and rational ethicists all supporting competitive individualism, MacIntyre was up the creek without a paddle.

For me in the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001, when it seemed that the values of common morality had finally been dispatched to the dustbin by the “power elite”, the question I asked of myself was, if modern religions were the problem, what were human communities like before the advent of religions that could assert such power, before, say, 3,000 years ago? Were these religions the inventors of common morality, or might such values have been evident before that time?

This is a valid question to ask. Before pursuing it, however, it will I think, be helpful to recognise the perceived importance of the common moral values in more recent times. 250 years ago Adam Smith, better known as the author of The Wealth of Nations and father of modern economics, in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, sought rational justification for common morality and its values. One paragraph in his book is here well worth quoting:

“Without this sacred regard to general rules [of common morality], there is no man (sic) whose conduct can be much depended upon. It is this which constitutes the most essential difference between a man (sic) of principle and honour and a worthless fellow…… But if without regard to these general rules, even the duties of politeness, which are so easily observed, and which one can scarce have any serious motive to violate, would yet be so frequently violated, what would become of the duties of justice, of truth, of chastity, of fidelity, which it is often so difficult to observe, and which there may be so many strong motives to violate? But upon tolerable observance of these duties, depends the very existence of human society, which would crumble into nothing if mankind (sic) were not generally impressed with a reverence for those important rules of conduct.”¹

In Smith’s view common morality was still perceived to be the mainstay on which the major warfaring nation of Great Britain, just 250 years ago, depended. Also, and significantly for today’s world, he prophesied that human society would crumble into nothing should they be ignored.

This was the view from a couple of centuries ago. What about the far more distant past?

In ancient Egypt the pyramid and coffin texts after 4,400 years ago described the lives of significant people who had died. However, rather than emphasising these people’s achievements, they describe how generous, forgiving and kind these people were. Within the texts the values of common morality shine through. As such they certainly seem to reflect the culture to which all Egyptians of that time would have aspired.²

Those texts take us back close to the origins of writing capable of narrative meaning. Going back further in written records is, for this reason, not possible. Archaeology goes back further but only regarding the material consequences of physical behaviour. As such it has little or nothing to say about other values.

The one value it can comment upon from this perspective is non-violence. In doing so, it observes the extreme rarity of warfare anywhere in the world prior to 8,000 years ago. Subsequently, and suddenly, in northern Levant, across large numbers of archaeological excavations, it then observes the effects of warfare’s sudden eruption. This is particularly notable because it follows 4,000 years of predominantly peaceful settlement and farming that can also be seen in the archaeological record. These observations attest to a transition from the previous culture of prevalent and persistent peace, to the culture of persistent war that is still with us today.

A more detailed exploration of these issues needs to be postponed to a future post. Suffice it to say for the moment that prior to 8,000 years ago, evidence of violence between individuals, although infrequent, was not uncommon but inter-communal violence, that can be conceived as war, was rare in the extreme.

The same can be said of mobile forager communities of the more recent past. When violence perpetrated by slave traders, settlers, farmers and modern economic interests, and emotionally-generated interpersonal violence are taken into account, these communities were pervasively peaceful as well. This was one aspect of these communities more general adherence to the values of common morality.

Recognising non-violence as one of the values of common morality that, when integrated together, work together towards the common ideal of communal cooperation, this is no more than would be expected.

This then suggests that if mobile foragers in the ancient past were predominantly peaceful, such an outcome is unlikely to have occurred without their adherence to all the other values of common morality as well. Common morality, seen from this perspective, could be very ancient indeed.

However, if this is true, and if, as the evidence shows, these values persisted into the very recent past, they would seem to have persisted in a world that was competitive, violent and aggressive. And yet how could this be?

Indeed, if the world has always been aggressive, violent and competitive, how could the trust that these caring and sharing behaviours require, ever have emerged in the first place? Seen from this perspective, cooperative and reliable caring and sharing behaviours and the values that supported them must surely have arisen, and become firmly embedded, in a very different world to ours. This is the proposition that the next post will explore.