Relational Morality

by Lloyd Harrison Whitling         

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In the animal world, morality is pretty simple. It’s because we’re humans and had to give it a name and then had to describe it that we have complicated it. As though that were not enough to mess things up, we have tried to use it for purposes it was not intended, and tried to make it work in reverse of the natural order.

At its most basic level, morality has to do with good and bad actions we take during the course of our lives. Its simplest form, found in the animal world, is that what’s good tickles, and what’s bad hurts. “That might be fine enough for animals,” we might think, “but we’re humans and we have to think about our futures, and also consider other people in our lives. That makes it more complicated.”

Not so fast, Bubba! People have been using that notion to subvert Nature and to push agendas of their own onto the rest of us for centuries. They have long ago achieved a point where what tickles is evil, and what hurts is good, and made that into rigid rules attributed to their various gods to frighten everybody else into compliance. Our ancestors may have let them get away with it, and in doing so left us a mess to clean up. It’s time to get ourselves back on track again, admit that we’re just complicated animals, and once more become the moral beings that we once were.

Only, this time we ought to know why we should and should not do certain things, so that we won’t be tricked into shady tactics again.

What’s good tickles, and what’s bad hurts. That might work fine enough for lone humans off in the woods someplace, but how might it be a firm foundation for a society? How can we learn how to apply it to our interactions with others, and to our own pathway as we follow it through life? We can apply it to both by making it into a business model, and by additionally recognizing it’s not a black versus white process that we have inherited from the Stone Age. Ayn Rand wrote that good and bad could be found in models of trade. We can apply that idea to our concept and see that every action involves tradeoffs that imply gain or loss for those involved. In other words, tickles and hurts, pleasure versus pain.

Every action we take is not entirely good nor entirely bad; most are neither good nor bad, but simply deeds we do out of necessity or that are of little or no consequence. Picking up a pebble to drop into a creek; bending back a branch to clear a pathway; washing a bird dropping off the finish of our car, are a few simple things of that sort. They don’t mean much, they have no importance to the world, they only satisfy an innocent need of the moment: They neither tickle nor hurt.

It is those actions we take involving others that complicate things. We have to consider not only whether or not we tickle or hurt, but also whether we are tickling or hurting them. We also have to recognize that other feelings enter the picture, some of them physical and most of them emotional. We also must realize that what tickles now may hurt too much later to be worth it; and that a little bit of immediate pain might bring about huge tickles at a later time, and so the hurt will be worth enduring. Most times we must rely on our self-confidence and take a little gamble that a goal we’ll risk hurting for will pay off in those huge tickles, and that we can make it work that way. That’s why we do things like go to school, take a college course, or get a menial job from which we hope to save up enough money to make something work according to our dreams.

Before we can begin to apply the principle of tickle versus hurt, we really need take the effects of emotions into consideration. We could create two columns, in a simple exercise, and list some various emotions according to their effects upon ourselves and others. Let’s do that.

Those are just a few of all the possible entries, of course, and there’s nothing to prevent you from making up your own list. It might make an interesting exercise, especially when you play the emotional against the physical, and then try to establish a set of precedents according to your own valuations. One thing to be anticipated is those who will feel tempted to threaten you with statements like, “You know, of course, this is going to tickle me far more than it will hurt you.” That kind of statement can be tested with a response of, “Well, then, demonstrate the truth of that by letting me do it to you first. If my tickle makes me squeal harder than your cries of anguish, only then will I consider whether I should submit to your pain.”

Have you by now seen that there’s no great mystery to how human beings seem to share a sense of morality with other mammals? We are of the type known as ‘social’ because we thrive best in groups and do poorly when facing Nature alone. Social animals evolved to know how to interact with each other, and those whose genetic heritage enabled that in their lineage survived by practicing social behavior. We, humans, have the disadvantage of feeling a need to explain the obvious, couched in mysterious terminology. We can keep it simple, but only if it works. We can test that with another list. Look at it and see if you agree that the words belong under their headings.

It may be simple enough for one animal to kill another, or steal its food, eggs or home, especially among those not commonly found in herds, packs, or groups. Such an animal would sense little loss, and be only interested in its own gain. We would describe such actions among our own kind as ‘immoral’, voice our common disapproval, call the perpetrator a predator, and feel suspicious of those who may disagree with that. You may wonder why that is so, and also why do we seem inclined to give the social order precedence over our individual interests.

We do that because we have our own interests at heart. We know, without much thought, that we need an orderly society to advance our own well being, and that—for the most part—we stand the greatest chance to accomplish our individual aims with that society at work and in good condition to support us. We behave in ways we want others to behave so that can happen, and condemn those who fall astray because they act as threats against us. If we are honorable, we will behave the way we want others to behave, and set ourselves up as an example. If we are wise, we will be always playing our long-term interests against the immediate, and assessing how we will make out best overall. Those who pooh-pooh the long term and demand immediate gratification also seem to threaten us. They appear to have no concern for their own future well-being and, from previous experience, we know they will end up demanding large portions of our carefully gathered resources. It takes no stretch of the imagination to deem them immoral, and ourselves immoral if we refuse to cater to their needs. Why? Well, because maintaining an orderly society demands no less from us.

Scammers and liars and cheaters take note. Schemers, swindlers, and hoodwinkers of all kinds, be warned. We are onto you in increasing numbers. We have found a way to recognize you and that will be your downfall. Those who proclaim natural morality as evil, we can know your hidden agenda and the evils you represent. We can identify the kind of immorality that you seek to increase in our midst, the way that it threatens the common good, and introduces pain into our midst for no worthy end. We can see how your arrogance works to favor your agendas at great cost to the majority of the rest of us, how your immoral intolerance drives you to purify our society so that only your poison survives, and how you condemn the greatest attributes humanity portrays so that you can bring us down. You claim to speak for God to us, but your God has horns and wears a scarlet cape that exposes hairy, naked loins when we dare to look.

Why so? Look at those organizations that have been set up and purport to teach us about good and evil. Look at the corporations that have plundered Nature with no notion of replenishment so the future is cared for as a part of their programs. Look at the governing bodies we have created, that now serve as subjects to those corporations and have made our nation into an oligarchical theocracy. Do they make you feel tickled? Do they say how the painful present will lead to future greater tickles? Can you foresee a future brighter than the present, and a clear path being followed to get us there?

Let’s now declare a moral law, taken from the book Secular Morality. Take it to church written on your sleeve, and contemplate it while listening to your preacher:

"To deny a right to the experience of pleasure is immoral unless that denial can be justified by a valid presentation of how pain will result from that experience in an amount that would render the expected pleasure regrettable; or, if it can be shown that pain will be induced in others innocent of any involvement. The role of science in moral issues should be to test that, predict that, and find harmless ways to demonstrate that."

Copyright ©2007 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling. All rights reserved. Visit http://www.atheistlloyd.com for permissions and more free stuff.

Reveal the variants; divulge the discrepancies; elucidate the parameters; speculate the possibilities; comprehend unique solutions.

A literary process by Lloyd Harrison Whitling