From our current perspective on human development, these two expressions of our behavior appear to be mortal enemies. They began together as our hunter-gatherer societies became larger and more settled. They are both gaining in strength and expression. They appear to be as directly opposed as the positron and the negatron in our spooky world of quantum physics, where for every positive there must be a negative. One proclaims there must be justice and peace for all; the other specializes in destruction of life, property and resources. They appear to be headed for some calamitous battle, where one or the other will triumph. Which will it be? Will it be the forces of Good, after the apocalypse, as the Bible predicts, giving us justice everywhere; or will it be Evil, the constant presence of war and terror everywhere? Or the quantum physicists may be as correct when this concept is applied to human behavior, as they are correct about particle interactions. War and its enemy, Morality, could both grow to full expression, then obliterate each other in a burst of energy, leaving us nothing left of human life, or life anywhere, for that matter.
The current growing volume of apocalyptic novels we now see predict some such an ignominious end. Yet it is not a simple matter to predict.
Webster’s Dictionary defines morality as “rightness or wrongness, as of an action.” The Encyclopedia Britannica defines morality as the “standard of human behavior derived either objectively or subjectively and based on what is considered ethically right or wrong.” Michael Tomasello, writing in the September, 2018 issue of the Scientific American, puts it in simpler words. He says that the essence of human morality is the sense of obligation human beings feel toward one another. He traces that feeling of obligation to the change of our ancestors from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural society. The group became larger. They were more sedentary, and had developed borders. They had, within those borders, valuable resources, which crops and animals they needed to protect in order to survive. If they did not all work together to protect those resources, then none of them would survive. Obligation of one human toward another group of humans was born
There was natural selection in that group, Tomasello states, which gradually included those who were most willing to cooperate and were best able to communicate, and rejected those who were selfish. As the social group evolved to become one in which all members took care of each other, each individual assessed, he says, how well he or she was holding up to those standards. As those assessments were internalized, guilt was formed, and the sense of right and wrong. Morality was created, and became the guiding matrix of that society.
The scope of moral behavior, the degree to which we feel responsible for other humans, appears to be increasing in our societies. We have had, in our fairly recent human history, prophets who have since influenced millions, Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, Confucius. We have modern day prophets, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, who have liberated masses of humans to greater freedom, expression, and happiness. The number of governments which are democratic are more numerous, giving their citizens rights they never had before. The European nations have bonded together as a single entity, realizing that life will be better for all of them if they treat each other with respect and equality. We now have a legislative body which is available for all nations on this earth, the United Nations, which at least gives a voice to all nations, no matter what their size. We appear to be slowly realizing that all humans are bound together on this single cocoon planet, and that we must work together in mutual respect, if we wish to have enough resources to sustain everyone.
War, however, has kept pace. Writing in the same September, 2018 issue of the Scientific American, R. Brain Ferguson traces the roots of modern warfare to the same seminal events in the development of human societies. He notes that we have always had homicide, or murder, in all animal societies. Chimpanzee gangs will kill intruders into their group. Murder begins with the first chapters of the Bible, or any other account of human behavior. He contrasts that to war, which is the enmity of any entire group, large or small, toward another. It involves the mobilization of all available resources to destroy that group enemy. He also relates this group violence to the development of an agricultural society, where there are borders and resources to protect at all cost. As such, war has become a prominent part of human history over the last 10,000 years.
And war, as an expression of human behavior, has not only kept pace with the further development of human morality, but also seems to beaccelerating. It is increasing in extent and ferocity at a rapid rate over the last 100 years. We have now had two world wars, causing immense destruction. We have powerful nations, America and Russia, invading other nations. We have Arabs bombing Yemeni, Yemeni killing Yemeni. We have Jews killing Palestinians, who return the favor. We have Sunni killing Shia, who do the same to them. We have terrorists all over the world, killing large groups of people with guns, cars, planes, suicide bombs. We have Syrians bombing and gassing Syrians, causing a mass exodus of twelve million Syrians, trying to escape death and destruction. We have a growing number of atomic power nations, leaving us with the possibility of one angry finger pushing a red button, causing a sequential destruction of all life as we know it.
This increasing intensity of war, as an expression of human behavior, leaves us very scared. We seem to be rapidly approaching a precipice, where we either learn to extend moral respect to all people who exist on this planet, or else go down in flames as a species.
Which will triumph? Let’s discuss it further next month