The Need for a Social Morality in America Today
by Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB
Today happens to be the Jewish high holiday Yom Kippur. It is a day when people atone for their sins. As an American, I have been thinking for a long time about our nation's need to atone for its sins. Most of the worst sins are government-led. Many citizens will say they are not responsible as they are not the government. I say we ARE the government, and we are all responsible.
This article is about that fact that that Americans have recently lost their sense of being a society. I think this loss is recoverable -- thanks to biology. Bear with me for that argument.
The Biological View of Human Society
Sociobiologist Edward O Wilson refers to an ant colony as a superorganism. It has individual organisms in it -- sometimes millions. Ant individuals have some selfish behaviors and some altruistic behaviors. What guides the individual as to whether to act selfishly or altruistically at a given moment? To put it roughly, I'd say "the situation" guides her.
(Note: it's usually a "her." The ant queen is the mother of all the members of the colony, mostly female. Her consort, never referred to as "king," has only the job of providing the service needed for procreation. He is no playboy; it's hard work.)
Th "situation" guides an individual by providing cues. Famously, in the human situation, a soldier in battle gets cued to act with extreme altruism, including an instinctive willingness to die for the group. In his civilian life, the same soldier normally acts instead on his instinct for self-preservation. Thus, he possesses both instincts, but each requires a circumstance to bring it out.
How is it, that apart from the specific case of uniting against an enemy, we humans are able to be decent to one another? We have a gene for altruism, as is evident in the love and devotion of family members, especially a mother with her baby. It is also notable in circumstances when a non-relative is in dire need, such as needing to be helped if he has fallen on the street. Our emotional apparatus prompts us to help such a person.
OK, but what about more run-of-the-mill situations? Why apply self-restraint when one could more profitably grab every chance to advantage himself (as some psychopaths indeed do)? I think it's because we are emotionally geared to fit in with the social norm of good behavior. If our society says "Help old ladies to carry their bundles across the street," we not only do it, we get a little spark of emotional pleasure. Virtue pays, so to speak.
Biology of Ordinary, Day-to-Day Morality
Ah, where did that set-up biologically come from? We have at least two basic propensities that cause morality (and ethics and etiquette) to be a standard part of social life. One is the child's biological need for approval. A nice look from Mom makes him happy; a frown from Dad causes him to feel pain. It's easy to see that natural selection would cause the young to survive best if they follow the adults' admonishments -- just watch how your cat trains her kittens.
The other biology-of-morality thing is our propensity to punish wrongdoers. I guess this means we are born with a basic sense of justice. It can work, on the ground, between Human A and Human B, but we tend to make it into a complete law, claiming to be based on justice. Here is the Leviticus 24:20 expression (King James version of the Bible): "Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him."
Again, it seems that we evolved the right prompting mechanism, perhaps the emotion of sweet revenge. Some people, present company included, really get off on justice -- law itself evokes pleasure. Law is also a work of art.
How then does the culture come to include specific rules, such as the one about helping the old lady carry her bundles across the street? I presume it is a function of the brain, whereby we create ideas in our head. Idea-creation consists of the joining up of many information-loaded neurons (or something like that) within one person, and then his sharing it. Others expand on it and the idea becomes a norm, a cherished norm. (I think norms are cherished because they are familiar. Familiar things have a pleasant feel.)
Although I referred above to ants and cats doing something moral, only humans have the necessary trait for spitting out their moral ideas and passing them around for debate and development. Imagine the Leviticus idea (known as lex talionis). It features in the Code of Hammurabi that preceded Leviticus, and Roman law that came after it. Over many generations, such a law gets shared and developed.
Rational Equality Will Out
Note that there is a tendency toward "rational equality" in moral thinking. The author of Leviticus says "If A knocks B's teeth out, the proper punishment is for B's teeth to get knocked out."
The science of sociobiology supports Robert Trivers' idea that we evolved the mental trait of reciprocity, as expressed in the phrase "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." This is a kind of enlightened self-interest -- though it may exist at a sub-awareness level. Normally, I shouldn't want to be bothered to scratch a stranger's back, but I sense that the time will come when I need to have my back scratched, so I am willing to invest in this chore. Rational equality -- the equality of the two sides in a particular argument -- seems unavoidable.
By the way, it's different today -- if I knocked my neighbor's teeth out because he knocked mine out, I could be arrested for that crime. Procedurally, we have moved the vengeance (or teaching) factor up to a societal level. "Government" has the sole prerogative of going after the criminal. Moreover, there are no statutes such as a Victims of Crime Act, whereby the poor toothless fellow is given new teeth (or money) by Society.
I presume we have an instinct for spirituality, also, and that it's no great leap for folks to make a connection between human spiritual sensibility and the impressiveness of authority (i.e., the bosses) -- mainly, God. Plus there is always a tendency for one person in a group to be a natural leader or teacher and so moralists invariably arise.
American Morality Today Has Problems
Recall that in this article I'm supposed to talk about Americans atoning for their sins! The title of the article heralds a need for a societal morality. I will now argue that American society does not acknowledge that it has a social morality -- it's over-concerned with the individual. It can't even make a moral appeal to "society." This wants fixing!
I'll bypass the problem of there being no one religion that is aligned with this nation. It always helps to be able to say "our" God is in charge, but Americans can't forthrightly say that. Granted, in early days people in the US spoke of this nation being Christian but it really won't do the job today. We need a morality for our tribe.
Back to EO Wilson saying that an ant colony is a superorganism. I suppose every human society -- if it is substantially isolated from others -- is a superorganism. Its members live in it biologically; they are interdependent for their survival.
There's an economy in which one has to participate as producer and/or consumer. (How could you escape that?) There is an education system, even if only taught by parents, who learned it from their parents and others. You can't get educated without help. Then, too, there are all the biologically guided relationships -- friendships, sure, but even a contractual relationship is guided biologically, as in the agreement to scratch one another's back.
If you are part of a superorganism, you have obligations to it. (Obvious, right?) I mean above and beyond the natural obligations to family and contract partners, there is an obligation to the group. "How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful member of society!"
It just so happens that our love for our group is easily stimulated by our apprehension of an enemy attack. People can drop their selfishness like a hot potato to defend the group. But we need day-to-day social morality, not just wartime altruism. I have heard that German culture happily practices corporatism. This is unrelated to "corporations." A corpus is a body. Germans want the whole body to be healthy not just one social class. They will work together for that.
Getting Together -- What about the Parchment?
Admittedly, one stimulus to social cohesion is class conflict. The brain's penchant for calling up altruism to defeat an enemy is at work here -- the members of the other class (upper or lower) are your enemy. This can be very helpful if directed at a ruling class. Disgust with the British rulers of the colonies sparked plenty of togetherness. In regard to the 1773 taxation on tea, Meshech Weare of New Hampshire wrote:
Rouse every generous thoughtful mind,
The rising anger flee,
If you would lasting freedom find
Now then abandon tea.
Today I'd like to see more banding together of "the people" against our Behind-the-Scenes rulers. But that's not so simple, as those same rulers have cleverly broken us up into little groups who don't trust any but their own, sworn-in members.
So what about the Parchment? My age cohort (70 and up) was well soaked in the importance of the Constitution as the uniting force of American culture. It stood for freedom and justice, no questions asked. But the next generations did not get that training. in fact the youngest ones today are being taught in school that the Constitution is bad.
This needs to be corrected. The Great Republic, as it was called by our overseas admirers and imitators, does indeed hold a unique honor. We were a country, in 1787, that "constituted ourselves" by writing important things on a piece of parchment (handwritten -- no typewriters in those days; no cars either --- you walked). Millions of people drew strength from the Constitution. It should be restored to its rightful place. It says very sensible things about curtailing the role of government.
I am a big supporter of the Bill of Rights but it is selfishly read. People think they have a right based on something being listed as a right. Nah. People have a right because the members of American society have covenanted with one another to protect their fellow citizens from harm. It's a given that rulers will become abusive . Each of the ten amendments comprising the Bill of Rights lays a taboo on letting the ruler get away with some particular oppression.
It takes work to fight the abusers off. Yet we do not lack the means. The Constitution is a strong guide. But if you are alone, you cannot take on the powerful by yourself. The trick is for us to gather together against the oppressors. And it's also crucial to invite the oppressors to give up their bad performance -- they too could find happiness in American society. We are a body. I claim we are a superorganism whether we choose to be or not.
We are in a horrible mess right now, with an array of baddies about to turn the nation into a concentration camp. We need a social morality. We also need to acknowledge our sins -- we have not been the nice folks that we boast of being. We don't even give loving care to our own habitat.
As argued above, biology has given us appropriate emotions to sustain our membership in a society. We are predisposed to obey decent law and customs. And it's perfectly natural and even enjoyable to band with others to solve problems.
Let's try that, OK?
Mary Maxwell is the author of Human Evolution: A Philosophical Anthropology (Columbia University Press, 1984), and more recently, Keep the Republic, which is linked below.
