morality vs laws
Morality has been a feature of homo genus for hundreds of thousands of years; a remarkable adaption that regulated any transgressions that were not in the interest of the whole community. We evolved with a propensity to coexist with a shared sense of moral understanding, values which benefitted everyone.
It was the advent of agriculture and the subsequent rise of civilisation (only 5000 years ago) which spawned the unnatural, rule-based framework that managed our behaviour. These abstract laws, both secular and religious, created a system that was contrived to satisfy the agenda of those who asserted themselves as rulers, not one that considered the needs of all. This was a radical shift from the egalitarian morality of our nomadic ancestors, who took advantage of their evolved intelligence, creating communities which were neither hierarchical, patriarchal, nor violent. It is the moral understanding of fairness that distinguishes humans from other primates, and from the retrograde attitudes of greed, selfishness, and violence which now define modern civilisation – characteristics more akin to our remote chimpanzee relatives than an expression of our highly sophisticated human forebears.
When we have hierarchy, there is always going to be inequity, slavery, division, and conflict, yet the essence of our natural morality is to uphold the notion of fairness, and the understanding that it is wrong to harm another, which obviously includes murder. And although murder is still universally condemned on both moral and lawful grounds, there is a clear contradiction when it comes to war, where killing the enemy – our fellow humans – is not only celebrated, but rewarded, and more perversely, it is an engagement that is established on accepted legal parameters. This corruption of our natural human character can be explained by the fact that those who instigate war do so from a need for power, and the prospect of personal gain, not from a moral perspective. Therefore, war can never be morally justified, because morals are not a consideration in its objectives. We have substituted morality for the rule of law – a system designed to defend the atrocities of war, and the extreme inequity that is such an abhorrent feature of ‘civilised’ society.
We would not have war, poverty, injustice, or the destruction of the natural world, if we had adhered to our innate morality, but alas, we have become subservient to the egotistic, greedy, and self-serving agenda of those who assume positions of power. We are compelled to satisfy the amoral laws which are imposed upon us, laws whose true function is to preserve the power structures which service their obscene greed and immature egos.
As proof of the catastrophic failings of such an unnatural system, modern humans, having existed for at least 160,000 years without any conflict, are soon to become extinct because, only a few millennia ago, we replaced egalitarianism with hierarchy.
Hierarchy is rooted in the same motivation as the pursuit of status, class, and rank, along with patriarchy, self-importance, competition, self-promotion, and the seeking of notoriety. These engender a sense of superiority which then denigrates into abuse, racism, classism, exploitation, and arrogance. A mature person who has had the opportunity to avail themselves of the refined attributes of generosity, empathy, reason and compassion – which are the intended disposition of the human character – would not partake in any of those childish, ego-driven and, ultimately, destructive aspirations. Rather, they would have lost any sense of their own self-importance, and understood that their function would be to safeguard the welfare of the community. That is what we should all aspire to become, altruistic. If not, we will become extinct in the very near future.
July 2024