As I'm watching Jon Stewart tonight, I see a man, Sam Harris an atheist, appear on his show with his new book, The Moral Landscape. Now, I figured out morality and the meaning of wrong or right, last year, but my horrible writing...haha, and procrastination has led me to not share it with any one. So, tonight my ego got the best of me and gave me the motivation to post what I know before others get credited with the idea first. I will do my best to share my knowledge now. I have not read his book yet so I can't say what he does or does not say. Also there might be light introductions to other concepts that I will later blog about and articulate on, such as the meaning of life, happiness, ect.
Okay, what is the meaning of right or wrong? From what I saw of Sam Harris it looks like he is close to getting it right, but I wasn't able to know if he understands it completely just based on the interview, and also on the fact I haven't read his book. I believe he describes it as human flourishing, where as I describe it as survivability. But its okay, its basically the same thing. What I mean is, and I think he does too, is that morality, the meaning of right and wrong, is based on whats good for humans.
Now, since we were young we were told what was right or wrong, by parents and religion, but I have always wanted a better definition. What is right and what is wrong? The only answers seemed to me to come from just knowing based on what I was taught. But it occurred to me, after, I figured out the meaning of life, that what it is ,in reality based on is survivability.
As, I will later articulate in future blogs, us humans evolved with randomness. This randomness pointed our perceived characters and morality towards the most logical conclusion. That conclusion is to make more of our selfs, to stay alive, reproduce, and continue being more. In randomness we evolved to want to reproduce and stay alive, because if we hadn't we would not exist. We would kill ourselves, jump off cliffs without thinking and fail to provide to our offspring to continue to survive. Randomness thus slowly removes the people with less traits to survive, and replaces them with the people who survive better and reproduce more often.
It is then no wonder why our mind has evolved to include morality in the picture, morality increases our survivability. Think about it. What is considered right increases our survivability. What is considered wrong decreases our survivability.
Let's say I steal from some one. Stealing decreases the victims value, their ability to survive because what I stole could be sold or used for food, or shelter or something else that could be essential to survivability. Stealing is considered wrong. But what if I give charity to a desperate homeless guy. I have increased his survivability and therefore have done something that is considered right. Same could be said if I kill someone, or save someones life. How about studying, going to school, making more money, as opposed to not studying, not going to school, and thus making less money. One is perceived right, one is perceived wrong, one increases survivability and the other decreases survivability.
It seems right and wrong have evolved to be dependent on the perception of increasing or decreasing societies survivability. For example if you steal from some one it is considered wrong, but what if you steal bread to survive. I remember my mother always telling me that God said that, that is okay. This is where you can argue for or against it. It is the gray area. You can argue weather it is wrong or right and weather it increases or decreases societies survivability. If the man lives and does not die because he choose to steals food, then his survivability increases and also that of society. But if he steals because of wants and not necessity then he decreases societies survivability, because even if he didn't steal he would still be able to survive. In, reality there is no wrong or right answer, as I describe later about the meaning of life, but in the world of morality in our minds you can argue for or against it based on the decrease or increase of survivability. Since it is hard to prove as a fact that societies total survivability value increased or decreased without stats to prove it, morality question like this become gray for people.
Alright, so what about stuff like child abuse, rape, prostitution, abortion, gays? Hmm...Lets start with abortion. Abortion is a grey area. And people are split on the topic. It obviously destroys survivability since your killing a potential child, but what if the mother is young? If there is no social programs to help her, for example, she would probably not be able to go to college and in turn make more money because she is busy raising a child. That child's survivability decreases, as well as her other childrens' survivability, because less money equals less survivability. But what is she aborts the child then goes to school, makes more money, and then has kids. The kids and her have way better survivability. You see, you can play with it however you want, but abortion as a whole is different for every woman, what is wrong or right is hard to prove since it varies for each individual case and becomes hypothetical. And because of that abortion is grey and is hard to prove completely wrong or right. That is unless you believe in a certain type a religion and you go by that alone... blindly.
Okay, what about child abuse? You can argue for spanking or not spanking. You can argue spanking makes a child have a better understanding of right and wrong and thus increase his survivability. You can argue spanking will give him a better character to survive, but can you prove it? Statistics would be needed. Obviously hurting a child to the point that your causing serious injury, decreases his survivability and is considered very wrong. Even if your lightly spanking your kids, some people see it as wrong and archaic. Hitting a child has a negative connotation no matter the context due to the fact that it has been taken to far by irresponsible parents. That is why it is perceived wrong, even if their survivability isn't in danger, when you are lightly spanking them.
Rape? A woman is programmed to want to have sex with men who would increase her babies chances of survivability. Being rape destroys the woman's option to choose and thus decreases survivability for that child. Even if a child wasn't produced and the woman lived with no decrease to survivability, rape has a negative connotation due to rape leading to murder, injury, and other factors that could decrease survivability. That is why raped is perceived as always wrong no matter the context.
Prostitution was actually widely accepted in early America, but when disease started spreading quicker through prostitution, it became clearer that it was wrong. It has developed a negative connotation because of that and other factors. Even though it could be regulated to include safer sex and better screening, its negative connotation will leave it there for now.
What about gays? They are considered wrong because a same sex couple can't reproduce and therefore don't increase survivability. Religion also takes extreme views on this because of this factor. What gays should know is that there is nothing wrong with being gay. We are all products of natures' randomness. As I will articulate later in a future blog: the meaning of life. Also, many gay people are extremely productive to society, thus increasing survivability. This seems like a grey issue, but it's really not, because there is nothing wrong with being gay. I'll end it at that.
In conclusion, I would like to add, that morality is really just perceived in the mind. It is an evolutionary tool to help us progress. And some religions seem to have based themselves on this whole concept, almost as if they were intended on the sole purpose of increasing survivability.
Phew.. I'm sure I forgot to go over some stuff, but I will save that stuff for some other day, thank you for reading my blog. Rest assured there will be more to come...
