Many villains often sneer at morality, while many righteous people uphold morality as a standard. Is morality a mask for villains or proof of a gentleman? Is it a lie or a reality? Anyone living in society will be troubled by various moral dilemmas. Morality, like a shadow, is proof of our existence in society.
The Definition of Morality Inside and Outside#
What is morality has been described by previous generations. From an external perspective, morality is defined as a set of behavioral norms recognized by a group of people or a culture. The study of moral values is the subject of ethics. From an internal perspective, morality includes judgments on values such as good and evil, right and wrong, justice and evil. Although I do not understand ethics, we do not look at morality from within, but from the outside.
The Specificity of Group Morality#
Morality is first and foremost a social norm that exists within a group. Taking modern Chinese and foreign morality as an example, many Chinese moral values do not apply to foreigners, and many foreigners have different understandings of parent-child relationships, superior-subordinate relationships, and so on. Therefore, the morality of different groups is different.
So where is the boundary of different moralities? If we want to seek a broader morality, we must find the intersection of different moralities. Randomly killing people should be universally condemned in human society. But without comparison, we cannot see the differences between different groups from an external perspective.
The Highest Value of Morality#
I have raised many animals at home, so I am more sensitive to the fate of animals. This has given me a deep understanding of "respect for life". Schopenhauer said, "Good is the preservation and promotion of life, evil is the hindrance and destruction of life." The greatest scope of a group is all life, and this understanding of good can be the highest value in ethics. However, from an external perspective, this kind of good has little effect.
Moral Nihilism#
Taking humans and cows as examples, drinking milk and eating beef have almost no psychological barriers for humans, but what about cows? Why is it not acceptable to drink milk and eat beef just because humans need it? From the perspective of the balance of power between groups, morality is naturally nothing. Some people draw the conclusion that the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, survival of the fittest, is the law of survival. Based on this, they despise all morality and believe that morality is nothing more than an illusion of pseudo-gentlemen.
But in reality, these people make a mistake by not realizing that morality exists within specific groups, and once the scope of the group changes, morality also changes. The law of the jungle exists between different species and cannot be compared with the same species.
The Coercive Force of Morality#
Any norm, whether it is custom, tradition, morality, or law, has a coercive force guaranteed by material foundations. If the material foundation on which it exists is lost, any norm will return to nothingness. When the law and the state are gone, there is nothing left. When the morality changes to a different place, it is gone. Suppose there are no people, then there is no morality. Suppose a person is completely transformed into another creature, then there is no morality.
The Shared Coercive Force of Morality and Law#
In most cases, people believe that the law is enforced by the coercive force of the state, but morality is different. It is enforced by the inner strength of each individual. In fact, the law has the coercive force of the state, but it may also have other coercive forces. Morality does not have the coercive force of the state, but it does not mean that morality does not have other coercive forces, or that the coercive force of morality is weak. The enforcement of most laws relies on psychological coercion, and this psychological coercion often relies on the coercive force of morality. Or it can be said that it is achieved through psychological coercion. This is why China's combination of rituals and laws has been adopted by rulers throughout history, including the so-called rule of virtue and rule of law today.
The Operation of Morality#
It used to be said that law alone is not enough to govern, and in fact, morality alone is not enough to govern. Morality, as a normative existence, is only a superficial representation. It is as a psychological coercive force that it reflects the material foundation of its existence. Any psychological coercion does not arise out of thin air. In terms of the generation of morality, it is a declaration made by a group with the power of public opinion to fight for or confirm its own interests. In terms of the constraints of morality, it is the result of the subject's judgment on the violation of moral costs in the objective world. In terms of the guarantee of morality, those who violate the morality of a specific group will face various forms of resistance and oppression from within the group.
Taking the various demands of gender transformation groups as an example, they have long been suppressed by traditional morality. In "Brokeback Mountain," the love and hate between two homosexuals are filled with internal pressure and various external threats to life and career. But with the decentralization of social decision-making, more and more of these groups have been able to become independent and unique groups through various means. The group continues to influence society through various radical or conservative methods. And then they rise to the level of using the law to confirm the results of their struggles.
The Source of Moral Power#
Therefore, the power of morality is not as simple as so-called psychological coercion. It can make a person who is denied by morality lose their qualification to live in a group. People live in various social relationships, as the subjects of social relationships, they have family members, employers, customers, and if they are negatively evaluated by these people, the consequences are self-evident.
So why do some people not care about moral evaluations? For example, many criminals do not believe in "leniency for confession, severity for resistance," nor do they believe in "saving a life is better than building a seven-tiered pagoda." Because as criminals, especially those lone bandits, their material foundation has completely separated from the group. On the contrary, their activities of killing and robbing are their way of survival. But as long as these criminals exist within social relationships, they will inevitably be influenced by different degrees of morality. For example, an internal requirement of a criminal gang is certainly a certain degree of loyalty, because loyalty as a rule within the group is the basis for the continued development of the group. Many criminals often have trouble sleeping and eating after decades of being on the run because the material foundation they rely on is built on society, so how can they not be influenced by social morality? But once a criminal becomes a primitive beast that lives by killing and robbing, how can they still have morality?
The Eternal Morality#
Of course, morality will definitely exist, but it is not the morality of the previous society, but a new morality. This is also the most fascinating aspect of the morality of "respect for life" because it starts from the perspective of all life and obtains legitimacy from an ethical standpoint.
Moral Relativism#
Moral relativism holds that morality does not reflect objective or universal truths. Some people think that this moral view is dangerous because it does not have morality. But it can be certain that some "morality" is in a state of historical change. Even according to the perspective of moral relativism, eternal morality can still be obtained. For example, I believe that the morality of different groups is different, and the morality of different species is different. However, all of us are part of the group of life. We may sacrifice the value of other lives for certain interests, but you can always base your existence on promoting and preserving life. In this sense, humans and any other creatures do not need to harm each other.
But the dark forest theory described in "The Three-Body Problem" is indeed chilling. The novel believes that there used to be many dimensions in the world, and many civilizations destroyed higher-dimensional worlds in order to survive and entered lower-dimensional worlds. "Fish that drained the sea went to the land before the sea dried up, running from one dark forest to another."
Whether it is morality or other laws, cultures, in order to study them, it is necessary to conduct material analysis and interpretation. But if we only stay at the material level, it is indeed meaningless to add another boring thing to life.
Morality Within the Group#
Morality needs to exist within a specific group. Wolves and sheep have no morality. But within the wolf pack and the sheep flock, there are their own rules.
Similarly, humans rely on group life, and each person is a member of the group. The poor can also become rich, and vice versa. This difference between people is only due to the differences in the culture or order within the group, not physiological differences. As members of the ruling class, they will "transform human nature", change morality, and then transform culture to recognize the existence of this ruling status.
Previously, in the exploration of the material foundation required for a "communist society," I believed that the decentralization and incompatibility of the material foundation are the basis for humanity to escape exploitation. To achieve control, the concentration of culture is one of the methods. Similarly, morality as a group's morality is also transformed in this way. But as morality itself, it has its own inherent laws. For this reason, I would rather admit that there is a universal morality. Mutual assistance between groups, doing good deeds, is the basis for the healthy development of the group and the realization of the maximum interests of the group and individuals.
Reporting, indifference, deception, pursuing only personal gain, and other behaviors that are denied by group morality are the result of distorted power, unequal distribution of material interests, and injustice in society. In this centralized material foundation, morality is not an extra point, but a pit. Trust between group members is also destroyed. The whole society becomes fragmented. The division of the lower class is the stability that rulers dream of. Of course, the limit of this stability is limited. Once the system cannot obtain new energy, the influx of external energy, the entire system will collapse.
Like morality, the dilemmas faced by various humanities disciplines are also centralized and destroyed. Because as an upper-level culture, it needs the support of a prosperous society. In other words, a society that can support the widespread development of humanities disciplines already has a prosperous foundation. However, these disciplines are not harmless. The free development of various disciplines often means breaking the existing monopoly of interests and liberating human nature.
Morality, ethics, and other humanities disciplines are a kind of joyful and luxurious thing in themselves. In the past, abolishing humanities disciplines and retaining science and engineering disciplines was as Shang Yang and Han Fei said, to eliminate the five pests. The country only needs two types of people, farmers and soldiers. Why don't they want intellectuals and only need farmers and soldiers? Because farmers and soldiers serve the monarch, while intellectuals serve the people. Only by controlling desires can one achieve a profit and be useful to the monarch. If everyone likes art and literature, who will simply obey? This is the role of retaining science and engineering disciplines.
Social laws are not laws of survival, and civilizations are survival of the fittest between civilizations, but within civilizations, survival of the fittest is not applicable. Morality, as well as other humanities disciplines, is both the cultural foundation of survival and the meaning of survival. Unfortunately, as public morality or humanities disciplines that can benefit everyone, they have withered in the cold winter of power. They can only continue to consume the remaining nutrients as seeds, lurking between this blood-red world.
July 15, 2023, noon