From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Sun Oct 10 1999 - 15:16:02 MDT
Kathryn Aegis wrote:
> At 01:02 AM 10/10/99 -0400, John Clark wrote:
> >I agree. If good and evil exist independently of God then He has nothing
> >to do with morality except that He's supposed to obey moral law just like
> >everybody else.
>
> If Good and Evil exist at all--some of us view those as constructed concepts,
> based in ancient superstitions, and best left behind as we evolve.
I would agree, Kathryn, that specific concepts of positive and negative moral
values are artifacts of human social organization (c.f. the debates between
Rousseau and Voltaire) but the DISPOSITION to express feelings of pleasure and
pain, attraction and aversion, security and fear, like and dislike etc. in terms
of JUDGMENTS OF ABSOLUTE VALUE ("That is beautiful" rather than "That
gives me pleasure" or "She is worthless" instead of "I don't like her) seems to
have emerged very early in our evolution, and everyone has noticed that all
efforts to negatively reinforce this tendency through education have been
largely unsuccessful. We CAN change the consensual MEANING of these
dualities, but we CAN'T seem to prevent their "construction" or the chronic
compulsion to JUDGE THE VAlUE of something (as opposed to describing how
we feel about it).
Speculatively, this may be a trait selected because it facilitates social control
and stability, e.g. state-sanctioned capital punishment of murderers or incar-
ceration of people perceived as a threat to the "general tranquility" by judging
them "Evil" or "Vicious". And even, just as Bergson interpreted "Laughter" as an
inborn technique for the of reinforcement of social norms, we use such judg-
ments in an attempt to control others so that our needs are more likely to
be gratified in interpersonal contexts.
If someone early on got more of what he/she needed by making aggressive
moral value judgments (or submissive in order to "conquer by stooping"),
his/her chances of reproducing more of the same would be enhanced and
the trait might be indefinitely perpetuated as an involuntary behavioral
determinant.
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
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