Many villains always sneer at morality, and many heroes also regard morality as a criterion. Is morality a mask for villains or a proof for gentlemen? Is it a lie of nothingness or a matter of fact? Anyone who lives in society will be troubled by various moralities. Like a shadow, morality is a proof of our existence in society.
The Definition of Morality Inside and Outside#
What is morality has been explained 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 don't understand ethics, we do not look at morality from within morality, but from an external perspective.
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 moralities not only have no binding force on foreigners, but many foreigners have different understandings of parent-child relationships, superior-subordinate relationships, and so on. Therefore, the moralities of different groups are different.
So where is the boundary of different moralities? If you want to seek a broader morality, you need to find the intersection of different moralities. Randomly killing should be universally condemned in human society. But without comparison, it is impossible to see the differences between different groups from an external perspective.
The Highest Value of Morality#
I have raised many animals at home, and I have always been sensitive to the fate of animals. This has given me a deep understanding of "reverence for life". Arthur Schopenhauer said, "Good is the preservation and promotion of life, and evil is the hindrance and destruction of life." The greatest scope of a group is all life forms. This understanding of good can be regarded as 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 can't we drink milk and eat beef just because humans need them? 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 regard morality as the 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, where the strong prey on the weak, exists between different species and cannot be compared between the same species.
The Coercive Force of Morality#
Any norm, whether it is a habit, custom, 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 no law. When the morality changes to a different morality, it is gone. Suppose there are no people, then there is no morality. Suppose a person is completely non-human and becomes another creature, then there is no morality.
The Shared Coercive Force of Morality and Law#
In most cases, people believe that the law is guaranteed 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 through psychological coercion. Therefore, the integration of ritual and law in China has been adopted by rulers of past dynasties, including the so-called rule of virtue and rule of law today.
The Operation of Morality#
It used to be said that "laws alone are not enough to govern a country," and in fact, "morality alone is not enough to govern a country" either. Morality, as a normative existence, is only a superficial manifestation. As a psychological coercive force, it reflects the material foundation of morality. Any psychological coercion does not arise out of thin air. In terms of the generation of morality, it is a declaration of 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 judgment of the subject 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 various groups that demand gender transformation as an example, they have long been suppressed by traditional morality. In "Brokeback Mountain," the love and hatred between two homosexuals are filled with internal pressure and various external threats such as death 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 of extremism or conservatism. The group continues to influence society through various means and continues to use laws 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 the qualification to live in a group. People live in various social relationships. As the subject of social relationships, there are family members, employers, and customers. If they are evaluated negatively by these relationships, 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, strictness for resistance," nor do they believe in "saving one 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 definitely be influenced by moral differences to varying degrees. For example, an internal requirement of a criminal gang is definitely a certain degree of trustworthiness, because trustworthiness is a rule within the group and the basis for the continued development of the group. Many criminals often have trouble sleeping and eating after decades of escape because the material foundation they rely on is built on society. How can they not be influenced by social morality? But once a criminal becomes a fierce beast that lives in the primitive forest after committing a crime, how can they still have morality?
The Eternal Morality#
Of course, there will definitely be morality, 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 "reverence 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 they do not have morality. But it can be certain that some "morality" is in a state of historical change. Even from the perspective of moral relativism, eternal morality can be obtained. For example, I believe that the moralities of different groups are different, and the moralities of different species are 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 take the promotion and preservation of life as the basis of existence. In this sense, humans and any other creatures do not need to harm each other.
However, the dark forest theory described in "The Three-Body Problem" is indeed chilling. The novel believes that there were 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 everyone is a member of the group. The poor can also become rich, and vice versa. The differences between individuals are only due to the differences in 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 state.
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 get rid of exploitation. To achieve control, the concentration of culture is one of the methods. As a morality within the group, it 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, performing 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 caused by the distortion of power and the unequal distribution of material interests, resulting in social conditions. In this centralized material foundation, morality is not a bonus, 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 and 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 extensive 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, or other humanities disciplines are in themselves a kind of joyful and luxurious thing. In the past, abolishing humanities disciplines and retaining science and engineering was like what Shang Yang and Han Fei said, eliminating 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 common people. Only by controlling desires can one achieve a benefit and be used by the monarch. If everyone likes art and literature, who will simply obey? This is the role of retaining science and engineering.
Social laws are not laws of survival, and between civilizations, it is survival of the fittest, but within civilizations, the law of the jungle 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 welfare 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 in this blood-red world.
July 15, 2023, noon