Morality Only Applies if You Are Alive

....morality and compassion are things you can only afford when you're in a nation that's isn't fighting for survival.Source.

Morality has become fashionable in politics, with both sides of the US political debate claiming the moral high ground. Always be suspicious of politicians appealing to morality. By definition, politicians and lawyers are liars. Priests and Pastors are almost as bad. Special interest morality is unsatisfying to anyone who values truth. The media laps it up like dogs, though. So do people with little experience in life, or little personal ballast despite experience.

There are different approaches to morality, some of which are fairly objective. Special interest morality is a focused morality that ignores far more than it includes. It is very useful to lawyers, politicians, and priests--not to mention partisan media pundits. The problem is being able to detect the stunted morality before it causes you to change your behaviour. Most people are incapable of doing that.

If schools wanted to provide a service to students, they would require them to analyse a full spectrum of arguments on a particular issue, and not only identify the logical parts of the argument, but locate logical fallacies and logical shortcomings--including blatantly ignored alternative premises. The reasons schools rarely do this, is that such an exercise presents a danger to the school's (or professors') underlying argument or point of view. We cannot have that.

So I will do something similar. I present links to three point of view articles--here, here, and here. You may choose the topic that interests you most and analyse it.

Morality exists on many levels. The failure to distinguish between levels of morality, and how they might affect an argument, is a major shortcoming of modern education and public discourse.

Finally, there is Marc Hauser's book, Moral Minds. I have skimmed the book and read several reviews. I have read other books by Hauser. I consider the new book an essential early step in looking at the biology of morality. I plan to read the book in detail fairly soon, as it may fit in the reading rotation.

Philosophy once encompassed ethics. Now biology is elbowing its way in, quite rudely. There is something offensive about biological imperatives that force their way into polite conversation, over cocktails. Nevertheless, a growing number of dissenters from politically correct self-censorship are beginning to speak more loudly--and publishers are finding it harder not to publish them. This is a trend.

The popular media has temporarily hit on a "formula of morality" that seems to sway the majority of voters in some parts of the developed world. What the popular media may not realise is that morality is a fickle servant, subject to significant recoil.

For interested observers, I strongly recommend reading Hauser, Pinker, Dennett, Dawkins, and other students of human behaviour with Darwinian perspectives. Then look at what societies' liars--politicians, lawyers, media pundits, clerics, PC professors--are doing to morality arguments. Fascinating.