What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? - Looking at the Evolution of Morality.

What does the old question concerning the chicken or the egg have to do with the development of morality? The chicken or egg statement is to indicate an unclear observable relationship of a cause and effect. For many, if not most, there is a lack of understanding concerning the process of moral development independent and in the absence of what we would call religion. This is understandable, since religion long ago usurped other social institutions as the caretaker and final arbiter of authorized social structure and conduct.  

Initially, one must look at why religion developed in the first place. As far as we know we are the only current species who have developed religion. Keeping with our biosocial nature; religion could only have developed from a cognitive species such as ours to explain the unexplainable. We must keep in mind that our observable world is best explained based on cause and effect; when effects occur without observable causes, then the cause must be such as due to divine or supernatural forces. On the surface this seems entirely logical, but as science has led us to other explanations to understand nature, less and less is left in the realm of the unexplainable, thus reducing religion’s operative value in explaining nature. Just as we can now answer the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg through science, then we can also answer the other questions concerning our place in nature. By the way, if there was any doubt; the egg came first and was a mutation of whatever laid it.

The 16th and 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes asks a very fundamental question; “Why is there order”? Everywhere one looks, order prevails. This doesn’t just reflect the order of nature, but it also describes our social order. Why is this then the case? The explanation is pretty simple when you think about it. Society and social order is our species primary survival strategy. Only through group organization and cooperation can we best facilitate survival and adaptation. Therefore, social organization must be a product of biosocial natural laws since it preceded the emergence of us as a species and is a common element of our hominid precursors. Morality is one of those elements of social organization that facilitates and regulates social relationships and individual behavior.

Morality is simply a system of socially sanctioned prohibitions and permissions adopted by a given society and/or community. It becomes the accepted standard of perceptual evaluation and behavior by which the individual and group are supposed to adhere.  Society inculcates these principles, values and standards in the young as they are socialized during childhood and adolescents. By necessity, moral structures are malleable and contain a flexibility to adapt to the changes of environmental forces that the organism of society encounters. Unlike other species, which respond only to forces of the physical environment; our species must respond to the physical environment, technological environment and the social environment. Although, by necessity, social structures must adapt to environmental forces, moral imperatives function as a change governor, regulating the rate of change, attempting to sustain order during the transition from one social structure to another. This has also allowed religion, as the institution of accepted moral authority, to develop and flourish as a governor of change and to regulate.

Many are disturbed by the concept of moral relativity due to the obvious implications. Moral relativity suggests that there is not a single universal human moral structure that governs all of mankind. If there isn’t a single morality, then how is it possible to state that there is only one right religion and in the case of monotheists, one ruling Supreme Being?  For there to be a single moral structure, based on the evolutionary biosocial processes, then all of mankind would have to have the same history, the same environmental forces acting upon it and the same social structure. It is fairly obvious that this is not the case and each moral and social structure is an adaptation to the unique experiences of a given group, giving that group a survival advantage in their given circumstances. What is universal is that all successful groups do have a social structure governed by a given moral structure.

This has implications on how we live in a complex diverse society. Most communities that live in close proximity to one another have fairly consistent and shared moral structures. However, as the history and experience of the affected groups begins to differ, then the application of moral structures also begin to differ. It is natural that a given majority will claim that they have the correct moral system and will condemn all others as being inferior and deficient making the targeted group inferior to the majority. This is the means by which moral superiority is claimed and validated.  

For those who take positions as hard moralists; judging others based on the their own moral beliefs, they are blindly following a structure and allowing the structure to govern them without critical thought and an exercise of free choice. The moral structure is making decisions for them and they have abdicated an important part of their humanity.

It is a certainty that social structures will adapt and become more functional given environmental influences. The process of change is three fold; it begins in a place of stasis, new external forces are applied and the system destabilizes and becomes mutable, and finally it is followed by the building of a new structure that is more functional. Currently, America is in the state of change from that which was to that which will be. Those that are incapable of accepting the process or highly resistant to the change will soon find themselves left behind with an old antiquated structure of moral imperatives headed for the ash heap of human history, just another social artifact.