reciprocity

The Fragile Overlay: Morality, Rationality, and Human Need

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Language isn’t reality. Morality likewise is an overlay. Even rationality itself does not arise from the substrate. Mathematics is probably our best 1:1 analog to something objectively real, and even that breaks down at the edges of reality.  It is important we work through until we find the substance of what matters.

We all have our reasons for what we do. It is often good from our perspective. But we have a perspective limited by our ability to accurately model the world based on what we know and extrapolate from that. Faulty information and assumptions will lead to bad reasoning and the suboptimal outcomes we wish to avoid.  That’s what this essay is about—explanation of what is truly moral and sustainable.

Moral reasoning is about human desire. It is an extension of our biology and part of an effort to survive—even thrive—in the environment we’re in. Morality is about a set of rules, and a good rule is one that produces optimal results. In the words of Anton Chigurh—a sort of force of nature and psychopathic antagonist featured in No Country for Old Men—mocking Carson Wells: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

Morality doesn’t exist “out there” separated from human need. It is negotiated between us, like language, where we all have a say (to a point), along with culture and tradition (essentially our moral programming), in setting the standard. The “Golden Rule” works as a code because most people have the same natural aims that we do. Morality is about mutual benefit or the win-win situation. And this can break down at the edges, in zero-sum games or times when one believes they can get away with harming another and lacks a true conscience to stop them.

Disproportionate power and differences of language are fracture zones. Reciprocity, as a rule, generally only works with those who are at the same economic level or have a voice. The reason we don’t care about the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1923 is that we were never told to care. Our morality only applies when we can identify with the other person and see them as an equal. Conflicts arise when we don’t consider what is good from the perspective of another person and they lack the means to stop us.

What is the reason for morality?

To protect ourselves by respecting the right of others to exist as we want to exist.

What causes violence?

  • Low intelligence: If you don’t understand cause and effect or how what goes around comes around, then you’re more likely to do ‘bad’ things without ever fully considering the consequences. You want X, he stands in the way, so you murder him because you are strong enough to do it. This is the law of the jungle.
  • Low exposure: It’s hard to fool me into thinking that other races are subhuman. I have met them in real life. People living around the world may see the U.S. as a nation of school shooters and OnlyFans girls based on what they know of us. But the reality is we’re just a nation obsessed with violence and immoral sexuality. And yet, seriously, ignorance isn’t bliss—it is a propagandist’s haven and what allows them to convince otherwise good people to kill people who don’t look exactly like them or speak their language.
  • Low empathy: Some intelligent people are just psychopaths. They are part of the social contract (although they will pretend to be) and see their own needs as the only ones that are important. They can’t “walk a mile in another man’s shoes” without some innate ability to feel what other people feel and imagine their pain. Empathy is natural and also taught. Yet not all have the same capacity to show empathy or care. If you see other people the same as you do a fly, you won’t hesitate to exploit or kill them if there’s a low risk of consequences.
  • Low trust: We can recognize that others are human, no different from us, and yet still choose to kill them. Why? Well, if there is a fear that others will do violence to us, there’s an option of preemption. It’s also why men kill the guy in the opposite trench in a war—it is me or him. If we see another person as a potential threat, there’s a primitive impulse to eliminate the other before they act. This is how war is sold to the masses: violence as an answer for uncertainty and anxiety over not knowing what they may do.

The problem with violence is that it creates a cycle of violence. And if it doesn’t do that, it still comes at a cost. To prevent this, we must get ahead of the causes. Education, diplomacy, and building relationships are an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. Sure, violence can be a winning strategy in the game. However, violence turns what is possibly a win-win scenario into a zero-sum game with unpredictable outcomes. It may be possible to exploit trust and murder your way to the top, yet eventually it catches up to you—eventually someone bigger, smarter, and nastier comes along.

The highest form of morality must therefore serve the ultimate good. A tribal morality, or one where only people like you gain, is risky. It means chaos and conflict. Whereas with a universal morality that serves all, there is a possibility of peace, harmony, or stability. This is why consistent non-violence is the intelligent option. Innocent people are hurt in war. Violence begets violence. So if we want to maximize our own chances or those of our loved ones, then we must respect the rights of all others. Apathy and indifference are not a choice either—we must be united in opposition to violence and abuse of others if we want others to care when it is our turn to face down true evil.

Only in the most extreme circumstances is it moral to use force. Self-defense, or one of the very narrow circumstances where there is no other reasonable option, is a possibly justified exception. Of course, not a “right to defend” that tramples the rights of other people.  Unfortunately, we live in a world of propaganda where the most aggressive and disproportionate acts of revenge can be construed as defense—where unwanted words can be called violence. A clear standard can very soon be rationalized away to the point where defenders are made the aggressors while actually being the victims who are attacked.

This is the problem with any moral system we create. The overlay can be shifted, the language manipulated, and soon we end up back at square one fighting tribal wars over irrational fear of the other. This is why we cannot ever assume that our ideal is being transmitted perfectly in words. This is also the risk of making any exceptions.

Moral conscience must be built and passed on. We need to address the ignorance and show people how history is full of examples of unintended consequences. A war rarely goes as planned. We need to minimize the fear of the ‘other’ by encouraging positive interactions. Humanization is a natural byproduct of good relationships. It is past time to stop putting psychopaths in positions of power. We must resist those who manipulate us to fight wars for their financial or political gain.

We also need to equalize power so that all are represented and all are accountable. If we make some kings and others pawns—some “more equal” like the pigs in Animal Farm—it leads to endless conflict. Wealth inequality is a problem when it means that a few can buy their way out of morality. The Epstein-class—those who believe the law doesn’t apply to them as special people—will come to us in many forms when we let financial or political power concentrate into fewer hands. Morality is all about identifying with the other, and it is only possible when we are all at a similar level of status.

This is a Christian moral teaching:

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.’

(2 Corinthians 8:13-15 NIV)

Morality is about considering others to be equal in value to ourselves. And that is easier when they basically are equal in terms of their social status and power. This is why the writers of the New Testament put so much emphasis on the elimination of special social status or favoritism. We are supposed to “submit to one another” rather than enforce our own advantage. We’re told God is impartial. We are told the greater should serve the lesser, to share “all in common” so none are ever in need. The Great Leveler (Galatians 3:28) is a confrontation of identity politics and only fighting for those like us.

It’s interesting how many people want the U.S. to be a Christian nation when it comes to their own sexual mores or religious customs, and yet don’t want to treat the foreigner as the native born (Leviticus 19:33-34) or love their ‘neighbor’ as Christ defined the term. They seek to accumulate power for themselves and impose rather than serve. This is false morality; it is just legalism and hypocrisy—forcing others to apply a morality we do not fully live out ourselves. Being truly moral is about what we consistently live, not merely what we claim about ourselves.

Which brings us to the final point. Morality needs to be consistent in logic and application. We can’t carve out exemptions or have double standards because it destabilizes the entire structure we’re standing on. Moral integrity is about rooting out our contradictions and being the same person in all circumstances. If you lie in one context, for example, eventually this habit is bound to bleed over into another. And if we enable our leaders to violate others, who (or what) will stop them from violating us? This is why we must battle against expediency math that violates consistent application of a moral rule. It is better to take the cost of maintaining these critical principles upon ourselves than risk their end.

Morality is an abstraction. A construct. But it is a very important one to get right.  Good morality is about aim more than it is about perfection.  And like driving when you look where you wish to go rather than at the edges.

The Greater Good Fallacy: Morality Without Excuses

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Setting aside moral principle to serve a greater good means you have no moral principles.

Moral relativists love their hypotheticals: “What if you had a chance to travel back in time and kill baby Hitler?”

Once they can establish the answer as “yes” then pretty soon thereafter anyone who stands in their way is a Nazi. Or, in other words, the morality of “everyone I don’t like is literally Hitler” where you will basically become Hitler killing all of those baby Hitlers before they become Hitler—kill them all, you can’t be too careful!

It is ends justify the means morality that justifies, ultimately, the most heinous and horrible acts by one projecting a possible outcome as an excuse to violate another person—in some cases even before they drew a first breath.

For example, the Freakonomics case for abortion pointing to how inner-city crime rates dropped in correlation with black babies being killed—used as a moral justification.

Contrast this with Matthew 12:20, with Jesus: “He will not break a crushed blade of grass…”

This prejudice is behind every genocide or ethnic cleansing campaign. The excuse: “We don’t want to kill babies, but if we don’t ‘mow the grass‘ then they’ll grow up to kill us.” I mean, it’s not like that attitude will create a backlash or stir the anger of the population being cynically targeted for a trimming back, right?

Oh well, at least when you are starting at the very bottom, relying on self-defense by precrime judgment and a doctrine of preemption, there is no slippery slope to be concerned about: Morality becomes a race of who can eliminate their potential opponents most efficiently rather than a social contract between people trying to live peaceably with their neighbors.

(Im)Morality of the ‘God’s Plan’ Excuse…

One of the sidesteps of treating others with human decency is that it is all part of God’s plan. Biblical fundamentalists often use a similar kind of ends justify the means moral reasoning as the far-left—except they dress it up as faith and seeing the bigger perspective.

This is their excuse to be Biblical, but not Christian. The moment you raise a moral objection about anything they’ll find their loophole in Scripture: “Oh, yes, God said not to take innocent life, but He also told Israel to wipeout the Amalekites, so it is up to us to decide who gets slaughtered or saved.”

This is the God’s eye perspective Jesus addressed in Mark 7:10-12:

For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother.

What the Biblical experts were doing was using one command to nullify another by a greater good moral reasoning. Of course they, in their own minds, were the more spiritual. They had convinced themselves that—by neglecting their duty to parents—they were seeing things from God’s eyes and just better than everyone else. But, in reality, this is rationalization and an excuse to be immoral.

Morality isn’t about taking the God’s eye view, it is about our practically applying the Golden Rule or the law of reciprocity described in the passages below:

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Matthew 6:14-15 NIV

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:1-5 NIV

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

James 2:12-13 NIV

See the pattern here?

What we put into the world is what we will receive back. If we do not show any mercy to those under our power, then we will not be shown mercy. And that’s the point behind the parable that Jesus told about a man forgiven a great debt—then goes out demanding repayment from the man who owed him.

Seeing things from God’s perspective—according to this—is to apply Micah 6:8:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

There are no excuses to set aside normal morality for the sake of God’s plan.

There is no special exemption given for a chosen race of people either.

Throughout history the most evil of men have excused their atrocities using God’s will. It is the reasoning of the Crusader’s command, based on 2 Timothy 2:19, of “Kill them, for God knows his own.”

The ‘Christian’ West killed more innocent people in the Holy Lands than Islamists.

With that kind of thinking, everything will become justified as part of God’s plan if you zoom it out and, therefore, we can’t take a moral stand against anything. If it is God’s plan that babies are killed—then who are you to decry it as murder?

This is logic which can neutralize every moral stance or turn every evil deed into some kind of ultimate good—if you just see it from ‘God’s perspective’ it all becomes okay.  Of course, at that point, accepting this, there is no morality—once everything is relative to God’s will or the outcome that we call good.

It essentially replaces the Golden Rule with: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—except if you can explain away the abuse by some kind of greater good excuse.”

Act Justly, Love Mercy, That’s the Conclusion…

Moral relativism, whether cloaked in the guise of achieving a greater good or justified as part of God’s plan, erodes the foundation of true morality—the Golden Rule.

By excusing heinous acts through hypothetical necessities or our ‘divine’ rationalizations, we are becoming the very monsters we claim to oppose. True morality demands consistency: acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly, without excuses or every resorting to preemptive judgments or selective exemptions.

When we abandon moral principles for the sake of outcomes we desire or divine loopholes, we replace mutual respect or an opportunity for understanding with a race to eliminate every perceived threat, leaving no room for peace, forgiveness, or humanity.

The measure we use—whether it is mercy or judgment—will be measured back to us, and no appeal to a higher purpose can absolve us of that final reckoning.

When we cut someone off it is a mistake, when they do it to us—we go ballistic.

Post script: Morality is staying in our lane and abiding by the rules. Playing God is running someone off the road for daring to cross into our lane. It is about our keeping the law—not our enforcing of it. And when we start to justify the abuse of others, as Biblical, then we turn into a violator. James 4:11 explains: “When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.” The end result of exemption of ourselves using God’s plan as cover is a cycle of violence where all see themselves as righteous—even while doing incredible evil.