{"id":561,"date":"2012-12-29T18:22:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-29T12:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saravanan.org\/?p=561"},"modified":"2018-07-29T15:23:20","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T09:53:20","slug":"who-gave-you-you-your-morals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/who-gave-you-you-your-morals\/","title":{"rendered":"Who gave You Your Morals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fairness\"<\/p>\n

In the last post<\/a>, we saw SCARF model<\/a>\u00a0proposed by David Rock, identifying five strong human motivations (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness & Fairness). \u00a0The last post also discussed Status. \u00a0In this post, we will discuss the Fairness, or morality.<\/p>\n

The most important paradigm shift on morality is this:<\/p>\n

Fairness and other morals are hard coded in our genes!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The conventional belief is that the moralities have been given to us by religions. \u00a0But the more we understand how humans and other animals work, the more it becomes clear that<\/p>\n

Religions have simply documented the moral values that we have inherited through our genes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, religions have done a poor job of documenting morality. \u00a0Given that most of the religious teachings are hundreds or thousands of years old, they suffer from two disadvantages:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The clarity of thought applied (while documenting the moral values) in the distant is substantially poor when compared with today’s rigorous standards<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The power of today’s science and mathematics to\u00a0segregate\u00a0the nuts and bolts of morality was not available in the past. \u00a0For the ancient thinkers, morality was too large to grasp, too dynamic to pin down and contained too many black boxes to make sense of.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Here is a wonderful TED video that shows morals are hard coded in the genes: Do Animals have Morals?<\/a>\u00a0(17 min). \u00a0The capuchin monkeys shown at 13 minute mark in the video have a brain that weighs about just 3.5% of a human brain! \u00a0Still, they clearly understand what is fair. \u00a0Understanding of fairness has been observed even in small fishes with pinhead sized brain, or in insects with no central nervous system. \u00a0If we know how to look, morality is seen in every animal.<\/p>\n

    Here is why the genetic origin of morality shouldn’t be surprising:<\/p>\n

    Proteins come together to form genes. \u00a0Genes, to chromosomes. \u00a0Chromosomes to organs to an organism. \u00a0Individual organisms come together to form a society\/colony.<\/p>\n

    Each of these collectives has their own set of rules that must be preserved across time and generations. \u00a0Else, the process of formation of collectives stop from happening.<\/p>\n

    Chemical and physical rules govern the coagulation of organs into an organism (or upstream). \u00a0Morality is the rules that govern as to how individual organisms come together to form a colony\/society.<\/p>\n

    Without morality, we will have no societies. \u00a0Because, morality is the fabric that holds us all together into a society. \u00a0The fabric of the society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    This idea has a few very interesting implications:<\/p>\n