Good and Evil: What is morality and how does it change?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-07 16:23

Morality is a set of standards that allow people to live together in groups - what societies consider “right” and “acceptable”. Sometimes moral behavior means that people must sacrifice their short-term interests for the good of society. Those who go against these standards can be considered immoral. But can we say that morality is one for all, stable and unshakable?

We understand the concept and see how morality changes over time.

Where does morality come from? Scientists have not yet come to an agreement on this issue, but there are several the most common theories:

• Freud's morality and the super-ego- Freud suggested that moral development occurs when a person's ability to ignore their selfish needs is replaced by the values of important socializing agents (for example, the person's parents).
• Piaget's theory of moral development- Jean Piaget focused on the socio-cognitive and socio-emotional perspectives of development and suggested that moral development occurs over time, at certain stages, when children learn to accept certain moral norms of behavior for their own sake, and not just observe moral norms, because they don't want to get into trouble.

• The behavioral theory of B. F. Skinner- Skinner focused on the power of external influences that determine human development. For example, a child who is praised for being kind may again treat someone with kindness out of a desire to receive positive attention in the future.

• Kohlberg's moral reasoning- Lawrence Kohlberg proposed six stages of moral development that go beyond Piaget's theory. Kohlberg suggested that a series of questions could be used to determine the stage of an adult's thinking.

If we talk about what is the trigger for the development of morality, the dominant modern point of view on this issue is close to the position set forth by the Scottish philosopher of the XVIII century David Hume. He saw the moral mind as a "slave to the passions," and Hume's point is supported by research that suggests that emotional responses such as empathy and disgust affect our judgments about right and wrong.

This view is consistent with the recent discovery that the elementary moral sense is universal and manifests itself very early. For example, babies at the age of six months judge people by how they relate to others, and one-year-old children show spontaneous altruism.

When looking at the big picture, this means that we have little conscious control over our understanding of right and wrong.

It is possible that in the future this theory will turn out to be erroneous due to the complete denial of reason. After all, emotional reactions alone cannot explain one of the most interesting aspects of human nature - the evolution of morality.

For example, values such as caring, compassion and safety are now more important than in the 80s, the importance of respect for power has dropped since the beginning of the 20th century, while the judgment of good and evil, based on loyalty to the country and family, is steadily increased. Such results were obtained by the authors of a study published by PLOS One, which showed distinctive trends in the moral priorities of people in the period from 1900 to 2007.

How we should understand these changes in moral sensitivity is an interesting question. Morality itself is not a rigid or monolithic system; the theory of moral foundations, for example, puts forward five whole moral rhetoric, each with its own set of virtues and vices:

• Morality Based on Purity, ideas of holiness and piety. When standards of cleanliness are violated, the reaction is sickening, and violators are considered unclean and tainted.
• Morality Based on Authoritywho values duty, respect and public order. Hates those who show disrespect and disobedience.
• Morality Based on Justicewhich opposes a morality based on authority. Judges right and wrong using the values of equality, impartiality and tolerance, and despises bias and prejudice.
• Intra-group moralitywho values loyalty to a family, community or nation and considers those who threaten or undermine them to be immoral.
• Morality Based on Harmwho values caring, compassion, and safety and views wrongness in terms of suffering, abuse, and cruelty.

People of different ages, gender, backgrounds and political persuasions use these morals to varying degrees. Culture as a whole, over time, increases the emphasis on some moral foundations and decreases the emphasis on others.

Historical change in moral concepts

As cultures and societies develop, people's ideas about good and evil also change, but the nature of this transformation remains a subject of speculation.

Thus, some believe that our recent history is a history of demoralization. From this point of view, societies are becoming less stiff and less judgmental. We have become more receptive to other people, rational, non-religious, and we try to scientifically substantiate how we approach issues of right and wrong.

The opposite point of view involves a re-moralization, according to which our culture is becoming more and more critical. We are offended and outraged by an increasing number of things, and the growing polarization of opinions reveals extremes in righteousness.

The authors of the aforementioned study decided to find out which of these views best reflects the change in morality over time, using a new area of research - cultural studies. Culturalomics uses very large databases of textual data to track changes in cultural beliefs and values, as changing patterns of language use over time can reveal changes in the way people understand their world and themselves. For the study, data from the Google Books resource was used, which contains more than 500 billion words from 5 million scanned and digitized books.

Each of the five types of morality was represented by large, well-founded sets of words reflecting virtue and vice. The results of the analysis showed that the main moral terms ("conscience", "honesty", "kindness" and others), as we moved deeper into the 20th century, began to be used in books much less frequently, which corresponds to the narrative of demoralization. But, interestingly, around 1980, an active recovery began, which could mean an amazing remoralization of society. On the other hand, the five types of morality individually demonstrate radically different trajectories:

• Morality of purity shows the same rise and fall as the basic terms. Ideas of holiness, piety and purity, as well as sin, defilement, and obscenity, fell until about 1980 and then grew.
• Egalitarian morality of justice did not show any consistent growth or decline.
• Moral power, based on hierarchy, gradually fell during the first half of the century and then rose sharply when an impending crisis of power shook the Western world in the late 1960s. However, it then retreated just as sharply during the 1970s.
• Group morality, reflected in the general rhetoric of loyalty and unity, demonstrates the most pronounced upward trend in the 20th century. The notable rise in the periods around the two world wars indicates a transitory rise in "us and them" morals in threatened communities.
• Finally, harm-based morality, represents a complex but intriguing trend. Its fame declined from 1900 to the 1970s, interrupted by a slight increase in wartime, when the themes of suffering and destruction became relevant for obvious reasons. At the same time, a sharp increase has been taking place since about 1980, and against the background of the absence of a single dominant global conflict.

It is likely that the decades since 1980 can be seen as a period of renaissance in moral fear, and this study points to some important cultural transformations.

The way we tend to think about right and wrong today is different from how we once thought and, if trends are to be believed, from how we will think in the future.

However, what exactly leads to these transformations is a question open to discussion and speculation. Perhaps one of the main drivers of moral change is human contact. When we associate with other people and share common goals, we show our affection for them. Today we communicate with many more people than our grandparents and even our parents.

As our social circle expands, so does our "moral circle." Nevertheless, this “contact hypothesis” is limited and does not take into account, for example, how our moral attitude towards those with whom we never communicate directly can change: some donate money and even blood to people with whom they have no contact and little in common.

On the other hand, perhaps it's all about the stories that circulate in societies and arise because people come to certain views and seek to convey them to others. Despite the fact that few of us write novels or make films, humans are natural storytellers and use storytelling to influence others, especially their own children.

Personal values and moral foundations of society

What your values are, and how they align with your community's morale and your own actions, directly affect your sense of belonging and, more broadly, life satisfaction.

Personal values are principles that you believe in and have invested in. Values are the goals you strive for, they largely determine the essence of the personality. But more importantly, they are a source of motivation for self-improvement. The values of people determine what they want personally, while morality determines what the society around these people wants for them.

Humanist psychologists suggest that humans have an innate sense of values and personal preferences that tend to be hidden under layers of social demands and expectations (social morality). Part of the human journey involves the gradual rediscovery of these innate and highly personal desires, which are unconsciously hidden when they are found to be contrary to the demands of society. However, if you take an inventory of values, most well-socialized people will find that there is a great deal of correspondence between what they want and what society wants.

Yes, certain behaviors are considered desirable and others not, but for the most part, as we have seen, morality is not set in stone and often reflects local cultural and historical aspects that tend to change.