If you are too young to have lived through the civil rights era in the U.S., you probably haven’t heard of the “Friendship Nine.” They were a group of black men who, in 1961, decided to commit an illegal but nonviolent act of resistance to the odious segregation laws in South Carolina. (The name of the group came from the fact that most of them went to Friendship Junior College.)
On January 31 of that year, the group walked into a store in Rock Hill, South Carolina, sat down at a lunch counter, and ordered lunch. That was illegal: blacks were forbidden from eating in white establishments. They were arrested and convicted. The group decided, as a statement, to go to jail rather than put up bail. They served 30 days at hard labor. The signifiance of this event, which I still remember, was (according to Wikipedia), this:
“What made the Rock Hill action so timely … was that it responded to a tactical dilemma that was arising in SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] discussions across the South: how to avoid the crippling limitations of scarce bail money,” wrote Taylor Branch in “Parting the Waters,” his Pulitzer Prize winning account of the Civil Rights Movement. [JAC: Branch’s book is terrific.] “The obvious advantage of ‘jail, no bail’ was that it reversed the financial burden of protest, costing the demonstrators no cash while obligating the white authorities to pay for jail space and food. The obvious disadvantage was that staying in jail represented a quantum leap in commitment above the old barrier of arrest, lock-up, and bail-out.”
During their sentence, the men refused to work several times and were put on a bread-and-water diet. All of this drew national attention to the inequities faced by blacks in the South, which ultimately led to the Civil Rights act of 1964, pushed through Congress and signed by Lyndon Johnson.
I bring this up for two reasons. First, the men’s convictions were finally overturned—two days ago, after 54 years. Over much of the interim, the men suffered from having a conviction on their record, hampering their efforts to get jobs. On Tuesday, the men’s original lawyer moved for dismissal, the current prosecutor agreed, and the judge apologized, saying,”We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history.” (See the dramatic courtroom video here.)
That brings up not only the idea of human rights, but also question of “What is the right thing to do?” Reporting on the story last night, Brian Williams of NBC News (the channel I watch) said something like this: “South Carolina did the right thing after more than 50 years.”
Who among the readers here doesn’t agree, instantly and instinctively, that clearing those men, as well as the old battles for civil rights, were indeed the right things to do? Most Americans would nod in agreement as well.
Yet when I was young, the instincts were largely the opposite, particularly in the southern United States. Segregation was seen as natural and right (indeed, it was often justified on Biblical grounds), and what the Friendship Nine did was seen as wrong and immoral: a group of people claiming a right that they didn’t have.
The instinctive feelings that we have convey a couple of lessons. First of all, they have changed dramatically over those fifty years, and almost completely among white Americans over the last century. Yet our feelings about what’s right have always seemed to come from the gut, even when those feelings change.
Francis Collins and other religionists argue that our instinctive views of right and wrong can’t be explained by science, but must have been vouchsafed by God. (Collins calls this set of feelings “the Moral Law”). But if those instincts change so drastically, and so rapidly, what does that say? It says, of course, one of two things. Either God has changed the Moral Law (which can’t be true if you’re a true believer), or that our moral instincts come not from God but from rationality, secularism, and changing circumstances.
The answer, of course, is the latter. As Peter Singer argues in his book The Expanding Circle, and Steve Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, the increasing interactions between different groups of humans, and the changing tide of thought, has made us realize that nobody is privileged with a set of “rights” not shared by other humans. That is why, as Pinker documents eloquently, what humans see as “moral” has changed so much over the last several centuries.
Second, the rapid change shows that our particular feelings about right and wrong, at least in this case, cannot come from our genes. Morality about civil rights, and other things like animal rights, child labor, slavery, women’s rights, and so on, has changed too fast to be accounted for by evolution. Yes, some feelings of what is “right” probably reside in our genes (our preference for our own children and our own relatives over others, for instance), and perhaps the very notion of “right” vs. “wrong” also resides in our genes, but the particular actions and feelings that constitute right and wrong are often quite malleable.
Morality does not come from God, and most of it isn’t in our genes. It comes, I suggest, from an evolved background of having a code of behavior that enables humans to live harmoniously, on top of which is overlain the particulars of that code, which change not only as our society changes, but as our species learns what it takes to make a good society.
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Here’s a short documentary on the Friendship Nine:
There are some more basic genotypic characteristics specific to homo sapiens that allow for variable phenotypic expressions we designate as moral opinion and behavior.
I wish I understood more about genetics.
Actually, I wish the public at large understood more about genetics.
So do I 🙂
I’ve been reading up for several years now, and the more I learn, the less I realize I know, so …
I wonder if Carbon 14 has a slightly different effect than Carbon 12.
Sub
sub2
Which reminds me: I must finish Angels and read Singer. He’s been sitting on my shelf unread for too long.
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“Francis Collins and other religionists argue that our instinctive views of right and wrong can’t be explained by science, but must have been vouchsafed by God. (Collins calls this set of feelings “the Moral Law”). But if those instincts change so drastically, and so rapidly, what does that say? It says, of course, one of two things. Either God has changed the Moral Law (which can’t be true if you’re a true believer), or that our moral instincts come not from God but from rationality, secularism, and changing circumstances.”
It doesn’t get more clear than that! Why can’t more people see it that way?
Their argument would probably go something like this:
The moral battle is being fought in the supernatural realm. The evil one is obfuscating the moral climate in the natural world. Those who believed they were behaving morally then were actually victims of the supernatural evil. God remains the same.
This kind of “reasoning” is really not that difficult to make up.
I actually heard this type of logic in relationship to homosexuality used on American Family Radio.
I used to hear it all the time when I attended a fundamentalist church. Christians are always first to jump in with “God’s law” and “absolute moral standards,” except when it would affect their own lifestyle. Luke 14.33, anyone?
In other words, the “moral law” was right all along, and even “good” Xtians were simply on the wrong side of it. However, we can be certain those same people are on the right side now with their positions on same-sex marriage, reproductive health, punishing the poors and the olds, the anthropogenic climate change “hoax,” and generally about the magical perfectness of Xtian belief.
And, when they sync-up with the “moral law” on same-sex marriage and climate change, we can be sure they are still right about the rest of it. Man, I wish my conscience and intellect were that malleable! Life would be so much easier!
And it gets even clearer when we’re dealing with someone who expresses their conviction that they are being prompted by God to do something which secular reason shows is wrong. God’s voice is supposed to be that still, small part of you that knows what to do, that holds you back from error. And the examples they use are always the ones which make sense to a humanist.
But humanism isn’t the moral standard: God is.
So I use that analogy to imagine a young man standing over his sister holding a rock — she was seen kissing a man from another religion — and hesitating. He loves his little sister, and she is so frightened. But then the still, small voice of conscience comes and speaks — “you know the right thing to do” — and so he smashes her brains out. Crisis avoided. That was a close one.
You can trust your moral instincts. They come from God.
Of course, a religious person would simply argue that God WAS speaking — in the hesitation. But that’s a cheat.
It will always be rationalized away as a failure of some sort on the humans part in understanding what god is telling them. Because, by definition, god ain’t never wrong.
It’s not just religion, it’s the reassuring popular pop psych bromide that when we’re in a dilemma and don’t know what to do we ought to “trust our instincts.”
Yes … but which side is the instinct?
Answer: the one that turns out to be the side you’re glad you’ve chosen or sorry you didn’t choose.
Which means that “trust your instincts” is an absolutely worthless guide. It’s an after-the-fact rationalization, a way of flattering yourself and your always reliable intuition. “Reason” pointed one way but you knew better. You always know better. You need to learn to believe in yourself.
People eat that spiritual shit up with a spoon.
Yes. And of course confirmation bias is a key part of it. “See, my insticts were right!” Except for all those times they weren’t. Probably more often than mere chance would provide for. But, you don’t remember those instances so well.
No, no — if it wasn’t right then it wasn’t the instinct! Not the real one. Think back and remember. When you decided to “follow your instincts” didn’t you have a few doubts at the time? Just a little? You ignored them, right?
That was the true voice.
Some people may remember the hits and forget the misses — but if so then they’re doing it the hard way.
Of course! See? I am hopelessly damned. In the newer liberal xian meaning of the term, I am separated from god and therefore can not hear him.
Don’t sweat it, darrelle; he ain’t talkin’ anyhow…
A good post, Jerry, and a good conclusion.
This might be overly picky, but phrases such as “instinctive feelings” would perhaps be better as “intuitive feelings”, since, as you argue, they are clearly learned rather than genetic.
Right. The annoying thing I always see is the false claim that evolutionists — Pinker was cited in one debate I had — DO believe our moral beliefs evolved by natural selection. And then that strawman is kicked around a while. And when I explain it’s the capacity for moral emotions and reasoning that evolved, and that those can be subject to NS, it just gets ignored.
Well I’d say that a lot of it *is* evolved, but that (as usual) both the genetic recipe and the environment have a large effect on the end product.
For example, we seem — highly simplistically — to have a programmed tendency to divide people into an in-group “us” who merit moral treatment, and out-group “them” who do not (or to a lesser extent), but where that divide is set is then cultural.
In the above case, the cultural setting of that divide has shifted to include all humans over a generation.
Agreed, but I think that falls under what I described as moral emotions.
Thanks for this, Jerry. Beautifully articulated. It’s a powerful argument worth repeating–morality does not come from God or the Bible or from laws, it comes from us when our innate empathy asserts itself against prejudice.
Might be a good article for you to write especially given the larger national dialogue around the movie Selma.
Yes, this is one of your most powerful posts, and I hope you decide to make a New Republic piece from it.
Yes, this would make a superb New Republic piece. I wonder if it would be appropriate, in the context of a longer disquisition, to quote Steven Weinberg: “Religious readers may object that the harm in all these cases is done by perversions of religion, not by religion itself. But religious wars and persecutions have been at the center of religious life throughout history. What has changed, that these now seem to some people in some parts of the world to be only perversions of true religious belief? Has there been a new supernatural revelation, or a discovery of lost sacred writings that put religious teachings in a new light? No—since the Enlightenment there has been instead a spread of rationality and humanitarianism that has in turn affected religious belief, leading to a wider spread of religious toleration. It is not that religion has improved our moral sense but that a purely secular improvement in our moral values has improved the way religion is practiced here and there.”
One thinks not only of the even to which the OP refers but, for example, to the sudden revelation to the mormons in 1979 or thereabouts, that blacks really could take part in a fuller way in their religion. And, you don’t see a whole lot of kids being stoned for sassing their parents anymore.
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I have observed that very transition in one individual over the course of my lifetime, which only represents the latter half of his life. My uncle was born in rural Florida in 1937 and raised to be a racist. He was forty when I was born and still railing against the passage of the Civil Rights Act well into the 80’s. It was no later than 1989 or 1990 that he said it was wrong for me to have to play basketball on a team with black athletes on it, although that is not the term he used to refer to them.
Eventually though, after years of coexistence, he began to soften. In 2008 and 2012 he volunteered for the Obama campaign. He freely admits that he was wrong. He understands that he was a product of his upbringing but, as he puts it, it was his fault for hanging on to it for so long.
If a man can have, for lack of better term, a moral realignment after 50 – 60 years of being a racist, then how can morality come from something immutable like genetic information or a deity?
RE the deity, humans are too stupid to understand what the omniprofound deity wants of them, or it works in mysterious ways. Take your pick.
That’s a lovely story. especially as it seems everyone I know becomes more conservative not less as they get older. I’m a bit worried about my dear old mum, a Czech immigrant when she was 18, who’s now getting more and more cross with immigrant ‘entitlement’, homosexual ‘entitlement’, ‘entitlement’ in general really(the silver lining is that she’s still a staunch Lib Dem voter).
Thanks for the interesting post.
That was my reaction too, Saul. I watched my father go from staunch Democrat to Republican in his final years. Person to person he remained the patient, compassionate individual he’d always been, thank goodness.
I definitely make snap judgements about people based on their political affiliation. It’s just never that simple is it?
I kind of think I wouldn’t care if my mum joined UKIP because, like with your dad, the kind of person she is hasn’t fundamentally changed.
This is truly moving story and I agree completely with its sentiments.
That said, I have to confess that I’m confused by the use of the word “instinct” here. I had always thought it meant a biologically inherited, rather than learned, behavior, but apparently there’s more to it than that. I guess I’ll have to read up on the subject.
Not sure there is much more to it besides casual usage vs technical definition. At least in casual usage it is often used to describe behavior that did not take any forthought, whether the source was genetic or a learned / trained response that has been learned well enough that you “don’t even have to think about it anymore.”
Yes, exactly.
“At least in casual usage it is often used to describe behavior that did not take any forthought…”
No, that’s intuition. I’m talking about instinct.
I think you’re ignoring the “casual use” part. The words are indeed used interchangeably in much common use despite what the original strict meanings were.
Excellent post on this important even. Just another of many reasons why Frances Collins and his delusions on morality are dead wrong.
Does anyone think the civil rights struggles are over in South Carolina? Hope not. Funny that g*d changing event, overturned conviction only took 54 years. Better than Galileo.
I wonder – was it g*ds wish that after the civil rights bill past in 1964, that all the democrats throughout the south suddenly became republicans? Such power could only come from him and it had nothing to do with civil rights.
Great post, thanks.
I accepted a while ago that in a meaningless universe justifying morality in an objective sense can’t be done. The is ought barrier is rock solid. So it always pains me a little to watch brilliant people struggle to come up with an objective, atheistic morality. Often it’s in debates with a religious advocate of objective morality, and it’s almost always a slam dunk for them to pull this atheistic morality apart.
But the reason we shouldn’t be tying ourselves up in knots trying to objectively ground something that simply wouldn’t exist if human beings weren’t around is because no-one can justify it objectively. Not atheists and not theists.
If you ask why religious morality is objective you often get an answer like ‘because the bible says so’. Well smarter people than me have pointed out the circularity of relying on biblical authority in order to sift the bible for the good bits.
The second argument is to say that God grounds morality. But this is just words. Why does he ground morality? ‘Because he created us’. So what? Where is there a logical relationship between ‘x was created by y’ and ‘x must do what y says’?
Even if you could find such a relationship, why would that make the actions prescribed by y objectively moral? And then the believer ends up saying ‘because God’s actions are, by definition, moral’.
By this point, if the believer hasn’t kicked you in the balls and walked out because ‘you’re being intolerant’, you can bring up the Euthypryo dilemma which, despite a lot of apologetic semantic sophistry, is the most water-tight refutation of religious morality there’s ever been.
So, in a long-winded way, I’m saying we should admit that objective morality is not possible in ‘an atheistic universe'(I understand that a lot of people already believe this so I’m probably preaching to the choir). By doing so the onus is shifted entirely onto the other side to show why religious morality is objective, and I’ve never heard an argument that can withstand the biblical-cherry-picking argument or the Euthypryo dilemma.
It relieves a lot of pressure if, every time a theist says ‘do you believe morality is objective’ you can just say no.
Besides, I can’t think of many things that are less worth fighting for than absolute morality. This moral question has just one, correct answer? What a bloody awful thought.
The objective morality argument has always seemed to me to be the ultimate, the foundational, little people argument. Where all of humanity, including the arguer, are cast as the little people. S-C-R-E-W that.
Though some might perceive Sam Harris’s efforts as an attempt to objectify it as much as possible.
Well put — but there are different meanings of the word “objective.” The debate can then shift into in what way morality is objective and in what ways it isn’t. If there’s no common ground at all then the concept of moral progress is impossible.
The folks who think God somehow makes morality “objective” are completely avoiding the whole issue of inter-subjectivity and common ground and philosophical exploration of the meaning of morals and ethics. They’re like little kids appealing to “Daddy said so” as a clincher and gaping in confusion when someone asks why Daddy would say such a thing. We’re not supposed to care.
When a theist asks me “do you believe morality is objective?” I just say “Yes and no; it depends on what is meant, and on the sense of the term we’re dealing with.” I’ve noticed that this seems to increase the pressure. At least, they look like it does.
I agree with the vast majority of what you say. I don’t quite know what you mean by “different meanings of the word “objective”” though. Do you mean different incorrect meanings, or do you mean the Sam Harris definition(which I don’t think is objective, unless you just assume that human flourishing is morally good)?
“We’re not supposed to care”. Absolutely – with some people there’s a total, ferocious commitment to thinking so far and no further. And then there’s a kind of bewildered irritation when you do go further. Like that wasn’t in the training.
Re. the question in my post I prefer to ‘just say no’…like with drugs, and jazz.
Yes, I think we’re mostly in agreement. As for “just saying no” I avoid it because it will rapidly be misunderstood and I know it will. I’d rather communicate a more nuanced “Maybe.”
An “objective” morality may mean “external to human beings.” Or it may mean “relative to a common standard.” It might mean “nobody’s opinion” or “everybody’s opinion” or “clearly the opinion of X, right over there, just ask and find out what I tell you.” It’s been defined as “not dependent on the subjective wishes or desire of the moral agent” and as “existing independently of the mind” and as “measurable against rational truths regarding equal exchanges in relationships” and “without undue bias” and “empirically discoverable” and “capable of being universalized.” Objective morality is “the view that there are reliable procedures for ascertaining moral truth even if those procedures are dependent on the perspective or situation of the agents.” Unless it’s the view that morality is “ontologically grounded” — presumably by God, or as a Perfect Idea or Essence. Or the word “objective” indicates “moral differences can be adjudicated by third parties following rules to which disputants subscribe.” Unless someone wants to make the case that an ‘objective’ right and wrong solves moral differences by smiting the weak.
I think it saves time to start out with some sort of warning that it’s complicated.
Why complicate things? I don’t think it helps much to say ‘maybe’. Most people disagree anyway with “objective morality can’t be done”. And the few who agree will have no problem.
You think that saves time?;)
I find that both parties generally know what they mean by ‘objective morality’ – and theists generally want exactly that kind of ‘it’s complicated’ response, as reasonable as it may be, so they can respond with the apparently clear-cut simplicity of religious morality.
Personally I don’t think it is complicated – the is-ought gap is just unbridgeable, for either side. And when I’ve debated theists on morality ‘just say no’ is the only tactic that’s rhetorically effective.
They seem to find it both bewildering and fantastically irritating that an atheist wouldn’t spend half the discussion tying themselves up in knots on the subject…:) It puts them on the defensive, which, considering the shit that happens on a daily basis in the name of religion, is just how it should be.
I’ll agree heartily on the blandly ignored is-ought gap problem for theism, but don’t agree that theists know what they mean. That is, they start out meaning one thing and then push it into meaning something else (through force of habit, I guess.)
From my perspective it seems to me that theists love it when their oversimplified misunderstandings are granted because it allows them to run freely in the wrong direction — but if we’re arguing over tactics then there’s no reason we can’t both be right. The meaning of ‘objective morality’ may or may not be ‘complicated,’ but there’s little doubt that people are. What enlightens one confuses another; what works for me may not work for you.
My guess is that we’re leading them in the same direction anyway.
Here’s hoping..
So interesting, and as usual your views accord with my own. It is amazing is it not how one society develops norms of proper behavior which they see as moral, but another society will see as basically amoral.
One example is how men and women associate in public. Here in the west we sit together, and walk together with generally no prohibition about who walks in front, etc. But in the Islamic world I think the man is expected to walk in front. For it to be otherwise would seem wrong. Someone correct me if I am wrong on that example.
The segregation of men and women you speak of is from religion and that is pretty solid.
However, in the case of segregation of black America, that is social and historic for the most part. Religion did nothing to fix it, although it may have helped to justify it.
Religion has always seemed to me to be an anchor on forward moral progress. How can we possibly move forward when people look to ancient texts, from immoral times, for moral guidance.
Excellent point.
Excellent post. As it happens, I just finished reading “The Expanding Circle” for the first time just a few days ago. Great book. I can see why Robert Wright liked it (see Wright’s “The Moral Animal”).
Wright. Another author biding his time on my bookshelf!
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Why do you keep posting this kind of controversial topics if those who might disagree with you will have their comments deleted? It’s your website so you can obviously do as you please, but I still wonder why you do it. Is confirmation of your beliefs by those who agree with you that important to you?
Look, Mr. George, read some of my free will and Israel posts if you think I delete comments solely on the ground that they disagree with me. And I have stopped reading comments as they come in, so everything by a reader who’s already posted will continue to be posted given that I almost never delete a posted comment. I will not allow first-time comments if they’re dumb or misguided or derailing.
Take this thread. I haven’t even read any of the comments yet posted, and have approved every new commenter who has weighed in, regardless of what they said. So I’m hardly purging disagreements.
But you, sir, are different. You are rude, and more important, wrong in your claim. So you don’t get the privilege of posting anything.
“You are rude, and more important, wrong in your claim.”
Dr Coyne, permit me please to disagree with your priorities. Errors of fact are easily corrected. Rudeness is simply uncivilized.
“Segregation was seen as natural and right (indeed, it was often justified on Biblical grounds), and what the Friendship Nine did was seen as wrong and immoral: a group of people claiming a right that they didn’t have.”
We all diagree with this statement but what were the biblical passages that were used to justify slavery and segregation?
Weren’t the passages on slavery used to justify slavery? If so, I’m sure it’s a slow climb down through Jim Crow from there.
I’m not sure I understand your words that what the friendship nine did was seen as wrong or immoral. Far as I know it was illegal.
Religion could be used to justify slavery in various places in the bible and they refer to slaves and their treatment. But religion was not the reason for the millions of slaves in America. It was economic and it was socially acceptable. It became a way of life in the southern states. Jim Crow and segregation became the norm for 100 years after slavery was abolished.
Here are bible passages, with comments by evilbible.com between them. It is a book written by men who owned slaves. The passages are as expected.
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
The following passage describes how the Hebrew slaves are to be treated
If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.’ If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)
Notice how they can get a male Hebrew slave to become a permanent slave by keeping his wife and children hostage until he says he wants to become a permanent slave. What kind of family values are these?
The following passage describes the sickening practice of sex slavery. How can anyone think it is moral to sell your own daughter as a sex slave?
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
So these are the Bible family values! A man can buy as many sex slaves as he wants as long as he feeds them, clothes them, and screws them!
What does the Bible say about beating slaves? It says you can beat both male and female slaves with a rod so hard that as long as they don’t die right away you are cleared of any wrong doing.
When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)
You would think that Jesus and the New Testament would have a different view of slavery, but slavery is still approved of in the New Testament, as the following passages show.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)
Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)
In the following parable, Jesus clearly approves of beating slaves even if they didn’t know they were doing anything wrong.
The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. “But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given.” (Luke 12:47-48 NLT
Slavery and racism was also justified by the story of Noah and his bad son Ham in the Bible.
Well said, Jerry. Thanks.
Thanks for this insightful post.
Shouldn’t these men and/or their heirs be due some kind of compensation? The apology is nice – it’s a very nice apology, actually – but I think a generation of damage from state-sponsored discrimination deserves more than a “my bad.”
I’m sure the Google will have some info (and for all I know there is some in the video, which I don’t have time to watch), but I wonder whether there have been successful individual or class action lawsuits against the slave states for their 20th century discrimination? Maybe states are immune due to sovereignty, and certainly the statue of limitations has expired on many of the bad acts. Still, these gentlemen and their families suffered post-civil rights act and up until this day; a just system would lend them some kind of standing.
Wikipedia notes one successful claim: in the mid-1970’s HBCU’s in Mississippi were awarded $503 million for the state’s unequal distribution of funds.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal
Haven’t found any individual or class action suits though …
That was my immediate question. They should
indeed be compensated.
The judge who overturned the verdict was the nephew of the judge who originally sentenced these men. He got to correct (to some degree) a harm done by his family in the past.
…and yet, as I indicated in the post about him, Ben Carson would offer no apology and would not have reversed the decision based on his views concerning discrimination against gays.
“violating my rights is an outrageous act of tyranny.
Violating your rights is a necessary price for peace and security.”
-annon
At age 3 and 1/2, I and my parents moved to Dallas Texas in the late 1950s. My folks were terrified of my picking up any racial bias from the surrounding culture, so from Day 1 they reinforced into my infant mind that no wonder what my friends at school said, I must never say negative nasty things about “Negros” (the current word late 50s).
The inculcation was reasonably effective, but I briefly fell into allowing racial slurs against other ethnicities, since I initially interpreted my parents’ injunction selectively.
It was not until 5 to 10 more years that I sort of got you mustn’t act that way towards any ethnic minority.
A lot of morality is taught and/or absorbed by osmosis.
It would be particularly intriguing to untangle what elements of sexual morality are in our genes and what is socialization.
I wonder sometimes about situations where nothing was explicitly taught.
In my case, I don’t remember any time where my parents told me to avoid racial slurs, etc. except by the time I already knew better and was simply reporting something a classmate had said.
One twist to my upbringing this way that I think about is the fact that I watched very little television when I was small (before about 6 years old) and what I did largely then until about age 12 or so at my parents place at least was *black and white* – my parents only got a colour TV in the early 1990s! So I watched Sesame Street, with its messages of inclusiveneses, with a further degree of indirection. (I also grew up thinking Big Bird was a girl, somehow.)
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As for the history, it is wonderful to hear about this, and be inspired to push for more justice.
“(I also grew up thinking Big Bird was a girl, somehow.)”
Well I grew up thinking Bert and Ernie were straight:)
“Well I grew up thinking Bert and Ernie were straight:)”
Look mate, I’m all for freedom of speech but when you make insinuations about two such upstanding members of the Sesame Street community you go too far.
What about Bananas in Pajamas?
Definitely not straight.
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The brain is still developing in children, right up into early adulthood. If not taught how to behave, I can imagine things would get pretty “Lord of the Flies”. I remember lacking empathy or perhaps lacking theory of mind as a 2 year old and punching a girl to see what she would look like when she cried. This sounds completely sociopathic and I remember not getting why I got in trouble. Empathy seems to be something that we develop as we grow (probably why child soldiers are so vicious) and probably has corresponding parts of the brains that develop to enhance it.
According to this new study, the brains of psychopaths are wired differently that they don’t learn from traditional punishment in jail.
http://www.thestar.com/life/2015/01/29/psychopaths-brains-wired-differently-researchers-find.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/psychopathic-criminals-learn-differently-from-punishment-cues-1.2935438
I would argue that what changes is not our feelings about what’s right and what’s wrong, but who belongs to our tribe. As our culture changes, tribal boundaries change.
Tribes used to arrange intermarriages in order to end wars and promote peace. Now we have television and colleges attempting to expand the boundaries of our tribe.
The problem with Abrahamic religions is that they are — to the very core — tribal. How much more explicit can you be than to call yourself the chosen people?
Christianity and Islam promote conversion as a kind of inclusiveness, but woe to anyone who refuses to convert.
Secularists, of course, are immune to tribal feelings and exclusiveness. All we ask is that everyone else abandon their tribal mores. Does that require a sarcasm tag?
That seems a rather tautological description of things. Those who don’t belong to our tribe are wrong not to.
But I’m not trying to discuss right and wrong.
I’m trying to get a handle on how we change toward outsiders.
If you read some on Abraham Lincoln you learn how quickly a person can change in his own attitudes on race. Lincoln himself changed a great deal in 4 or 5 years, from the time he was running for president and his death. So I think, if you are willing to learn and you leave religion out of it, you can accomplish great things.
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Morality does not, in detail, arise from our genes. but our sens of things moral, the fact that things can be felt as wrong even when at times we can’t logically put a finger on why is part of our complex social instincts. From a young age, empathy starts to form a sense of morality (and this can be seen because there are some people of normal intelligence with no sense of empathy or morality).
More of morality is added by the culture in which we are immersed. From an evolutionary survival perspective, this makes perfect sense, a culture develops a bit of a ‘group mind’ and this cohesive structure helps with cooperation. As long as the evolved morality does not cause major social disruption, it is a success.
But as we tune to our environment, our moral choices (other than a few objectively obvious ones: murder etc) seem right. This is why a Catholic may feel every bit as sincerely horrified by abortion or homosexuality as someone else might feel about racism (or child labor, which, for most of human history was a perfectly normal fact of life).
When pressed, all of us, tend to find justification for our own moral precepts. The Charlie dust up is a conflict, where the West kept returning to arguements about freedom (ironic, because most of our culture fetishes only token personal freedom). But freedom itself is an assumption, it’s not a fact of the universe, it’s not a key component of evolutionary adaptation (evolution has no particular ‘interest’ in free speech. Indeed there are successful civilizations (particularly in the East) where people will argue for order over personal freedom.
The key factor is that a sense of morality is endemic to the species, the details vary widely. We all experience forms of moral distress, but the causes can vary widely. When it comes to moral decisions about subjective things (what makes abortion right or wrong, what makes infanticide right or wrong) we need to recognize that all of us are looking at it from the lens of either our birth culture, or the culture into which we’ve embedded ourselves.
+1, very well put.
Does the US legal system have no concept of a “spent conviction”? Viz, after so many years after the conviction and end of sentence, that’s it ; you’ve served your sentence and you no longer have to inform people of it. In the unlikely event that someone does find out about the conviction, well so what. It’s not as if your employer can take any awareness of it if they did find out. your sentence is over, finished and done.
Obviously there are some crimes that don’t become spent – anything that attracts a “life” sentence you remain liable to recall, and if asked about convictions you must inform people. but otherwise … shrug, you just say nothing.
I know that it’s different in some respects in America – a friend was recently rejected for a visa because of a possession of cannabis conviction from nearly 35 years ago – but is it as draconian as that for all convictions?
This issue is still alive today.
The Mormon Church still wants to allow bigots to refuse public accomodation to gays. Just claim, like their spiritual brothers in 1961, that their religion motivates them to discriminate.
Did morality change really that fast or have we just created an environment that makes it easier to behave morally?
I think the latter. There is no reason to believe that this cannot collapse faster then it came.
A very sad thought, but hard to disagree with. Most fundamental religionists of any stripe seem intent on ratcheting up tribalism and encouraging conflict. Stir in diminishing resources and increasing population and one might conclude that we’ve reached our pinnacle morally and have only one way to proceed from here.
///The instinctive feelings that we have convey a couple of lessons. First of all, they have changed dramatically over those fifty years, and almost completely among white Americans over the last century. Yet our feelings about what’s right have always seemed to come from the gut, even when those feelings change.///
One problem is that you assume, that the gut feeling of segregationist and those who oppose it, today and in the past, are fundamentally the same feeling, with just the words “right” and “wrong” being switched. But anyone in touch with their own feelings, and can recognize the sort of feelings underpinning one and the other, can see it’s not that all. One gut feeling is composed of empathy, while other is composed of resentment, a resentment apparent in watching any KKK member, or full fledged racists today sharing the same sentiments of those in the past.
With all due respect for these men this is a very good post Prof.
Grounding our morality in our evolution is the sane and only conclusion. How we behave with these evolutionary underpinnings is only just being fully understood (neuro and cognitive science) But as history shows we have shifted the posts constanately to suit the current cultural norms until found obsolete, discredited, thrown or cast aside. All the while holding these evolutionary influences constant e.g.
expanding the family kin circle to include outsiders.
Trading being a proximate cause to such a relationship. Killing, maiming someone who supplies food for dietry needs is not conjusive to your families fitness and vice versa.
Religion claims morality as a foundation but suffers from all human made constructs.. human foibles (good and bad) streaming via our nervous system from our deep evolutionary past seated between our ears.
Religion came after the fact. The function of a morality sense came inbeded and practiced in the first instance.. everything else followed.
This is when you extend evolution, to a series of fanciful tales, metaphors well out of its reach. This is where atheists tend to veer into sounding like the Deepak Chopra’s of the world, who borrow the language of science to peddle their own humanistic woo.
Pah. You’ll be dissing evolutionary psychology next!
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Exactly. It’s just spinning a series of stories, extending a series of physiological components, beyond their reach, and often obscuring the very thing.
Thank you for posting this.
This highlights the dangers of not learning to think rationally for oneself, but just going by what our forebears and their doctrines and traditions tell us. It’s not hard to brainwash and indoctrinate young, malleable minds. That’s what stands in the way of creating a more just society — the hijacking of young minds.