I have been taken to task for suggesting that we should live our lives and frame the economy according to the “Bedrock Principles of Ecology and Morality”
It’s not the first bit the critics object to. Ecology after all is a science, or at least a collation of sciences. The task of science is to study the natural world and indeed the universe — “What’s in it? How does it all work?” — and no-one doubts these days, at least in the circles I move in, that nature and the cosmos are orderly, and indeed are guided by principles which are customarily called “laws”. In truth the idea that there are or can be scientific “laws” is metaphysical in nature and raises all kind of questions (as discussed elsewhere) but we have grown used to it over the past few centuries and most of us most of the time now take it for granted.
But the idea that there can be “Bedrock Laws” of morality is altogether more contentious. For, say the critics, moral rules or edicts or whatever they are differ very conspicuously from society to society and from age to age. The principles of science may be absolute and universal but morality must always be “relative”. Thus as the arch rationalist, sceptic, and atheist Richard Dawkins points out (though I regret I can’t find the reference) while Christian men must go bare-headed into places of worship unless they are bishops or cardinals or some such, Jewish and Muslim men are enjoined (though not usually absolutely compelled) to cover their heads.
Yet such differences, I suggest, are not really issues of morality at all. They are superficialities, outward signs — matters of manners, or of tradition, or custom, and they do indeed differ from community to community. The moral principle is what lies behind and beneath the outward signs. The underlying principle is the reason why people of religion actually care what they and others put on their heads in the church or temple or Mosque or indeed in their daily lives. And the principle in this case is that churches and temples and Mosques are holy – sacred spaces wherein to communicate with God, and must be treated with supreme respect; a feeling shared by all people of faith, whatever their particular religion. The headgear (or lack of it) serves as a sign of that respect, recognised by other members of the community — and hence it has a secondary function; it shows that the wearer or the non-wearer belongs to the community and, vitally, respects its traditions. It’s the idea of respect, and the metaphysical concept of holiness and of the sacred, that can properly be said to belong in the realms of Morality. And – crucially – these underlying ideas, the deep moral concepts, are common to all religions and indigenous traditions. All agree that there are sacred places and/or holy things and that when you are in them, or in their presence, you should or must show deference.
But what is this thing, or this concept, called “morality”?
The nature of morality
Morality is the sense of right and wrong: that there are things that we are allowed to do, and things that we ought to do; and things that are forbidden to us. We are guided in this by a mysterious, “intuitive” quality called “conscience”. Laws and customs tell us in a formal way what is acceptable, and right, and good. But laws and customs are imposed on us. Conscience is built into us. It is the reason we take laws and customs seriously. When we know or suspect that we have done something bad we are uneasy – a “feeling in the bones”. Contrariwise, we feel happy when we feel that we have done something good. Thus most of us break the speed limit now and again if the road is clear and the light is good, and we think no more about it. But if we treat someone meanly we feel bad, and may go on feeling bad about it for many years, even though there’s no specific law which says we can’t be mean – not if the meanness stops short of bullying, or Actual Bodily Harm, aka ABH.
Or at least, most of us experience such bone-feelings. That is the norm. Some people – the kind commonly defined as “psychopaths” — apparently do not. Alas, though (it’s a sad human trait) most of us at times seem prepared to put our consciences on hold, at least up to a point, when ordered to do so by people we feel to be in authority, and who therefore, we feel, should be obeyed. Thus in times of large-scale conflict, dignified with the name of “war”, ordinary people who in ordinary life may be kind and caring are persuaded to kill other people who in ordinary life may be kind and caring too. Or indeed to set fire to villages or drop bombs on cities full of people who are not directly involved in the conflict at all. Many of those who do bad things in war are seriously conscience-stricken afterwards. Some war veterans are broken for life, never fully at ease again. It isn’t just the memory of horror and fear that brings them down. It’s the feeling that they have sinned and are forever tainted. Or so it seems.
I suggest, then, that what may reasonably be called the principles of morality are in practice the kinds of things that prick our conscience, and prompt us to call some things good and some things bad. The task of moral philosophy is to help us to define in a formal way what kind of things we judge to be good and bad, and whether our intuitive judgements are justified, and hence, on a practical note, to provide guidelines. Thus:
A lightning overview of moral philosophy
Moral philosophers these past few thousand years have trodden one or more of three main paths in their search for the meaning of “morality”: Utilitarian; Deontological; and “Virtue Ethics”. In practice moral codes generally partake of all three, but with very different degrees of emphasis. In more detail:
Utilitarians demand action to be good or bad depending on its practical consequences – and hence the alternative name Consequentialist. In general an action is considered good if it spreads happiness, and bad if it makes people miserable. Most famously the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) suggested that we should be seeking to bring about
“The greatest happiness of the greatest number”.
This seems very straightforward, and “rational”, and of course in the 18th century rationality was held in very high esteem. In practice, too, this no-nonsense, commonsensical, utilitarian approach is very useful. Of course the outcome matters!
Like all ideas, however, utilitarianism has its limitations and its drawbacks. For it also matters, does it not, what it is that makes people happy. After all, Nazis take pleasure in beating up people they decide they don’t like, for whatever reason or indeed for no reason at all. If six Nazis beat up one old Serb who nobody seems to care about then six people are made happy and only one is unhappy. Does this make it good?
More generally, majorities in all countries whether Nazis or not are apt to give minorities a bad time – which some at least would and do argue on utilitarian grounds is OK because the winners far outnumber the losers. It’s a variation on the theme of “might is right”. Yet conscience tells us (doesn’t it?) that treating people badly just because you decide you don’t approve of them is not OK, and the fact that those who disapprove far outnumber the objects of their disapproval, doesn’t make it OK.
Bentham himself would surely have been aware of such caveats – but, once they are launched, the originators of big ideas no longer have control of them; and all ideas, including the very best and noblest, are subject to corruption and misuse.
So it is, for example, that in this modern, ultra-materialist age governments the world over emphasise the perceived need for economic, meaning material, growth. In countries like Britain and the US and the rest of the G21 the goal of growth seems sometimes to be pursued to the exclusion of everything else, including justice or the wellbeing of the natural world. Yet this single-minded pursuit of growth is rationalized by all kinds of arguments. Some are rather obviously venal; most of the increased wealth finishes up in the hands of the rich, who after all make the rules. Some are practical; we need more money to fix the NHS, fill in the potholes, and keep our enemies at bay. There’s a (utilitarian) moral case for growth too, for it is taken more or less for granted that more wealth must lead to greater happiness and since happiness is assumed ipso facto to be good, growth must be good too. To be sure, people who are otherwise too poor to afford good food or shelter or the occasional night out might well be happier if they were a bit richer. Yet above a fairly low threshold the relationship between wealth and happiness is far from linear. But moral – utilitarian – arguments are used to justify economic growth nonetheless.
Yet we might ask — is “happiness” really what we should be after? Thus, to refer back to an earlier point, we might question whether Nazis are really made happy by their acts of vileness. More broadly, many countries – actually most, including all of those that like to think they are civilized, like Britain and the US and Italy and all the countries of benign Scandinavia, and New Zealand, and most countries in Africa who are generally perceived as the perennial victims, and almost every country in Asia – have persecuted minorities and some, very actively, are still doing so. But I don’t believe that most of the citizens in any of those countries are made happy by this. Perhaps, as I have argued elsewhere, “happiness” is the wrong word. Happiness after all is all too easily conflated with hedonism, meaning short-term pleasure. Rather than superficial happiness, we surely should seek fulfilment. Maybe the Nazi elite did and do feel fulfilled by inflicting suffering but I somehow doubt whether the average modern big-belly with swastika tattoos really does. They don’t exactly look happy. Nazism seems to me a betrayal of human nature and I would bet that “deep down”, the average rank-and-file Nazi feels that too. They might feel hard done by in the present world but they surely cannot feel in their bones that the nastiness and mayhem of Fascism offers a satisfactory long-term solution. Can they? (I wrote a book on this: Why Genes are Not Selfish and People are Nice. Floris Books, 2012.)
In short, those who appeal to utilitarian ethics can still argue that if their moral principles are applied with due diligence then they can – and do — serve the world well. I just want to point out that in practice, big ideas are often misconstrued and applied in corrupted form; and Jeremy Bentham’s “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” seems particularly prone to misrepresentation and misapplication. Some ideas are more corruptible than others.
Finally, the fact that utilitarian ethics/ morality does seem so “rational”, and yet is so vulnerable to corruption, seems to me to support David Hume’s observation, a few decades before Bentham, that we can’t arrive at moral principles by rationality alone. In the end, said Hume, morality is a matter of feelings; and feelings I suggest are felt in the bones. The brain chimes in later, seeking to understand what the bones are saying. The bones have it. Hume was a true philosopher who, like Socrates (and many others) recognised the limitations of his own thought processes, including the limitations of rational thought.
Deontological ethics is rooted in the concept of obedience to the edicts of some higher authority, and underpins the concept of duty – which in some cultures at some times has been seen as the greatest of all virtues.It is a person’s duty to obey the law, or to stick by the rules. The sense of duty is reinforced by the sense of loyalty.
Deontology of course has its place. Thus I like to argue that the Goal of all humanity should be to try to create
“Convivial Societies that offer Personal Fulfilment within a Flourishing Biosphere”
I have further very presumptuously suggested that any action or policy that in net would lead us towards that Goal is good, and any action or policy that leads us away from the Goal is bad. It’s a rough and ready idea but for most purposes it seems to work. Also relevant is the concept of “opportunity costs”. That is, the physical destruction of Gaza and the suffering of its people are not only foul in themselves. They are bad too because while the Israelis are fighting and the US and Europe and much of the rest of the world are spending so much time on the conflict, and resources and energy, they are not thinking about the long-term state of humanity, and still less are they focused on the plight of the natural world, or the threat and the actuality of climate change. While the fighting goes on the world’s governments make even less progress on these vital fronts than they do in times of peace. That in itself is deeply regrettable, or indeed wicked. War at this time besides being horrible is an indulgence the world can’t afford.
My point here, though, is that the idea that we, humanity, should be seeking to reach a specific Goal is itself deontological in nature. And since I am suggesting that we should indeed be pursuing a particular Goal (“convivial societies”, etc) I can hardly argue that the deontological approach is not worthwhile or indeed necessary.
Again, though, moral injunctions rooted in deontology have serious limitations. The idea in essence is that we should behave according to some edicts or rules laid down by some higher authority. But which authority? And are the rules beamed down to us from above necessarily good in themselves, when judged by other criteria? And can we always be sure that the rules we feel obliged to follow do in fact come from the authority we thought they came from, or from some usurper? And can we be sure that the authority we choose to follow is itself good? Or are we being fooled by some mountebank (of whom there is no shortage)? Are we being led horribly astray?
So it is for example that Christians claim to live according to the word of God, as conveyed to us by Jesus and, in particular, St Peter and St Paul. But Christians very obviously disagree profoundly on what it is they are really being enjoined to do, and who indeed they should take most seriously. So it was that in the 15th century Tomas de Torquemada was put in charge of the Spanish Inquisition, tasked with “upholding Catholic religious orthodoxy”. Under his leadership the Inquisition became a by-word for cruelty – aimed at wayward Christians of course but also very much at Jews, 40,000 of whom were expelled from Spain in 1492. Many, including the incumbent Pope Innocent VIII, felt that such excesses were not exactly in the spirit of Christ. Others though felt that Torquemada was doing a good and necessary job. Indeed in the words of one supporter he was
“the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honour of his order“.
So was Torquemada really taking his lead from God, or Jesus, or the saints, or had the Devil supervened? Or was he just power-crazy, ignoring the commands from above?
The same kinds of questions arise in all contexts. Everyone who isn’t a hermit on some mountain-top finds themself having to support or at least to follow some kind of authority. Anyone who joins a commercial company must defer to the CEO. Every politician must give way to the party leader. But no two thinking individuals think exactly alike, and no employee or party member ever agrees 100 per cent with their leader’s views. So it was for example that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng claimed to be “in lockstep” as they re-designed Britain’s economy. But Liz then kicked Kwasi into touch (and followed soon after).
Yet no employee or party member feels able to express disagreement on every issue. Only when things “come to a head” do the discontented venture to take a stand (as Geoffrey Howe eventually did against Margaret Thatcher). Most of the time for all kinds of reasons, sometimes out of self-interest and sometimes in the cause of harmony, they fall into line. So it is that all politicians from time to time vote for measures they are ill at ease with, or against measures with which, deep down, they sympathise. To go against one’s own conscience seems bad. But politicians and company executives get around this by appealing to the perceived virtue of loyalty. The loyal followers see it as their duty to support the company or the party or their nation and hence to be loyal come what may. “My President right or wrong”, as the expression has it.
Loyalty on the face of things does indeed seem virtuous. Noble, even – for it surely is a noble thing to bury one’s own misgivings for the greater good; and the opposite of loyalty is treachery. But loyalty can be taken too far. So it was that the Nazis who were put on trial at Nuremberg commonly pleaded in their own defence, “I was only obeying orders!” – meaning: “I was only doing my duty!” Such a plea indeed seems weak in the light of Nazi atrocities. And beyond doubt, many of the people convicted at Nuremberg were wicked by any standard. Yet some, perhaps, in the normal course of events might have been perfectly nice – but nonetheless felt obliged to do appalling things in the name of duty. Thus in The Reader (2008) Kate Winslet plays a Nazi warder put on trial for locking people in a church even though it was on fire. Yet she feels she has no case to answer, and is bemused to find that anyone thought she had done wrong. She had no orders to unlock the church, and so she did not. She did her duty, in short, and who could ask for more?
So, as with utilitarianism, deontology has its advantages — but again, a lot can go wrong. In both cases, in the attempt to do good, goodness itself may be sacrificed. Which leaves us wondering what the thing that seems to have gone missing really is. We can decide both on grounds of reason and on the basis of bone feeling that such-and-such an act is good (or not). But the concept of goodness, to which the adjective applies, remains elusive.
This leaves us with:
Virtue ethics
The idea of virtue ethics as commonly understood in the western world comes from Aristotle, who in his characteristically commonsense way simply asked: “What qualities lead us to decide that any particular person is ‘good’, or not so good?” The qualities that are perceived to be good, or cause good things to happen, are called virtues; and the virtues may reasonably be seen to be the ingredients of morality.
Different societies at different times have between them proposed a whole catalogue of candidate virtues. It’s this variety, this heterogeneity, that seems to justify the idea that morality itself is “relative”. Some make a great virtue of parsimony while others urge us to be generous, and even on special occasions to be profligate. Some stress self-reliance while others emphasise sharing. Of course, too, all societies emphasise different virtues at different times. Thus as Henry V told his troops before the battle at Harfleur:
“In peace there’s nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility:But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger!”
The pertinent virtues here are those of courage, aggression, and of course loyalty. Some leaders of some societies evidently think it virtuous to imitate the action of the tiger at all times, and appear to make war for the sake of it, or at least in pursuit of some delusion or other. (Tigers themselves of course don’t think like this. Like all sensible creatures, when unprovoked they much prefer a quiet life.)
But although humanity over the years has proposed a long list of putative virtues, three in particular stand out. They are:
Compassion
Humility, and
A Sense of Oneness
These three are to be found at the core of all the moral codes of all the great religions and in many or most indigenous belief systems — albeit, as discussed below, with different degrees of emphasis. Since by far the majority of the world’s population claim to subscribe to one or other of these religions, and others who do not subscribe are nonetheless influenced by them (like the host of non-practicing but notional Christians in Britain), these three virtues might reasonably be said to be (almost) universal.
Compassion is rooted in the feeling that other people, or other creatures, matter, and in the feeling of empathy. When others suffer the compassionate person feels their suffering – and seeks to put an end it. When others are in danger they may risk their lives to save them.
For many religious leaders of all persuasions, compassion is the chief of all the virtues, the sine qua non. Thus in June 2017 the Dalai Lama told students at the University of California at San Diego:
“Young people of the 21st century, bring on the revolution of compassion! These words are not a hollow slogan. They are not the naïve dream of an elderly Buddhist monk who is disconnected from reality. I am calling for the mother of all uprisings to begin. Many remarkable individuals have called for different kinds of revolution: technological, educational, ethical, spiritual. All are motivated by the urgent need to create a better world. But for me, the Revolution of Compassion is in the heart, the bedrock, the original source of inspiration for all the others.”
Christians tend to use the word “love” rather than “compassion”. I am told the two are not identical but they certainly belong in what Wittgenstein would call the same “family” of concepts (along with “kindness”, “concern”, “care” and so on). Thus as St Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians (in the New Jerusalem translation):
“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love … If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a resounding cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
The Muslim scholar and author Ziauddin Sardar points out too that all but two chapters of the Qur’an begin with an appeal to “the Compassionate One”.
Neither need we assume that the capacity for compassion is exclusive to human beings. In The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (2009) the Dutch-American primatologist Frans de Waal describes acts of what looks like kindness and caring in dogs, monkeys, and apes – and they just happen to be the species that are most studied. The same might be equally true of many other species of which we know less. “Behaviourists” and other hard-heads have often dismissed the idea that non-human animals actually “feel” any such emotions. That’s mere “anthropomorphism”, they say, and anthropomorphism is wrong. Admittedly, non-human animals may sometimes look as if they are thinking, or are sorrowful or cheerful or some such, but this is just an illusion. In reality, non-human animals are just automata, or at least should be seen as such. After all, we can make clockwork mannequins that imitate all manner of emotions just by adopting different postures.
But to dismiss anthropomorphism so peremptorily, far from being “logical” and “rational” and therefore correct, brooking no further argument, is just an assumption; and the more that naturalists or indeed “animal-lovers” look at animals the less they seem like automata. Indeed the argument that they are automata is not an argument at all. It is simply an assertion; dogma in the worst sense. It seems safest to assume that the animals that appear to us to be intelligent are intelligent, and that they experience a broad and subtle range of emotions, which certainly include compassion. Furthermore, the compassion they feel is not confined to their own species, as in the concept of “kin selection” (be nice to your relatives because they contain copies of your own genes). Dogs may show kindness to kittens. Cross-species friendships are common.
It is easy to explain all this on biological grounds. For as I have outlined in several blogs on this website, inspired largely by the ideas of the Russian naturalist and polymath Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), the most universally efficacious survival strategy is not to fight and defeat and conquer, but to cooperate. Sexual reproduction in general requires cooperation in spades, in some species only for a few seconds but in others over months or years. It isn’t necessary to feel compassion or love in order to cooperate but in intelligent creatures at least it certainly helps. Since natural selection favours those creatures who are best at surviving and reproducing, the idea that animals in general should be predisposed to cooperate and hence to feel compassion is a Darwinian prediction. “Survival of the fittest”, the phrase coined by Herbert Spencer and later adopted by Darwin, does not mean survival of the strongest or most athletic and still less of the most aggressive. It means survival of the most apt, as in the modern expression “fit for purpose”. And the fittest under most circumstances are the ones who cooperate best, or at least take pains to fit in.
At a meeting in Oxford circa 2008 which I had the good fortune to attend the Dalai Lama advised:
“Always ask yourself “What is the most compassionate thing to do?”
It’s remarkable how this simple formula cuts through moral dilemmas.
The virtue of Humility is most easily described in negative terms; not what you do but what you don’t do. And what all the mainstream religions frown upon is the tendency to lord it over others, just because we can, because they are weaker than we are. Still less should we assume that we are innately superior in the way that old-style aristocrats were wont to assume they were made of finer clay than the peasants. We may well be better at some things than other people. Indeed this is bound to be the case. But superior skills in some areas does not make us better people. Neither should we suppose that our assumed superiority gives us the rightto bend others to our will. In any case, “rights” is a somewhat dodgy concept, as again discussed elsewhere on this website (for by what right do we assume that we have rights at all?). Neither should we, human beings, assume that we know more than we do, or can ever know; and still less should we assume that we are knowledgeable enough to control the whole Earth, and can re-design the natural world with impunity for our own benefit – or indeed have a right do so. In times of war governments may feel obliged to assume command, and even to impose martial law. In general, though, the job of governments and of all politicians is not to rule, but to serve. The better politicians know this full well and act accordingly but many alas do not, or so it seems.
The concept of humility applies at all levels. No individual should assume their superiority over others, or their right to tell others what to do. No nation or race should seek to dominate another. And – the biggest of all – human beings as a whole should not seek to dominate and control all other species, and claim a right – even a God-given right – to do so. That is supreme arrogance.
The antithesis of humility is hubris, which features so strongly in Greek tragedy. To the old Greeks, after all, hubris was the greatest folly and sin of all – and the state of the modern world suggests that they were right. Hubris isn’t just pride or arrogance. It is the assumption that we, human beings, or at least the privileged among us, have god-like powers and god-like rights. To the more literal-minded Greeks it meant that we, or some of us, have usurped the power of the gods themselves. The gods object to this, and hubris always leads to disaster.
Yet in the modern world we see hubris at every turn. We see it in the attempts of big and powerful countries simply to take over other people’s territory and lives. On the even bigger scale, the conceit that we, humanity, understand the natural world so well that we can manipulate it at will and pillage its resources, for our own material enrichment, or at least for the enrichment and aggrandisement of a privileged (and hubristic) minority. Ecological collapse is the result. It isn’t just the individual acts that matter – the destruction of ancient ways of life, the wreck of cities, the forest clearance, pollution, and all the rest. The real killer is the attitude, which leads people in positions of influence to give themselves carte blanche to indulge their whims, while the rest of us fall into line or vote them into office.
Religions should provide the necessary moral framework to impose constraints. But terrible things are done in the name of religion nonetheless and in the name of the prophets who founded them. Torquemada claimed to be doing God’s will.
Oneness
Oneness is a huge and essential principle with many connotations. It demands to be discussed at length, and brought to the forefront, and on the whole it isn’t. The idea is too complex to discuss here but the points include:
** The sense of oneness of course includes the idea that all human beings should at least see themselves as part of one great human family. Our tendency to divide ourselves into competing factions in the end is self-destructive, whatever the short-term gains. We can achieve so much more by cooperation. The modern, “neoliberal” economy, essentially an all-out global dog-fight for material supremacy is an exercize in slow or not-so-slow suicide. Competition in the sense of friendly rivalry does indeed spur us to greater efforts and is one of life’s pleasures. But to make a virtue of no-holds-barred competitiveness, and indeed to build our lives around it, is absurd.
This sense of oneness is what a great many people, including me, think socialism is all about. In his best known book, From Serfdom to Socialism, published in 1907, the acknowledged founder of Britain’s Labour Party, the Lanarkshire coal-miner Keir Hardie, put it thus:
“To the Socialist the community represents a huge family organization in which the strong should employ their gifts in promoting the weal of all, instead of using their strength for their own personal aggrandizement.”
Well; that at least is the ideal; although others put a different slant on it and things don’t always turn out that way. Most introductions to socialism as found for example on the web begin by talking about the economy, and in particular equate socialism with the centralised economy, organised and run by the state. But as Hardie said, the essence of it is, or should be, not the economic technicalities but the underlying morality.
More broadly: our task should be to bring the economy into line with the far more fundamental principles of morality and ecology; not, as now, the other way round.
** On the grander scale, human beings should see themselves at one with nature – or as some would say, with the rest of Creation. This theme is present in all the great religions and in all of the indigenous belief systems that I know about but in some far more than others. The idea that we are at one with nature is at the core of the Eastern religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Shinto – but is far less prominent in Christianity, or indeed is emphatically absent. Christianity, it seems, has been thrown off course by Genesis1:26 which in the King James translation reads:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
It’s the word “dominion” that gets in the way. It does not suggest oneness. Some might suggest it is hubristic. Certainly it seems presumptuous. Many have sought to get around this by suggesting that “dominion” is an unfortunate translation of the original, ancient Hebrew. “Stewardship” is closer, they claim. Well, stewardship is certainly an improvement – but even so it does not quite imply oneness. “Stewardship” still has an us-and-them feel to it; we are the stewards, they are the rest of nature. It is often claimed that St Francis of Assisi had the desired sense of oneness. But according to Roger D Sorrell in St Francis of Assisi and Nature (1989) Francis was in the end a 13th century gentleman and his attitude to other creatures was not one of oneness but of chivalry: treating others with respect and courtesy, but not necessarily regarding them as equals. The chivalrous treat others well but keep them at arms-length nonetheless.
Would the natural world be in better shape if the all-dominant Christians of the past few centuries had seen it through Buddhist eyes?
** Science contributes to the overall sense of oneness in various ways. Thus science has shown us these past few centuries that everything in the universe including all living things are compounded of permutations of 100 or so elements from the periodic table; and those elements in turn are combinations of fundamental particles which in turn are compressed forms of electro-magnetic radiation. Every material thing there is emanates from the same cooking pot, although “material” is not as material as all that. (But in the end it’s all beyond our ken, and it’s hubristic to suppose otherwise.)
Darwin too has contributed wonderfully to the idea of oneness. To be sure, he emphasised the role of competition in driving natural selection and shaping our destiny, which seems schismatic; and he saw the “tree of life” literally like a tree, forever branching and branching again, with each lineage always growing away from all the others. But he also suggested that all living creatures must have descended from the same common ancestor, which means that earthly creatures are all — literally — related. The phylogenetic tree is a family tree. Fish are our cousins and mushrooms are our second cousins and E coli is our fifth cousin several times removed.
Nowadays we can see that this unified vision of life is even more unifying than Darwin thought. It’s clear for starters that the branches of the tree of life do not simply divide and divide again. Often the different branches re-combine – anastomose, as a botanist would say. This is particularly evident among plants. A great many plant species can be seen to be hybrids of other species, and sometimes – often – the hybrids then re-hybridise with yet more other species to form polyploid coalescences. Viruses meanwhile are constantly ferrying individual genes across species barriers and indeed from Linnean kingdom to kingdom. Most wondrously of all, the American microbiologist Carl Woese suggested in the 1970s that the Eukaryotes as a whole, which include us and mushrooms and seaweeds and the miscellaneous “protists”, first arose as conglomerations of the two great prokaryote groups, the Archaea (which he first showed are distinct from bacteria), and Bacteria.
There is much more to discuss under this heading, including the role of mycorrhizas in combining all the multitudinous trees in an established forest into one great ecological/physiological consortium, or the fusion of algae and fungi to form lichens, or the partnership of various forms of siphonophore to form the “jellyfish” Physalia¸ aka the Portuguese man o’ war, and so on. Life overall indeed as discussed elsewhere on this website, is “a master-class in cooperativeness”. Cooperativeness doesn’t exactly mean “oneness”, but it is at least a precondition.
** The even bigger notion is that of Universal Intelligence (which I conflate with Universal Consciousness, or Universal Mind, although others perhaps more subtle than I do not). The idea is that intelligence (or consciousness, or mind) are not generated inside our heads, which is what we feel is the case. As many a mystic and philosopher and not a few scientists have argued, mind is a quality of the Universe. We do not create it. We partake of it, roughly in the same way that we partake of light – although we do contribute to it too. I like the idea that all sentient creatures partake of it; and that all living things are thus in some sense party to a universal conversation. It’s a fanciful notion but it seems at least to be a reasonable metaphor for what may well be a literal truth, or at least an aspect thereof. Of course the fact that I or indeed a great many other people like a particular idea, does not make it true. But then, truth is an elusive concept. The point in the end is not whether an idea is true, or we believe it to be true, or that we would like it to be true. The real point is whether the idea is worth taking seriously and, I suggest, the idea of universal mind and all that follows from it, certainly is.
** Then there’s the sense which in various feelings again seems to run through all cultures: the sense that an individual creature, taken alone, is not complete. We are all part of larger communities, and societies, and lineages, and should see ourselves as such. The Scottish philosopher John Macmurray explained the idea in Persons in Relation (1961). More recently Satish Kumar expanded the thought in You Are, Therefore I Am: A Declaration of Dependence (2002). The notion is embraced too in the African term ubuntu, which is often interpreted to mean “I am because we are”.
** Richard Dawkins famously or infamously argued in River out of Eden (1995) that
“The universe we observe has precisely the qualities we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
But since the apparent “laws” of science combine so beautifully to create a universe that provides such wonders as Earthly life, in all its variety and intricacy, it seems at least as valid to argue the complete opposite: that the universe as a whole, and life as a whole are wonderfully harmonious – miraculously so indeed. We might – reasonably – further suggest that any thought or action that contributes to or serves to maintain the overall harmony is good, and anything that detracts is bad. Thus moral principle acquires a cosmological dimension. Such a point as this is not provable, of course, or directly amenable to scientific investigation. But neither is the idea that the universe has no purpose or design. Both are just points of view. I am not sure why the negative point of view should be considered more rigorous than the more positive. Perhaps the pessimists prefer to assume the worst so as to avoid disappointment.
Clearly, the various sources and traditions of moral feeling feed into each other. Thus the sense of oneness reinforces the feeling of compassion, and the feeling of compassion — of concern for others, and of empathy – makes us more receptive to the general notion of oneness. It is such feelings that are needed to underpin the idea that we, humanity, should be seeking to create a more convivialworld, and that fulfilment, as opposed to mere hedonism, should – and does – come from the attempt to create convivial societies.
Finally, I do like Immanuel Kant’s notion of the “Categorical Imperative”, which he summarised in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals in 1785 as
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
In fact the categorical imperative is related to or is an expression of the “Golden Rule”, which appears in various forms in both testaments of the Bible, and enjoins us to treat others in the way that you would like them to treat you. The idea is encapsulated in the name of one of the prominent characters in the Rev Charles Kingsley’s moralistic children’s tale of 1863, The Water-babies: “Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby”.
All in all, the pursuit of moral principles leads is into some of the trickiest and most esoteric corners of psychology and evolutionary biology and physics, and of philosophy, metaphysics, and theology. But the simple formula, “Compassion, Humility and the Sense of Oneness”, underpinned by the Categorical Imperative. seems to me to tell us all we really need to know. These three commonly recognised virtues, then, may reasonably be seen as the fundamental principles of morality. Or so it seems to me.
And yet:
Can moral principles really be said to be “bedrock”?
To say that a thing or an idea is “bedrock” is to claim that it is immovable, permanent, and true for all time, brooking no further argument. Can we ever, legitimately, claim as much for what we perceive to be a moral principle?
It seems worth emphasising yet again that the three prime virtues as outlined here, plus the Golden Rule, are echoed in all the great religions that have emerged over the past 2000 years, and are accepted by the vast majority of humanity; and when those virtues are put in to action they really do seem to promote conviviality and fulfilment, which is what morality is for (or so it is reasonable to suggest). There are good reasons too to suppose that these moral principles, guided by conscience, are deeply embedded in our psyche, and indeed in our biology – evolved over aeons as essential aids to social life; and sociality in its many forms is the most universally successful survival strategy.
Even so: can we really claim that these ideas are bedrock – implying rock solid and true for all time?
Well, no idea of any kind that is not merely a tautology, meaning in effect that it’s true by definition, as in 2+2=4, can ever be shown to be true beyond all possible doubt. The best we can ask for, as demanded in courts of law, is proof beyond all reasonable doubt. Certainly we can never know that any of our explanations of anything are complete or unimproveable. There is always the possibility that we may have missed something, and we could not know what we have missed or how much unless we were already omniscient, and could compare what there is to know with what can be known. Besides, however satisfying our explanations may be, there is always room for a better one: more accurate, more all-embracing. We may feel certain that our more tried and tested ideas are indeed true but we can never be absolutely certain that our certainty is justified. There is always room for doubt. Science – or at least many scientists – aspire to unequivocal truth but in reality there can be no unquestionable proof of any empirically based idea and as Karl Popper said, all the theories of science, including the greatest and most widely accepted, are conjecture. They surely are sound conjecture – as demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by the fact that high technologies based on the theories of science do actually work, often miraculously well. But they are conjecture nonetheless.
With such thoughts in mind we might reasonably question whether any idea of any kind, however well tested and “robust”, can ever properly be called “bedrock”. Popper also pointed out, though – a very cogent metaphor – that some and perhaps most of the world’s greatest architecture is not all founded on bedrock. The fabulous city of Venice is built on mud – or at least on stakes that have been driven into the mud as far as they will go. The mighty Brooklyn Bridge in New York is built on sand. The foundations of Salisbury Cathedral are just a few feet deep and water runs beneath. Nowadays you would never get planning permission for such a structure and yet it has stood, dizzily, tall spire and all, since the 14th century. Bedrock, in short, in an absolute sense, implying solid and immovable, is not necessary. For practical purposes – for the purposes of living — we merely need the foundations to be functionally bedrock.
We all have lives to lead – just one shot each, it seems — and most people surely would prefer to live good lives – good in every sense. To achieve this we need guidelines, including moral guidelines: ideas that we feel in our bones are at least true enough to be worth taking seriously, by which we can live. The moral principles – virtues – of compassion, humility, and the sense of oneness are accepted by the vast majority of humankind (all who are not psychopaths) and are deeply embedded in our psyche and our biology; and when they have been applied they have served us well; as well as the stake-assisted mud has served Venice for so long.
I suggest that such ideas – almost universally accepted; deeply embedded; and truly helping us, when given a chance, to make a better world, and indeed a viable world – deserve to be called “bedrock”, or at least “functionally bedrock”. If they do not, then nothing else does. Not even the best-laid theories of science.
Coda:
One last question: Where do these “Bedrock Principles” of Morality come from? How did they get into our heads – and bones? There’s a wide range of possible explanations of many different kinds (evolutionary, ecological, cosmological, metaphysical, theological) – which are not mutually exclusive: and all deserve to be taken seriously. But discussion must wait for another time.
Colin Tudge, May 8 2025
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