Morality does not come from our intellectual superiority. The intellect has no inbuilt morality. Abstract reason has no innate morality. Morality comes from the constraints and affordances provided by the complex structures of living organisms.
We are each of us a living organism and those organic constraints and affordances that are the basis of morality come from within us, meaning from within our body and its evolutionary requirements and profound natural potential. We have lost our connection with the Earth and with each other and with ourselves. Thus it is no surprise that we have lost connection with any shared sense of morality.
You cannot pollute the water because it will poison your neighbors and children. Business owners and shopkeepers cannot mistreat their workers or their communities because they share the community together. We do not tolerate repression and exploitation and mistreatment of our bodies because we feel ourselves in our bodies intimately and do not want to suffer. Without all of these organic connections we have dissociation and immorality.
Our mental life has been elevated to the level of a digital superstructure. Within that superstructure there is no morality or immorality because there are no innate constraints to be felt, only infinite if imaginary and unsustainable potential. To the extent that we have become a civilization of talking heads we have become morally relativistic and impotent. The inevitable result is that morality is imposed from the top down.
The simple if profound solution is that we become talking bodies again, bodies and selves nestled within the constraints and affordances provided by the natural world and organic communities we always already live within.
If this resonated with you in any way, I am open and available for further discussion at Jimfreda@gmail.com.
[Feature Photo by Mark König on Unsplash.]