Generally speaking, women are a civilizing influence for a certain kind of morality, what you might call a family-centric morality. Initially, a frontier becomes a refuge for our fortune hunters and social misfits. Brothels and saloons spring up. Then, ironically, the misfits pave the way for the advance of civilization. Quite abruptly generally, the brothels and saloons give way to churches and schools. The difference is women. They impose morality on the fellers, not necessarily out of being morally superior but because they bring a new reality into being that’s not present within a rowdy bunch of gold seeking bachelors, the reality of the family.

Our moralists might bristle at this a bit, but, to my mind, morality is about biological success. I see family-centric morality within a larger context of morality having evolved from our cultural capacity to insure biological success. Family-centric morality is a set of values by which children succeed, thereby enhancing biological success of a society.

Take a generally accepted rule of morality that sex is to be reserved for the family. That’s about insuring that children have optimal conditions for success. Promiscuity, sex outside of marriage, is immoral, because, with that behavior often come children born out of wedlock and hence outside of a protective sheltering family that would give them optimal chances for success in life.

Family-centric morality is well exemplified here in Utah and in fundamental conservatism in general. There’s a strong prohibition of sex for anything other than within a strictly procreative role within families. The origin of this impulse might have been biological but now has become something beyond that, a powerful signature of tribal identity that is very protective of itself and very hostile to anything outside itself for other than pragmatic reasons. Homosexuality, for example, is seen as the most terrible abomination conceivable, even though there’s no substantial risk to biological success of people in general through it. I suppose there would be if there were a risk of a majority of people opting to turn gay, but there’s no evidence to suggest that the proportion of gays to straights within a population is anything but quite constant. What’s more likely is that the proportion of our gay population who have opted to be openly gay has been on the increase as that became permissible in our culture. Our fundamentalists have tended to interpret this is an indication of society becoming corrupted by loose morals and have reacted against this with, I think, unfounded paranoia. The paranoia that has arisen out of the emergence of gay rights and also out of the emergence of women’s rights and from new means of contraception within our culture in the latter 20th century has been become fertile ground for a virulent ignorance-promoting politics that has arisen in response to these changes. I see this as an unfortunate consequence of family-centric morality that has forgotten and even become hostile to its biological origins, though, I hasten to add, not as need for family-centric morality to be overturned. Not that it would do any good for me to insist upon this to our paranoid fundamentalists, but I’m really not a servant of Beelzebub here and wanting to destroy the ethical values that sustain families. I do, however, think that many of our “family values” fundamentalists of today have taken a seriously wrong turn in how they’re going about advancing family values.

Another problem with family-centric morality as popularly practiced within this family-centric culture I live in is that it’s incomplete. As I’ve seen so vividly here in Utah, family-centric morality doesn’t give a hoot about the planet. As long as your own kids and those within your like-minded community are well fed, healthy, and well educated, the planet on which they depend for life itself can go take a flying leap for all this culture cares. This is short-sighted, of course. The whole intent of family-centric morality is defeated if the planet host on which families are utterly dependent for everything comes to harm through the very behaviors that family-centric morality of today is promoting.

The cultural challenge before us today isn’t to defeat family-centric morality but to continue its development, to broaden its horizons beyond the narrow confines of fundamentalist religion. The process isn’t done. To my mind, the big cultural argument of this period in America today isn’t between the moralists and the immoralists but between those who insist that morality is complete as is, as in “It’s all right there in the Holy Scripture”, and those who insist the process isn’t done. Here we are with a bunch of new challenges at our doorstep for which the Holy Scriptures haven’t prepared us, but then isn’t the whole point of having a culture in the first place is that it’s not set in stone but can grow and develop as needed when we encounter unprecedented challenges? Why are we so determined to defeat this life saving capacity right at a time when we need it most urgently?

This isn’t to deny the legitimate local family-centric good that is being protected within this mighty fortress of paranoia, but it’s being falsely presented to us as though our sacred family values are under assault from a rival tribe, that bunch over there who value planetary good, as if the two kinds of good are separate and we have to choose one or the other as if one is good and one is evil. That’s a false choice. Those who present us with that choice are playing on our paranoia and, unfortunately, that has been a hugely successful formula for political success that hasn’t done us any good at all.

The family-centric good and the planetary good are interdependent. True, the values of each kind of good often do come into conflict. The choice, I think, isn’t between which of these two competing kinds of good will win; it’s between successfully balancing them with a little more maturity than we’ve shown to date and going out of business.

Chaster,

I agree with most of what you said about this.

I have looked at it a different way, through a paradigm I call, “Self-righteousness vs Universal Righteousness.”

What is right for the “self” is often not good for the “Universe” and vice-verse.

For example: As a species, we are not very good for the planet right now. The planet, honor be her name, would be better off just killing us all, which wouldn’t be good for us. What is good for me, may not be good my family, i.e, if I go off and party, drink, and have a good time.

To me, the goal is to find the balance. Perhaps I can order my life is such a way that doesn’t offend universal righteousness and maybe the universe won’t have to kill me to protect it self. . . . metaphorically speaking.

Marriage is good for the whole, but often binds the individual. Morals are sort of the “connection” between individuals and the whole. Immorality can be great fun, but is damaging to the group. Reckless behavior, while great fun also damaged the environment. Picking up litter and trash is an inconvenience yet is good for the whole.

Making morals based on religion is sort of a weak way of doing it. Morals should be based about natural conflicts of the personality/individuality and the universal needs for order, life, and environment care. This can apply to all layers of life. For example: Our desire (personal need) for space exploration could amount to a universal virus that spreads through the galaxy. Our need to understand God/Nature/the Universe could amount to power that humans shouldn’t have due to their level of immaturity.

Epistomologically speaking, I'm thinking one paradigm is equivalent to twenty cents. These days, though, seems like everybody is talking about a paradigm shift. Shift to what, I wonder, a quarter maybe?

I'm not sure I know what is moral in an absolute sense. I only know what is righteous to me, which is me on my righteous keyboard.

By the way, Self Appointed Greatness, which might could be the name of our band, do you have any software for dealing with MP-3 files? If you could record an MP3 file of your playing, I can take that and create another MP-3 file with my musing to your muse and maybe visa versa.