Hello all,
I agree with Polemarchus in that ethics is a formal case for moral judgements and standards. It was an interesting post and I could not miss the inherent non-humanness of some of the examples you gave, or rather comparisons with us humans, and that is an example-ridden manner of explanation.
Indeed, morality is a set of unwritten rules, and unwritten rules in human perceptive society invariably seem to transgress the boundaries of correctness or any well defined regimes and fall in the dimly illuminated regime of irrationalities such as pleasure and sometimes convenience which, like a shallow lotus pond, draws amphibians in on a cool afternoon and the clarity of the pond water is then utterly spoilt by the rising silt which then leaves the directions which were so clear before jumping in, now murky.
Atleast a couple of posts here have dealt with morality having to do with survival and these posts are either the decisive result of a lot of intuitive and imaginative thought which happens to consider Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, in which he writes “What I am not, that for me is God and Virtue”, juxtaposed with the considered range of the survival games played at various levels by people and animals alike, thereby arriving at the then intensely apparent basis of morality, or theyre mere instinctual feelings on the subject. Either way, they were good food for thought.
Also, in this light it is interesting to note Polemarchus’ observations wherein he has given tactful examples of both the so-called ‘Intelligent’ or rather sufficiently excessively conscious, viz. Man, and less conscious animals, with the latter being observed in many more acts of immorality than the former. Empathy, love and such irrational feelings perhaps transfer sufficient inertia to the human animal so as to have social darwinism not entail these metaphysical things here, and as a rule, social darwinism is sure to not underscore the future trends in irrational and certainly the moral aspects of future culture, which is as murky as an individual’s ability or decision. This is both in line with Nietzsche’s endorsement of ‘good’ being alluded to capacity and ‘bad’ to the converse, and I heve dealt with this thought in the next paragraph.
In regard to the ethics and morality, I will give you an example to settle the differences - the example is tradition, which is also considered moral in older societies. This is an example which I discussed witha few friends, but here goes -
If we have a bunch of 8 monkeys in a room with a stash of bananas hung from the cieling with a stool for the reach, except with a cold water spray for every monkey when any one from the that climbs the stool to get the bananas, we’ll have a coping behavious amongst the monkeys which prevents them from encouraging other monkeys to get the bananas. When the monkeys are replaced with new ones over a period of time one by one, however, information is passed to these monkeys as and when they enter the group about the forbidden fruit and this is now etched in their minds to such an extent that it continues as a tradition that wherever else the monkeys go they will arrange for a stash of bananas and a stool and will fear to climb the stool as long as there are influences from the older monkeys. Of course, some monkey will come along to realize that the bananas are reachable in another room without the cold shower spray and thats perhaps revolution, like Lenin and the Czar Empire, or the Fourth Estate in France, or the Indian War of Independence. So societies and morals work on similar principles - you never know who gets the banana first.
With regard to choices and the power of the individual to influence populations rather than have some evolutionary strategy evolve sentient beings, I suggest you read a little about India, its cultures and how its cultures represent different facets of correctness and sometimes iron-strong laws of state. From Gandhara (presently known as Kandahar, Afghanistan) architecture used on Buddha statues which were worshipped in hardly ephemeral, nearly all-Hindu/Buddhist kingdoms with Muslim Rulers, to the present day, where exist security with 1024 bit encoding side by side with 2000 year old rituals and customs, India flaunts as much as there is and thats a lot of possibilities, if anything.
What this shows is not only a good examples of recessive strategies being adopted in several instances for conquering dominant causes with morals in place, albeit non-subjugatory as instanced here, in most cases, but also pertinent points such as how small ruling classes with no heed to the evolutionary (societal, in this case) make up of the other social customs; they can point to a considerably tameful equillibrium even in the face of hard-hitting diversity. Is that explained by evolutionary sociology? Is this the question of how the world is, in all its diversity, and how it ought to be, in unity? Why not?
As for Polemarchus’ finishing lines which I will now elucidate upon, with my understanding of the same now: Social Darwinism is not a conscious and yet unavoidable matter like the second law of thermodynamics, or so I feel from what I know about the second law. From Man being able to adapt to his environment, the game has changed somewhat to mutating species of populations adapting/modifying the environment (rather than themselves) to their cause, owing to the dexterity which we so associate with human evolution and modern humans. To apply this to the matter of pertinence, it would be apparent that systems with modifyable morals, use more than the inherent conflict of several competing individuals and strategies, and in fact rely on randomness and irrationality to spawn ever-diverse and survivable strategies. Just follow the Indian election campaign this summer, with its several contenders making their fat claims, and seemingly addressing, in fact, some of the issues at hand. Some of these will turn out to become more successful than others, and just as managing irrational things requires an understanding of the irrational and its tendencies, morality in society will seem a veritable gift to the irrationally mutating matter that is a societal moral, drawing as it is on several recessive strategies rather than pseudo-positivist and Nietzsche-esque ‘good’ strategies.
As for the finishing line of the post, the signoff, it was excellent appropriation, Polemarchus. And pray tell, whats that last line in German? Could you please translate?