In my discussion
about identity, I mention how hard it is for
us to understand the 'other'. In emergence,
and in mind, I mention how I believe that trying
to model the 'other' is key to our development of consciousness. This
suggests that early on, in many ways we should have a better developed
sense of the other than of ourselves, although obviously this will become
swarfed by the sheer amount of time we spend with ourselves, not least at
night in our sleeping hours.
But in society
today, it would seem that there is a general lessening of awareness of
others. From the louts who terrorise little old ladies on the
streets, to the perpetrators of gun crime and the busy business
executives, and managers in all industries who have too much to do to be
bothered paying attention to what other people are doing, or need, there
seems to me to be a general drop in conscious awareness of the 'other'.
And yet society
is, I would say, an emergent property of the people who constitute
it. It is wrong, I believe, to say there is no such thing as
society (Nozick, Thatcher) - there clearly is, but it may have no more
substance than an individuals consciousness or free will. In the
same way that I blieve consciousness and free will are illusions of an
innately modelling mind, I believe society is the illusion caused by many
of these minds communicating with one another.
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Morality and ethics
In order to be able to live together, and function as a
group (society) rather than forever being at one another's throats, we
must have a means of formulating minimum standards of behaviour.
This is not to say I know where the original standards for us as
individuals come from, but that I argue that any proto-us who tried to
live in groups without having internal standards would have failed to do
so, and thus the ability to have moral standards is an evolutionary
advantage in terms of social living.
But we all seem to have different moral standards. And
what is more, society's standards shift over time, but also vary from
province to province, country to country. Why is that?
If we assume for the time being that our moral values
start off entirely random, then we can posit that after communicating the
minimum standards we will accept from others we will either learn to
reduce our expectations or the overall moral standard will be improved to
a point where it is tolerable for us, and for society as a whole.
But why would standards drift over time? Well, any number of
people, who for any reason have a different set of standards, being
introduced to a society will drag the moral tone of that society in their
direction.
And, given the nature of the relationship between children
and their parents, generally speaking if public morality is offset from
the normal value for the society, the children will rebel against it, and
swing morality the other way for the next generation.
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It would be interesting to do the study - have
immigrant populations changed the public morality through their
interactions with society, and have there been subsequent swings back as
the next generation tries to adjust? Of course one would need to
take into account the probable mis-representation in popular culture of
the morality of the immigrants.
Ethics, then, can be seen as the formalisation of the
minimum standards of morality common to the populace.
In language I discuss the
possible benefits which we gain from not being able to understand one
another, in terms of maintaining a heterogenous mix of different levels
of morality, but also in terms of protecting nascent ideas and ideologies
from hostile attack while they have the opportunity to gain some level of
maturity. This is something which is directly affected by the
internet, and I have a suspicion that active use of the medium may in
fact not speed up the rate of progress at some points, but may actively
repress the forumaltion and acceptance of good ideas as they are quashed
by the 'wisdom of the crowd' (which is not
always right) or are bounced as being too trendy (a fate I fear may await
connectivism).
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