Moral Invention

I am going to start where we are, which is several tiers into the complexity, and I'll bounce around a bit to explain, but I will aim to move toward the real, unabstracted reality.

We have created society, civilization. Massive, multi-tiered organization of all of the things in the world. This organization is artificial. Arbitrary. All of our sub-systems are as well. A best-guess fit to the world as we experience it through a pin-hole.

One point of interest, as it has arisen everywhere, in each culture, is the concept of morality; to put a fine point on it, right and wrong.

Within the undifferentiated soup, there is no morality, no right and wrong, no good or bad, there is simply the things that happen. In other words, the world exists prior to and without the need of judgment. It is, instead, a requirement of the mind, a requirement of dissection and abstraction that necessitates judgment, differentiation, distinction, and classification.

As we add arbitrary structure to the world, and live lives of abstraction, we start to discover the lack of actual limits that keep us from certain things. Some of these things are easy to accept as reasonable, while others seem to offend the senses, or open dangerous doors that threaten to dissolve our arbitrary constructions. Enter Law, Religion, and Moral Philosophy.

These three tools have their birth in the needs to preserve the structure of our fabricated world of abstraction. I'll use a simple example.

We value money. Money is a system of solidifying value so it can be traded in its own right, a promise note. I have money, you have food I need to survive. I give you money, you give me food. The non-specific nature of money allows you to then use it in whatever form you need it, when you need it. This allows for the more complex system that has developed where people no longer had the goods to barter directly, the result of complex society. Money is therefore important as it allows you to procure the things you need from the people who don't need the other things you have. Money becomes the support system that gives you the *actually* items you need to survive (food being an easy example). Money is important, but it is a solid asset, like food, or anything else. If you need something, what are the *actual* restrictions on getting it? Nothing, in fact. Is there a real world difference between trading for the money, or killing someone and taking there money? Not without the introduction of Law, Religion, and Moral Philosophy. Religion introduces the concept of cosmic consequence. If you do "bad" things, your immortal soul will be damaged, or you will lose something far more valuable in your next life or afterlife. Money is far less important than happily-ever-after/eternity, so there is incentive to not to the "bad" things (killing is often an agreed upon "bad" thing). Law, on the other hand, offers a simple quid pro quo. We've decided these are the "rules," you are not allowed to kill people. We know they're arbitrary, but we're telling you now, if you kill someone, we will kill you (or we will take something else valuable from you), that's the law. Follow the rules or face the consequences. Moral Philosophy, of course, comes as the limpest. Rather than offering "real" consequences, it simply explores the nuance of good and bad, and offers guidance as to what should be done and what shouldn't. The only reprecussions here are typically guilt and propriety, but it is often the root found in the first two (though religion would consider the philosophy subordinate to the religion itself).

This is what I call moral invention. This is the enforcement of ideals that are needed to preserve our abstractions.

Cosmically speaking, is killing a "bad" thing? No. No one even within the above examples will say so unilaterally. Within the law, killing is used as a punishment, a "capital" punishment for crimes committed, and we make a range of judgments about how bad killing is, with allowances for doing it by accident. We certainly do not apply our laws to animals, trying to arrest every lion who hunts and kills a zebra for lunch, nor do we punish humans for killing animals, in most situations. Religions allow for killing in one way or another. Some allow for retirbution and vengeance (though sometimes named more benignly, like law, as "justice"). Some allow for killing of those who are "wrong" about one thing or another, like which god(s) they worship. Few religions have something to say about killing animals, though it is fairly common in every moral philosophy that not just any kind of killing is "ok."

It is this arbitrary nature that makes it easy to identify this as an abstraction, and invention. The immutable truths are just that, unchangeable. The question is, just what *is* actually immutable, and how much of the things we live by are simply accepted, but arbitrary designations?