Morality, History and Democracy

Recently someone speaking before an audience argued that morality is either derived from God or from government, and with this false dichotomy he won applause and nods of approval from his audience. He then asked his audience to pressure government. "We decide," he told them, touching on one other source of morality: individual choices and collective agreement.

Morality cannot be said to be an end in itself. Some people see morality as a means to personal salvation. Some others are moral not only because of self-benefit but also because it benefits others.

Some people believe we can rely on our good nature and allow our impulses to run. They tend to see evil as done by strangers who are inherently wicked. Others see just about everybody capable of evil and the impulses of infants and children as perhaps deserving understanding but as barbaric. They believe that doing right requires mental development and control. They see mental development as a better means to moral behavior than a childlike obedience to vague commands from fear of punishment.

Religion offers rules for behavior, but when confronting choices concerning specifics these rules can be easily overlooked. In dealing with specific temptations and impulses, both the religious and those who are not religious need to apply reason. This puts their values in gear. For a grown and sane person, religious or not religious, every act is a choice. Life is a continuous series of choices, some made in an instant. We've all seen or have heard of examples of devoutly religious people letting themselves go astray. Some excuse their behavior on being human. But being human excuses nothing. Because we can choose, we are responsible for what we do. And, being responsible, we need to control our impulses. Not everyone who gets angry strikes out with violence - as infants do when fighting over a toy.

Morality as a cultural phenomenon is also a product of historical development. Cultures have changed. Judaic priests commanded a morality that accepted slavery, the authority of a father to arrange one's marriage, the stoning to death of a man and a woman for "love making" outside of marriage. The Book of Joshua approves of genocide. Today, people are inclined more toward thinking for themselves rather than, like obedient children, blindly following authority figures. In democracies, right and wrong are put into law by legislators elected by those who vote - in other words, collective agreement. Authoritarianism is over except for a few stuck in the Middle Ages, when political authority was with priests, mullahs or kings united with religious organizations.

There is nothing relative about this. Modern democratic societies are about diversity in opinion and individual values that become community standards expressed as law. Morality in a modern democratic society is about individual values as well as community standards. We are free to entertain beliefs that are not popular, believing that our morality is superior to the morality of our neighbor or the morality of people in general. We are free to hold to our own concepts of morality and to act on those concepts so long as it does not violate a community standard that has been put into law. In a modern democratic society we are free to create our own personal morality, which we do by drawing lines that we do not want to cross, also by thinking about the behavior needed to make the kind of world that we want to live in. Government is not going to charge us with heresy. And we are free to join others in supporting the various laws that make up the imperfection of collective agreement.

This includes rules that protect freedoms against the viscidities of majority opinion. For example in no state in the United States can people muster a majority to ban a religious grouping they deem to be evil. Religious organization is protected under the U.S. Constitution while the acts of its members as individuals remain governed by the right and wrong made by secular law.

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