The Evolution of Morality Part 1: Care and Fairness

Morality has been the subject of academic scholarship for many years. Moral values are not, as I originally imagined, a set of known values about which the whole world agrees.

Springing from Piaget's observations of the stages of cognitive development in children, Lawrence Kohlberg (1927 - 1987) developed a related theory of moral development which has been foundational to this subject's ongoing study.

If morality is developmental, then no wonder humans struggle to agree on what our moral values "should be." Depending on all sorts of cultural and experiential factors, individuals will prioritize certain values over others. An individual will hold fast to the values that "feel right" until and unless the rhetoric around them and how they understand their experiences change sufficiently. 

One of the most prominent theories today posits 5 foundations of morality.

These foundations can be most succinctly summed up here: https://moralfoundations.org/

You can find an in-depth exploration within the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion

Here are those 5 foundations of morality:

1) Care (aka "do no harm")

2) Fairness

3) Loyalty 

4) Authority 

5) Sanctity (aka purity over impurity)

How we understand these values matters, because how we prioritize them affects so much: what we expect from others, what offends or disgusts us, which political and religious leaders appeal to us, what foundational values we imagine should underlie how we govern/are governed, and so much more. 

One final thing to know before I start discussing these foundations:

As a rule "Conservatives" generally weight all five values equally, while "Liberals" generally weight Care and Fairness above the other three.

The following discussion contains my distillation of how I arrived at my "liberal" moral foundations. It is reflective, personal, and designed to add to the discussion. It is not "what everyone should think so if you disagree you are wrong," nor is it prescriptive or authoritative. I do believe it is valuable as part of the discussion.

CARE and FAIRNESS 

Care and Fairness encapsulate all the other values in my mind. They are a summation of the Golden Rule which is found in some form in all world religions. If one genuinely cares about others in equal weight to oneself, one wants equal care and fairness for them as well as oneself. One does not tend to look at others as a threat, but rather, as one's neighbor; therefore one does not tend to dehumanize groups by calling them "criminals" or "immigrants" or "from shit-hole countries." 

Under the Golden Rule, one tends to see the other in oneself and feel compassion for the hardships that the other has endured (and often continues to endure). One isn't as likely to scapegoat a marginalized group or to lay all the world's problems at their feet as some seem to. Laying society's ills at the feet of "the homosexuals" or "those transgender freaks" or "those teenagers having sex" is seen as incredibly ignorant. Instead, problems are seen as societal and innate to the human condition. Battles can be fought within oneself reducing the impulses to hate, scapegoat, or marginalize others. 

The Care and Fairness foundations often show up as activism for social justice causes around the world. They may show up as someone refusing to shop with businesses that exploit their workers just to bring "deals" to their customers. (Personally, I find the idea that some poor worker was exploited just so I could save a few bucks abhorrent. Who am I to deserve to save a little more money at the expense of some nameless, faceless worker in an impoverished country?)

The way liberals and conservatives hold "fairness" can look quite different. I have been on the receiving end of a lot of injustice, which makes me want to stop all injustice everywhere. If someone else is suffering from bullying or marginalization, I believe we all suffer. "We all suffer until nobody suffers," so to speak. 

But among some conservatives, the fairness argument seems to sound more like, "I want to be protected from cheaters" as though they themselves never cheat. There doesn't seem to be any sense of their own cheating ways---their entitlements, their desire for special status, or the ways their own team might cut corners. "Cheaters are some group "out there" and never themselves or their own team members.

In my mind, for genuine fairness to exist, everyone must be rigorously aware of their own impulses to cheat. We are all natural-born cheaters, be we liberals or conservatives, anarchists, or anything else. Until that universal human tendency is recognized, cheaters are always "them" "out there" different from "us" "in here." Therefore, if fortune favors our side, we tend to believe we deserved it. If fortune favors our opponents, we are likely to cry, "unfair!" 

This is a universal human trait. We ALL must stay alert to this tendency within ourselves and our group.

Next post: The Evolution of Morality Part 2: Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity - coming soon

Thank you for reading!

Cain and Abel and the Stages of Spirituality

So, I’m a student of the Psychology of Religion.

Scholars have done studies on the developmental stages of faith—meaning there ARE stages of faith from less mature to more mature. Early stages rely on an external authority. They are very rules-based and about doing things “right” according to the authority and the rules. There is usually an innocence or naïveté because folks don’t know better, they can’t be more progressive yet, and they absolutely want to be “saved".

The hardest shift is between level 3 and level 4 spirituality (according to James Fowler) when a person shifts from an external authority to an internal authority, and from a head-based religion to a heart-based religion. (Richard Rohr simplifies it as early life—stages 1, 2, 3—and later life—stages 4 and up.) The people around them who are still in a rules- and authority-based religion are particularly threatened by their shift and do not understand it. I liken it to learning to swim. People who have not learned to swim cling to the side of the pool and call out in fear at their loved ones who are starting to let go and swim in the water.

(Does this information help in understanding the ways people do religion that can be so different?)

If you are raised by people who are in stage 4 or higher level of spiritual development, you still have to go through your own stages, but everything about the way they live encourages you to move into a thoughtful, heart-based approach to life. But if you are raised by people who are “clinging to the side of the pool” in an authoritative “you will only be safe if you stick with us” religion, it is much much harder to take the next developmental step into heart-wisdom, because most of the people around you are screaming that you are going to “die”. They don't want you to notice all the people that you’re finding who are living from their hearts and yet are not "dead".

This theory has helped me a lot in understanding why people do religion the way they do. Levels five and higher in spiritual development don’t even look like “religion”, because they are so respectful of the individual spiritual journey. They tend to be empowering, not controlling.

How is this connected to Cain and Abel? (Genesis 4)

My childhood tradition's teachings say that Cain represents “the need to be right” and Abel represents “being loving from deep wisdom.” They are brothers because they are ways of doing religion. Cain is born first (early spirituality) and Abel second (later life spirituality). Cain resents and does not understand why God favors Abel (the more mature and genuine spirituality). Cain is threatened by Abel and wants God's favor too, not understanding the shifts he still has to make in his motivations and perspective. And threatened, Cain “kills” Abel thinking that that is the way to win God's attention and favor (someone clearly isn't reading the manual). Cain-energy in life will always kill Abel-energy. Judgy, controlling, need-to-be-perfect-and-right ways of doing religion (or politics) will always attack and criticize and invalidate loving, inclusive, service-focused ways of doing religion (and politics). It’s just the way people are. There's a foundational shift that needs to happen from "I've got mine, screw you" to "We are all in this together; if you are suffering, we are all suffering".

We all have a tendency to be drawn into the need to be right and "win" arguments. We value a sense of cognitive security and don't like perspectives that threaten our foundational narrative of how life (God, "salvation") works. Arguing with someone about how they are wrong is rarely effective because they are so emotionally invested in "staying alive" (maintaining the reality they have known and trusted until this point).

If you don't know how to swim, moving into deep water means death.

Questioning religious dogma is moving into deep water. It is essential that we learn to swim so as to be much freer and to realize how life-giving swimming can be. But everything in Cain-level development screams "death!" unless you are surrounded by loving swimmers encouraging you to try swimming.

The same way you can't teach a child to read until they have reached reading readiness, you can't force a lower level spiritual seeker to be ready to think for themselves until they are ready AND feel safe enough to try. Some birds are pushed from the nest, some fly with sufficient encouragement, but some have parents telling them that flying equals death.

So just love everybody to bits.

Try not to judge because people are (possibly stuck) where they are for good reason.

Learn to draw firm boundaries with those who want to push their beliefs on you (spiritual violation) even as you stop trying to push your beliefs onto others (still a spiritual violation, no matter how "right" you are).

This is my distillation of theology and psychology. It is not to be used as a club to force others to agree. Just a balm and guide for those who need a helpful perspective.

For more scholarship on the stages of faith you might start here:

https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/06/12/the-stages-of-faith-according-to-james-w-fowler/

For counseling and empowerment on your spiritual journey, you may contact me here:

https://pastoralison.com/

I do talk therapy as well as weddings.