Morality, who needs it?

It may well turn out to be that we all do. How so? It is the glue that keeps us all together.
 Without that glue, society will fall apart.

Everybody has to observe it. There has to be consequences for the individuals that
try to exempt themselves from it. If there's no consequences, if there's no accountability,
nobody will observe it. Or perhaps some, but it won't be enough to prevent collapse.

One of the more fundamental reactions of people is reciprocity. If I do something for
you, and you don't reciprocate, that will result in no more favors. And vice versa, of
course. There's a give and take to human relations. You can't always be on the take,
and you can't always be expected to give. When there's an absense of this give
and take, cohesiveness of a community will break down.

Also one of the more fundamental reactions of people is incentive. If there's an
incentive, people will take advantage of it. That's the wages of sin, you see. The
incentive is to sin, because there are advantages to it. But there are also costs.
It is said that the wages of sin is death. You don't believe that? It is only
because it hasn't caught up to you yet. But it does eventually.

Just now, it occurs to me that incentive is a favorite word of conservatives. It
is kind of the same logic as mentioned above. For someone who's morality is
tied up into equality, to have an incentive means to sin according to that morality.
But the same morality that says it is wrong to get ahead is the same morality
that favors some sympathy for the devils who break the traditional laws. Morality
eventually makes its way into politics. You would expect this, since it affects
everybody.

Then you've got the people who doubt that technological progress is a good thing.
They believe that it ruins the Earth on which we live. It leads to new and terrifying
weapons of war. Their god is the Gaia and Peace. Thus, to have incentives in order
to produce economic growth and technological advances is a sin in itself to them. To
follow that morality will also have its costs. Little thought is given to the benefits
of economic and technological progress, no thought is given to the costs of its
banishment.

That leads to the cost and benefit analysis of morality. It can be analyzed on the
individual level as well as the societal level. The individual may cheat on the
dominant morality, but not too many of those can be allowed. That means there
has to be an enforcement mechanism. That's a cost of having a morality in the
first place.

There's a need for morality, which but there's more than one kind.  You have to
decide upon which kind of morality will be your guide.  The same is true for the
individual as well as the society at large.  You may not like the costs of the
dominant morality, but there are benefits too.

The dominant morality in the West is still Judeo-Christianity and capitalism, but it
is becoming more and more secular, and Gaia and Peace.

That will have its costs if it becomes the dominant morality.  Maybe you don't
make the most advanced weapons of war, but you also lose your economic
strength and independence, as other societies push past you.  Gaia and Peace
doesn't dominate, but gets dominated.  Gaia and Peace is not going to be
observed by everybody, you see.  There's an incentive to not observe it, as
it exists with all morality.  That is, without a big war, Gaia and Peace cannot
be imposed upon everybody.  But that violates Gaia and Peace, you see.

Obviously, I favor economic and technological progress.  I think Peace can
be achieved if the world can avoid war long enough that prosperity can be
achieved for all peoples.  It will take more than just what this world can
offer to achieve that kind of prosperity, which is why I favor Space Colonization.

I think all of this can be achieved without blowing ourselves up first, but that is
the risk you take.  Gaia and Peace will lead to no technological progress and
certain doom from the asteroids at some point in the future.  There will be no
technology to stop it.

As for Judeo-Christian morality, I think that is better too.  For it leads to
the conditions in which capitalism can thrive.  Without it, people will cheat in
such a way that it will undermine the society to such a degree that it will collapse.

We in the West need to make up our minds one way or another.

There's a new Pope.  I don't see that as a big change toward secularism, nor
towards Gaia and Peace.  It is pretty much status quo as far as I can see.

For some, that is bad news.  For others, it is good.  We shall see.