Thread: right and wrong

This belongs in the philosophy thread, but it is still a very interesting question. Allow me to briefly correct your usage of the phrase "all cultures". Very few statements are true of all cultures, so be careful with that phrase

I believe it comes from the human psyche as it existed in the state of nature- natural instinct (which of course is now negated by most societies) and the addition of organized society. It was once seen by humans unaffected by societies that it was unnecessary to kill another person. Not necessarily wrong, but unecessary. With the creation of societies came customs. The way I see it, in the earliest societies, some person came into power and decided that killing was improper.

I don't know the history of it, and I won't pretend to. That's just my opinion. I think that people got annoyed when someone stole from them, so they determined that stealing was bad, same with killing. People wouldn't want to be killed, so they determined it was bad in order to protect themselves mainly, but as a general rule that everyone agreed with because everyone was afraid to die.

I think in general, most newly formed rights and wrongs that were not a part of our natural morals, were bread out of fear. Fear in history has inspired many customs, because when something is presented as "this is the way it is", everyone was too afraid to step out and disagree. As people have evolved, this has changed. But think of pilgrams for example.

interesting ideas. i know i should have posted this in the philosophy forum, and i am sorry for using the words "all cultures". although im fairly sure that there isnt a culture that considers random murder "okay" but i don’t think natural instinct can really explain it all.

say someone has a chance to murder a shopkeeper, steal all his goods and run away.
Q: why shouldn’t he do this?
A: because its wrong
Q:why is it wrong?
A: because i wouldn’t want him to do that to me
Q:why not?
A: Because its unfair
Q: Why is it unfair?
A: because it hurts our society
Q: if it doesn’t effect you, why should you care about society
A: because its polite to care about your fellows
Q: why?

and it just goes on and on like this. but people use a lot of words like POLITE, UNFAIR, JUSTICE. and i think it’s a mystery where they came from

*moved*

Of course I don't know the answer, but I "know" the other thing:
if you imagine world without the people there is nothing you could characterize as right or wrong.

Actually it has been shown that conscience is a subconscious entity and not a purely 'virtual' social phenomenon. Values such as honesty, truth, freedom and responsibility are deeply engrained into the human psyche. They are needed for a healthy society of intelligent individuals. My point being that a working society is beneficial to each of it's individual members. A society of morons or a society of assholes doesn't work and will clearly end before it barely started existing. Which is also why, at dawn of mankind, those who were socially savvy eventually survived so that there was a strong directional force, natural selection wise.

We are biologically hardwired to ensure the survival of not only ourselves and our families, but also our tribes(which often carry the same or similar genes as we do). Keep in mind that the over the vast majority of time humans have been on this planet we have been living in small tribal groups. Even after the agricultural revolution most people continued to live in small communities with people they were closely related to. These groups survived and reproduced based partly on how well the members of the groups were able to work together for the good of the group. This system of basic morality developed based on evolutionary pressures functioning on these tribal groups.

Many thoughts of right and wrong are programmed into us. Most in fact. This all comes down to social protocol. Most of which was based off of religious doctrines or alterations of such things. Protocol and etiquette of societies are ingrained into our brains.

Some concepts of right and wrong are natural instinct, but most of them are completely social, yet we accept them as valid because they become a part of our subconscious. This is a form of hypnosis. You are in a hypnotic trance when you are driving to work, for example. You are on autopilot. Yet everything you see is registered into your subconscious to some extent. This happens to us many times of day. As we're watching tv, we are programmed with things we see. Skinny girls are desirable, tenor saxophone music is an aphrodisiac, sex is a priority in society, death is a terrible scary thing to always be feared, etc. And over time we accept these things.

It's no different with morals. Most of you would likely tell me that it's wrong to kill a cute little puppy. Our natural human instinct would have no problem killing a cute little puppy if we existed only in the state of nature. We wouldn't see it as cute, first of all. Animals are cute, because society tells us that certain things are cute and we accept it and truly believe it. If there was no society, we would not have such logic.

Killing "innocent" animals would not bother us in general. We would have no reason to do so unless it was imperative to our survival. And if we happened to accidentally kill a puppy, we would not be phased by it, however if one of us were to do that now, many of us would likely feel bad.

This is the whole basis on my theory that there are core "right and wrongs" that are hard-wired into our brains as out natural instinct. Our self protection is naturally our first priority, followed by the protection of our families. Outside of that (and perhaps some other basic instinctive tendencies) right and wrong is determined by society, which was built largely on religious values.