Immoral Society
There's a difference between amoral and immoral, one I'm sure most of my intelligent audience is fully aware of. But here I'm going on a free flowing thought-stream on the question if capitalism moves us in the direction of either of the two.
source: Wikimedia Commons
Many debates have been had between atheists and theists about the existence of objective morality and whether objective morality, if it exists, requires the existence of a transcendent moral lawgiver. Now, there's also the debate between objective morality and moral relativism, but I'm of the opinion both can perfectly exist next to each other. Moral relativism is the view that moral judgments are to be made relative to a particular standpoint, that moral judgement can vary depending on the particular situation. For example, killing a child is always evil; that's an objective moral law. But what if killing a child would certainly save the lives of ten other children? Or what if we had a time machine and could go back in time to kill Hitler as a child? Many discussions, not just between atheists and theists, about these difficult questions are available online, in books, films and so on, so I'm sure you won't be disappointed if you go look for them. Oh, just in case: amoral means having no sense of right and wrong at all, and immoral describes sentient and self-conscious beings who know the difference and just don't care. You know the type; the evil villain who laughs maniacally, rubbing his hands or twirling his mustache just before pressing the button on his newly invented doomsday-machine...
The debate between atheists and theists is usually over the question if there is an objective ground or reason on which moral behavior is based, with theists pointing to the Abrahamic God or Jesus as that ground, and atheists or naturalists pointing to evolutionary psychology of self-conscious social creatures. Since capitalism is wholly secular and wholly of human creation, nothing to do with any deity at all, and since I'm a naturalist who ascribes higher probability to the truth of the evolutionary grounds for moral behavior, that's the vantage point from which I'll be viewing and discussing the question whether capitalism moves us in the direction of less moral behavior, immoral or amoral.
All societies all throughout history and of any religion have known the one basic rule upon which their unwritten or written social contracts were built, and that's the Golden Rule. This rule says that we should treat others as we would them have treat us. This is a very simple rule, the advantages of which are easy to discern for beings that for their survival depend on cooperation and organization. All through human history we've banished or shunned individuals who don't abide by that basic rule. It is in fact the one rule that encapsulates our social behavior. It's the rule that drives us to to set the well-being of the tribe on equal footing as our own, drives us to not be selfish and to share. Empathy is even hard coded in our biology, with the mirror neurons in our brains; these are brain-cells that not only fire when a particular action is performed, but also when such action is observed. Mirror neurons are why men make a painful face whenever they see another man be kicked in the nuts, for example.
All of history and all of science point to the simple and inescapable realization that we're social creatures who have come this far because of our social behavior, with moral behavior and the Golden Rule being essential parts of that behavior. The above mentioned mirror neurons are also crucial when it comes to learning behavior, as they make us mimic behaviors we observe in the society we're part of. And that's where capitalism, and for that matter feudalism, mercantilism, slavery, every major socioeconomic structure known to mankind after our tribal ancestry, come into play. Where our roots stem from small and completely equitable societies, called Primitive communism, we're now a society of individualism and profits; two pillars of capitalist society. No longer does society teach us to put the well-being of our fellow humans on an equal footing as our own. The Golden Rule has been replaced with "taking care of number one." And systemic arrangements that should benefit society, such as taxation and government programs, are now seen as theft and detrimental to the will to stay self-sufficient. It won't surprise anyone when I say that I disagree vehemently with both assessments; taxation isn't theft, but rather the recognition that we're indeed social creatures that NEED to take care of each other, and self-sufficiency is a delusion to begin with for the same reason. Hermits are self-sufficient, but everyone in society benefits from being part of that society and in his or her own way contributes to that society.
In capitalism self-sufficiency is measured by ones ability to earn enough material wealth in order to survive or more; our primitive ancestors never had to ask that question though, as they did nothing on their own, and weren't expected to. This is an eternal truth about the human condition; we do nothing on our own. Nothing. Unless you're born a hermit and die a hermit in complete solitude. Capitalism breaks with that simple, basic truth, and measures only the success of individuals, as if we're all hermits. It makes us believe that a billionaire is exceptionally self-sufficient, that he or she must have exceptional abilities or works exceptionally hard. This may be true for some of them, I don't doubt that, but most of them inherited their wealth and / or were born into favorable circumstances with access to stability, a good education and a network of the right contacts. However, that stability and education are products of society as a whole. Capitalist society is built on belief in the Great Man Theory and has become a place where persons of incredible wealth have become role-models. That's the one thing that has changed compared to the stratified societies of yesteryear: the Kings, Clergy and Nobility of previous empires were wholly apart from the general population. They extracted their wealth by exploitation of the general population, just like today's capitalists, but they weren't role-models. Citizens couldn't aspire to one day become the King because that title was reserved for certain blood-lines, whereas today we can all aspire to one day become as rich, famous, influential and powerful as Elon Musk. This attitude however disregards the fact that billionaires are as rare as Kings, Dukes, Counts and Earls were.
With that, capitalist society has normalized the selfishness and indifference towards the general population that was the King's prerogative. To say it another way: we've rebelled against and overthrown kingdoms, but we haven't removed the kings. Not really. And a shitty side-effect is that we may not have looked up to the King, but many of us do look up to billionaires because we believe we can all get there, we all have a chance at least, and they worked hard, were smart enough to actually get there. And even though their dollars don't trickle down, their behavior does, because they're our role models. Now I'll repeat the question posed in the beginning: does capitalism move us in the direction of less moral behavior? I've already said a lot about this in my post Fading Moral Skills, so you may want to read that as well. But the answer in my opinion is yes. Capitalism has spawned institutions that are amoral legal persons, like corporations, that make immoral choices affecting natural persons. And natural persons make immoral choices for their own economic well-being because capitalism explains these choices as rational. This multiplied by millions makes for an immoral society, one in which the number of empty buildings dwarfs the number of homeless people, and one where the amount of food produced is enough to feed the world's population twice over and still allows existence of hunger. This world makes no sense to me, and in my opinion shouldn't make sense to anyone. I'll leave you with one of the many debates between theism and atheism on the need for (a) God for objective morality to exist; it's one of the better ones I've heard, so I recommend you all to take a listen.
Is God Necessary for Morality? | William Lane Craig & Shelly Kagan
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