(March 10, 2020 at 6:58 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(March 10, 2020 at 6:45 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I don't think the bonobo argument does much to address morality in humans. Simply because humans aren't bonobos. We are far far worse.
If it's true what they say about bonobos, it is in their nature to be good to each other. But this is obviously not true of people. From Internet bullying, to domestic battery, to school shootings, to evil US foreign policy, people are cruel to each other. People often enjoy being cruel to others. And even worse, we can employ our unique reasoning powers to justify extreme cruelty. Whatever technological superiority we have over bonobos, we use to harm each other.
What little empathy human beings have for one another is so easily overcome that we clearly need something else to be moral.
I think that morality is something we need when our human nature fails us, since it clearly fails us so often. We don't operate through empathy, so we need some kind of abstract reasoning, along the lines of "I don't feel any empathy for those people, so how would I treat them differently if I did feel any?" "What guidelines is it good for me to follow, even if I don't really care what happens to those people?" "Even if I have judged that those people are unlike myself, how should I treat them so that I can continue to be a good person?"
This is NOT to say that when human nature fails us the only alternative is religion mandated by God. I am ONLY saying that bonobo nature, and a fortiori human nature, are not determinate of morality. Morality is largely to combat our human nature.
I’m not sure you’re painting the whole picture. Yes, human beings can be utter shits to each other. And yet, we drop what we’re doing to help look for a missing child. We check on our shut-in neighbours. We volunteer our time help out at homeless shelters. We donate time and money and goods to assist people we’ve never met in countries we’ll never visit. And all of this is done irrespective of religious belief.
Could we be better? Certainly. But if I didn’t have an unshakable conviction that people are more good than they are bad, I don’t think I could get out of bed in the morning.
Boru
The question for me isn't "do we want to help each other sometimes?" Clearly we do help each other sometimes.
The question for me is: "what should we say to ourselves when we DON'T want to be good to others?"