A big silent intellectual change of the past quarter century. The West got rich because Westerners are different. People from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies are WEIRD. The most important argument: this came from the Catholic church, which banned cousin marriage.

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[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Morality is a key component to a long-term stable society.

And yet those stable societies have a considerable variation in terms of what they consider morality.

With the exception of a handful of common ethics, most of which come down to either the Golden Rule or to self-serving rules that protect the elites, stable societies rarely agree on the nitty-gritty of morality.

We all agree that murder is bad, but what is murder, exactly? Obviously murder is unlawful killing but societies differ in what they treat as unlawful.

  • Killing members of your own tribe? Unlawful.
  • ... unless they are a member of your own family who has shamed your family, then you are honour-bound to kill them.
  • ... or to prevent them from stealing your wallet.
  • ... or if they insulted you.

  • ... or if they totally ignored the Trespasses Will Be Shot sign on the front lawn, they brought it on themselves really.

  • Killing newborn babies? Unlawful.

  • ... unless they are defective, then it's okay to leave them out in the hills to die of exposure or be eaten by wolves.

  • Going to war and killing people from other tribes? Unlawful.

  • Nah just kidding. Pretty much every society has considered wartime killing of the enemy (including civilians) to be lawful, so long as you have a good excuse for your war:

    • If God tells us to.
    • Because they worship the wrong god.
    • Or the right god but in the wrong way.
    • If the king tells us to.
    • If they insulted the king.
    • Self-defence.
    • Preemptive self-defence (hit them before they hit us.)
    • Retribution for the things they did to us.
    • Retribution for the things they're going to do to us for the things we did to them.
    • To take back our land that they stole.
    • To take their land if it rightfully belongs to us.
    • Because we want their stuff, and they unfairly won't give it to us.

That's why most majorly successful societies across the world have a religion in their culture.

But unsuccessful societies also have religion.

Since both successful and unsuccessful societies have religion, religion cannot be what makes some societies more successful than others.

At its core, religion is the aspiration toward morality.

Oh man, you don't know much about religion, do you?

The morality of religion is 100% "Because God says so." If God said that it was mandatory for you to murder babies, you would do it. Just ask Abraham and Jephthah. In Christian USA, about one child a month dies because they are sacrificed to illness and disease for their parents twisted spiritual beliefs.

[–]jet199 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You need to look up the difference between guilt based and shame based cultures

Most cultures really don't have morality as a big aspect, only not being found out.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I know about the guilt-shame-fear spectrum and honour, dignity and victim cultures. That's my point. Each society throughout history is unique in terms of its positions between guilt-shame-fear and honour-dignity-victim and consequently what they consider moral is unique.

Of course there are broad similarities because ultimately we all share the same fundamental needs for security and safety, and some of our moral intuitions about fairness and justice seem to be biological, but the fine details matter.

Most cultures really don't have morality as a big aspect, only not being found out.

Of course morality is a big aspect of every culture. It just might not be the same morals that you consider "morality".

Ultimately cultures don't have morality at all, individuals have morality. But we talk about a culture's morality as a short-hand for the more or less common morality shared by most members of that culture.

Without at least something of a shared set of morals, it would not be a culture, there would be no trust between individuals and society would collapse into a dog-eat-dog world where anything goes in the absence of at least some nominal unspoken shared morality. Even the worst criminals in prison form a prison culture with its own rules and morality.

Individuals differ in how strictly they keep to their moral standards. Nevertheless they have morals, even when they differ from one culture or subculture to another.

[–]newguy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh man, you don't know much about religion, do you?

A lot more than you, apparently. The aspiration is different from the reality. You don't have great reading comprehension on the last few replies.