The Origin and Problem of Morality

Goodness, is what every society strive for long time ago. They condemned unethical behavior in the forms of punishments and tortures, some even result in death. Each individual is expected to be good and to avoid all evil intention or any misconduct. But why is there morality in the first place? What is good? What is bad? And why is good, considered to be good? And why is bad, well, bad?

Let’s look back into history, imagine how the world would look like if every one behaves independently like cold-blooded animals, stealing and killing. The world would be a very chaotic place with dead bodies everywhere. In fact, that is what it was before human lives in tribe with social order and ranks. Being morally good in that period simply means quick death for you. Anyone who can rob, steal and kill, which is considered to be absolute immoral nowadays, can get their hands on many resources required for survival and protection. Its a simple game where you kill, or be killed.

Then human starts to live in groups. They found out that they can better survive and protect them better with a group then living alone. However, one might still behaves wickedly to take control of all the resource. This is when social order and ranking comes into play. Human starts to create class and social hierarchy to suppressed the chaotic nature of human. Usually the eldest are the leader of the group.

As society develop and evolved, human starts to invent rules of what to do and what to avoid doing, with their own consequences and punishment. To strengthen that, they convey it in a form of belief of the order from god or any spiritual higher being. And it work, real well actually. Since then what is right and what is wrong becomes more and more solid, which is passed on from generations to generations. Which now evolved into law and legislation. Breaking it would consider “bad” and the being have to face the consequences.

With no doubt, law and restriction brings discipline to the disorderly nature of human, however the problem here is moralities are not absolute, they are man-made and thus artificial.

Moralities are not absolute, they are man-made and thus artificial.
Hence, there are in reality, no good nor bad. We humans are the one who label what action is good or bad. Events that are preferable or beneficial and suit to personal needs will be labeled as the “good” thing.

To make it look worse, it seems as if moralities are just a social tool for the leaders to control their citizen. They define what is acceptable for us and punish the one who break their rules. From religion to politics and also our teachers, we can see this practice of morality everywhere.

Morality differs from countries to countries as well as different religions around the world. What might be good to a person might be evil for the other. So which one is true? Or are all of them false? Or there are no such things as morality?

Another question is, does you not trying steal your friends’ belongings makes your a good person? or you are just afraid of being caught and facing the consequences of losing them or something worse? Thoughts like these really challenge the way we look at morality.

I am not implying that it is bad or good to have morality, where the statement itself already posted the original question of what is good and bad. But what I am saying is that, as a social and intellectual creature, morality is the core value that we human evolved from. But in reality, morality is an artificial tool to bring order out of our chaotic world. So what you do is neither right nor wrong.