Reviewed Date: October 20th, 2021
I often stumble upon the question, how can we say what is good and bad? Where does morality come from? Is it something that can be learned? Or are we just born with it? If we are born with it, is morality the same everywhere in the world? How do we make moral judgments?
Many people say morality is something that keeps us from getting harmed. But morality goes beyond that. Suppose a family’s dog is dead, they heard somewhere that dog meat is good, and they ate it. Why are we feeling repulsive after reading the previous sentence? If morality is not causing harm, clearly there is no harm in the dog story, but still, why are we feeling disgusted?
There are two plausible arguments for where morality originated. Some say it’s in our nature. In other words, we are born with morality and can distinguish what is right and wrong. Others say we learn morality by our experiences in our lives. This also states that we are born blank; nothing is pre-written whatsoever.
Contrary to these, there is another argument that we learn morality by reasoning. This may sound like we got the answer. But considering the fact that intuition comes first and reasoning later proves that assumption is wrong. Moreover, the reasoning is just post-event fabrication we conceive. The reason why we reason (make judgments) is to convince others to join in our judgments.
We humans intuitively know what is wrong and right. This varies from culture to culture, as we are products of where we are born. We ingrain our cultural conventions and also experiences we had into our brains. When we face a triggering event, we know something is wrong even though we cannot materialize our intuitive feelings into words at the moment.
I highly recommend this book. If you haven’t read it, go and grab it.
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