Some of my thoughts on morality

Why do moralities exist? Why do we have reasons for doing things, or reasons
for not doing things? Why do we believe in right and wrong, good and evil? Why
is it beneficial for me to desire power/pleasure, for instance? Why choose
one moral system over another one?

The answer, is in the genes. For instance, I have genes that cause me to be
altruistic. At first, this does not make sense. Why would I wish to benefit
other people at my expense? Why would I sacrifice my life for the sake of
others?

It seems more beneficial to be parasitic: gaining from others without caring
about their desires. So why would I have genes that cause me to be altruistic?
In order to understand this, you must understand that evolution does not take
place at the level of an organism, like a human. It takes place at the level
of the gene.

Genes are bits of information encoded into us that can cause various effects,
like hair color, or skin color, or whether we have a disposition toward
altruism or not.

What happens is that the genes that are good at surviving will survive, and
the genes that are bad at surviving will die out. Thus, through evolution,
only the genes that are good at surviving will remain.

There are genes that exist within us even though they cause us harmful
effects. They weren't weeded out because they were good at surviving, despite
causing us harmful effects. It doesn't matter whether the human lives or dies:
if the gene is good at surviving it will survive, period.

There are also genes that will attack other genes. Anything goes: all that
matters is whether the gene survives or not. Anything else is secondary. Our
sole purpose, as an organism, is to ensure the survival of our genes.

I didn't come up with this idea: this is the gene-centered view of evolution
as advocated by W. D. Hamilton, Colin Pittendrigh, George C. Williams,
Richard Dawkins, and others. I merely think this idea is important and thus
wish to share it with others.


There are at least two ways genes increase their survival chances:

  1) Procreate. This one is obvious: have sex, make babies, half your genes go
into your child. This is the only long-term way for genes to survive, because
eventually all organisms die. Thus, at some point, organisms MUST procreate.
This is an absolute priority, for the sake of the gene's survival.


  2) Help other organisms who are similar to yourself. If you help other
organisms, you will increase their chances of survival, and thus increase the
likelihood that they will procreate, and thus increase the likelihood that
their genes move on to the next generation.

Why would you care about that, though? You don't, but evolution does. It
doesn't matter WHERE genes are, just so long as they survive. So, if two
people have similar genes, it doesn't matter which person lives or dies, just
so long as at least ONE of them lives and procreates.

Thus altruism was born: genes that cause people to be altruistic, which means
that the person will have an urge to help people who are altruistic, while not
helping people who are not altruistic.

This is very beneficial to the gene's survival because the end result is a
bunch of people all helping each other to survive, which in turn increases the
likelihood of procreation, which in turn increases the likelihood that the
genes that cause altruism survive.

Thus, evolution selects for altruism because altruism increases the survival
chances of the genes that cause altruism, NOT because altruism increases the
survival chances of the organism. All that matters is the genes. If altruism
happens to benefit the organism as well, that's just a nice bonus.


But here is where things get more complicated. There are also genes that cause
people to lie and PRETEND to be altruistic, when in actuality they are not.
The reason for this is so that genuinely altruistic people will be fooled
and help the parasitic person, but because the parasitic person is not
ACTUALLY altruistic, they do not give anything in return except the bare
minimum needed to fool altruistic people.

Thus, lieing, cheating, stealing, hypocricy, and backstabbing all formed as a
way for non-altruistic genes to benefit from altruistic genes at the expense
of the altruistic genes. So evolution not only selected for altruism, but also
selected for genes that take advantage of altruism.

So there's a war going on, between altruistic genes and parasitic genes.
Religions play a large part in that war. You may have noticed that most
religions claim that "altruism is good" and that "helping others is good", yet
you may also have noticed that religions don't live up to that claim:
religions have caused more abuse, more pain, more slavery, than almost
anything else humans have invented.

There are people who are genuinely altruistic. They do not need to be told to
do good, or to help others. It comes naturally to them. Thus, the only reason
people try to coerce and force these altruistic people to follow a
religion/moral system is to gain more power, more money.

You can see the same thing with war. Governments always claim that people go
to war to defend their country. To defend their freedom. To defend their
families. In actuality, the real reason countries go to war is to pillage and
burn. To enslave other countries. To gain power and money.

This apparent contradiction and hypocricy is easily explainable now: parasitic
organisms wish to benefit at the expense of altruistic organisms. They do this
by pretending to be altruistic when they are not. Popular religions,
governments, and moral systems are led by parasitic organisms, wishing to
abuse altruistic organisms.

This does not mean that every religion or every government is inherently
parasitic. It is possible for a leader to be either altruistic, thus it is
possible for a mostly altruistic government or religion to exist.

The problem is that eventually the altruistic leaders die. This leaves a power
vacuum that must be filled by somebody. And because parasitic people by their
nature don't have a problem with using lies or violence, they're more likely
to win the power struggle, and thus gain leadership.

So even if a religion or government starts off altruistic, eventually, one way
or another, it ends up with parasitic leaders. And when it does, the parasitic
leaders do everything they can to abuse their powers and prevent altruistic
people from becoming leaders.

People would not follow religions or go to war if they were told the reason
for these things is to give the leader more power and money. Thus, both
religions and the government lie and claim to be "good", to be "helping"
others, which is contrary to their actions.

Altruistic genes have fought back by evolving various ways of detecting lies.
Unfortunately, the lie detection cannot be too strict, or altruistic organisms
would refuse to help even other genuinely altruistic organisms. Thus, there
are flaws in the detection, which parasitic individuals abuse as much as they
possibly can. And so altruistic individuals are deceived, and benefit
parasites at the expense of themself.


The above seems to suggest that people are either "altruistic" or "parasitic",
but this is not true. In actuality, we all contain bits of both qualities: we
tend to be altruistic or parasitic based on the circumstances. However, people
do tend to lean strongly toward one side or the other side, even if it's not
completely.

Thus, "altruistic person" means a person who is mostly altruistic (even though
occasionally they may do parasitic things), and "parasitic person" means a
person who is mostly parasitic (even though they may occasionally do
altruistic things).

Are altruistic genes better than parasitic genes? No. In the physical world,
there is no such thing as "right" or "wrong". There is no such thing as "good"
or "evil". Evolution simply selects the genes that are best at surviving. That
is the simple fact of the matter, that is all there is to it.


I spent a long time explaining why altruism exists, but does it really matter?
For the sake of this essay, no. In particular, there are probably multiple
reasons for why altruism and parasitism exist. Not just at the genetic level,
but also at higher levels such as the cell, the organism, or the group.
Regardless of WHY altruism exists, it exists. And regardless of WHY parasitism
exists, it exists. What's important is the following:

There is something inside of me that causes me to be altruistic, and the same
appears to be true in other people. And there are also people that behave in a
parasitic way. What's important is not whether other people are right or
wrong, or whether I am right or wrong.

All that's important is that I be true to myself. I must benefit people who
are similar to me, and I must fight against parasites, people who wish to
abuse me for their own benefit. I must not bow to anybody else. Because that
is who I am: I fight for myself.