Ethics are civilization's front line defense against irresponsible and destructive behavior. The question is, do ethics work? Both personal and world history demonstrate our ongoing lapses in ethical behavior and sound judgement. Nevertheless, humanity has generally fared fairly well to this point; we have avoided nuclear winter, anyway. The consequences wrought by lapses in ethics and judgement in the coming years is another matter.

Modern information and technologies are raising the stakes. Before the 20th century, pushing the button meant nothing and tweaking DNA was not an option. The exponential increase in information and technology has now opened a Pandora's box. Our new world begs for a commensurate increase in ethical behavior and wisdom. Simply put, we need a society of mature, ethical people. How is that going to happen? We can not teach people to be mature, like we teach them factual information and technology. Such qualitites of character come slowly as we mature, right?

Foresight and mature judgement increase gradually; each of us is wiser now than we were as youngsters. Ethical behavior is different because it is not linked as much to age. It is obvious, empirically, that we are or are not ethical according to how closely connected we feel to our social family group. We are much less likely to cheat a friend than a complete stranger. The closer we feel to our group, the more likely we want to conform to its ethical norms. In practice these norms appear to arise out of a group consensus of what is and is not permissible. This has varied widely throughout history and cultures.

As society becomes more mobile, we can not help but feel increasing social isolation. When we lose the intimacy and security of the family group, we are left to do our own thing. We adapt by skewing our ethical rudder to favor individual rights. Our paradigm shifts to support a belief in 'free will' and in the virtue of independence and free choice. This more self-centric ideal, at the extreme, leads to a world view that feels "my way is the right way".

Ethical relativism

This modern decline of traditional ethics into a kind of ethical relativism has been decried as the downfall of morality. It is not ethical relativism that causes our current and impending predicaments. Rather, this relativism is a symptom of our social disconnection which has been deepening over the last few hundred years, but especially from the 19th century onward. As a result, many folks are now independent enough to sense how arbitrary ethics can be. Many no longer believe that God dictated ethics on clay tablets or that 'he' created the cosmos in seven days.

Ethics, as described above, are relative and arise out of cultural consensus. As long as all or most of the members of a culture believe their ethical world-view is true, they will uphold and conform to it without question. A good example of this is slavery. Slavery was ethical for millennia in various cultures because it was believed so. Now, most cultures share the belief that slavery is evil – unaware of how arbitrary this opposing belief is. The extent to which ethics can deviate from natural law exemplifies this fluidity. The ethical taboo of people breast feeding in public is a classic and sadly maladaptive example.

The individuality and attendant social detachment of the 'me' generation is eroding many of our traditional ethical norms, while enforcing those that impact the individual, e.g., my right to privacy. Increasingly, the importance of any specific ethic is relative to how it impacts me or what I empathize with. Perhaps this accounts for why we now see slavery as evil. As self-identity rises, group/tribal identity and the comfort it affords declines. The very idea of being free to realize ourselves as individuals can also become a lonely and isolating part of life. A social species such as ourselves can not thrive with increasing social detachment. Sure, we support and/or join churches, political parties, sports teams, and so on to recover some of that tribal solidarity, but the profound primal intimacy of the tribe is lost. It is the price of civilization.

Enforced vs. unenforced ethics

Compliance with ethical standards has always been one of civilization's most pressing issues. Religious ethics have always taken the lead in attempting to instill righteousness in people. The result, by and large, has always been an outward show of morality overlying an ocean of hypocrisy. Natural ethics, on the other hand, intuitively form in intimate social settings where both children and adults feel connected to the hierarchal paradigm of their family/tribe. This is one reason why elders and ancestors have always held a prominent social position. Symptomatic of our cultures' break with these ancient dynamics is how our culture idolizes its youth and devalues its elders.

In small hunter-gatherer tribes of a few dozen homo sapiens, there were little or no enforced ethics. The birth-to-death tribal environment provided such an intuitive sense of inter-dependance and connection to all members that, in most cases, they naturally behaved ethically. The advent of agriculture allowed more people to form into larger and larger social groups. The larger the group, the less each individual feels connected to all of the individuals outside his immediate and extended family. When individuals are not connected as intimately, natural intuitive ethics do not form as deeply, if at all.

As the tribal opportunity for natural ethical behavior subsides, a culture-wide need for enforceable ethics arises to prevent social chaos. Among other things, we invoke a pseudo 'alpha male tribal elder', e.g., gods, spirits and higher power, to validate the ethical standards we want. We then chisel these commandments in stone for everyone to see. Finally, breaking these laws comes with some form of reprimand, anything from shame to beheading.

Beyond ethics and free will

Ethics has not resolved our irresponsible and destructive behavior, both for reasons covered above, and because of how we attempt to fix these problems. Our 'find the cause and fix it' urge is probably an instinctive reaction to difficulty, e.g., "Ouch, a thorn! I'll stay away from those." This proactive approach won't work if civilization itself is responsible for our woes.

Many of our difficulties arise from our innate animal nature operating within civilization, i.e., tool-using circumstances. There are numerous examples; here are two. Our innate attraction to high-calorie food was a survival advantage in the jungle, but with civilization's abundance of refined rich food, it leads to obesity and illness. Our innate tribal instincts helped the stone age tribe compete in its struggle for survival in nature, but with high populations in civilized settings, it can foster entrenched warfare, slavery, racism and other exploitive behaviors.

Civilization affords us comfort and security through our mastery over nature. We then idealize our civilized existence as superior to that of 'lower' instinct-driven animals. This belief in the superiority of civilization blinds us to its pervasive dark side. Instead, we single out little pieces of civilization we deem villainous. It is those religions, those politicians, those corporations, those ______ (fill in your favorite villain). There is a bonus, too . . . faulting others makes us feel even more superior. Lastly, we point the finger at mankind's sinful animal nature. "Don't be an animal," we implore. Indeed, we believe the solution to our woes is even more civilization to tame the nasty old beast within.

This cripples us in our attempts to deal with reality – the unintended consequences of civilization. As technology increases, the consequences of our blindness are becoming inconceivably serious. Why are we not able to pull our superior heads out of the sand and take an honest look at ourselves from a primate point of view? If we actually had free will, we probably could . . . and would.

There may be a silver lining

As the average age of a population increases, so does its average wisdom. The longer each of us attends the school of life, the more we experience personal dead ends. We become wiser as we realize our own mortality and ignorance. A wiser population can not help but lead to a more mature and ethical culture. Surely, humanity will think and act differently when the average age is 100+ compared to Roman times, for example, when the average age was probably in the teens. Thank you modern medicine! A falling birth rate also moves a population's average age upward. Wealthy populations have declining birth rates, so let's spread the wealth! All in all, things are looking up, . . . and not a moment too soon!

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