Addendum: Atheism and morality (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 23:23 (5310 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,
> 
> I agree with you about the lack of moral instinct initially, but I'm not convinced about the "raw ancient lust to tyranny" phase of evolution. We can learn a lot about the early stages of human culture from what used to be called "primitive" cultures and even from the behaviour of social animals. We'd need the input of anthropologists and zoologists to guide us through these fields, but from my own dabbling I would be very reluctant to paint early societies in such negative terms. Even on a theoretical level, no society can exist without codes of restraint, and these always involve subordinating the desires of the individual to the needs of the group. Although this can be exploited politically, it's also the basis of what we call morality ... considering the needs of others. "Tyranny" sounds very much in the style of Nietzsche, but what makes you think that all earlier cultures were ruled by tyrants? 
> -Tyrant in the ancient sense means those who came to power by their own will; not by hereditary means. So any instance where one group of humans successfully dominated another by force is what I'm looking at. If we look at the world of the ancient Greeks and their city-states; we see an instance of a world where each city-state was in a constant state of survival from the others. This was the birth of our democratic world, for it wasn't until peace had been won (ruthlessly, I might add) that the basic idea of a republic could even exist. I don't know much about earlier societies, but it is clear that ours had a violent and tenuous beginning. If you compare the ancient societies of Athens, Sparta, and eventually Rome; we have a clear example of very violent societies that indeed thrived off of the Art of War. Socrates himself had served Athens as a Phalanx warrior. -Tyrants don't always have to be bad. Julius & Augustus Caesar, to name but two.-If you watch this progression from then to our modern democracies of now, you watch exactly the kind of cultural growth that tracks along with how a small child slowly learns empathy for others. -I can paint a similar picture for ancient China; the kingdom of Qin was noted for being very willing to usurp and shed blood, but its dynasty began a course of greatness that culminated in one of the oldest and longest lasting empires.-So my assertion of a progression from Tyranny to now is less a study of Nietzsche and more an observation of how Western Civilization grew.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"