A Defense of Moral Realism: Introduction: Part 2
U.S. Navy plane flying over Soviet missile cargo ship bound for Cuba
(credit: Wikipedia)
To continue on from my last post then, I will say that at about the time I was learning the steps in the scientific method, I also developed an obsession with a second matter: the moral
side of human life. Events in the world caused me to feel deeply that we’re
facing one problem that is clearly the most desperate that we need to solve.
The deepest question is not one like “Can we cure this flu?” or “Can we eradicate this moth?” The deepest question is not: “Can we?”, it is: “Should we?” “Would this act be right?” In short, the problem to which we should be devoting our best science is “What is right?” For us.
My Science 9
teacher also taught us, a few weeks later, about atomic theory and the nuclear
weapons that several nations in the world already had in 1963. And I understood
how science had led us to these too. They filled me with dread.
A
year before the scientific method lesson, I’d seen terror in the faces of
adults around me – my parents, teachers, even adults in stores I visited. October
‘62. Humanity hovered on the brink of nuclear war. Few of the adults understood
how atom bombs worked, but they knew if those bombs were used, they would cause
unimaginable destruction, maybe even an end to all life on earth. By smart human agency
and some luck, we came through that crisis. But only just.
Over
a year later, I got another massive shock. Just after my scientific method lesson,
President Kennedy was assassinated. Two days later, his alleged assassin was
also assassinated.
These
two events – the Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK’s assassination – led me to
conclude that the adults of my world had little understanding of, or control over,
what was going on in international events. At the very least, if our leaders were doing their best, then
the model of human social behavior that they were using was inadequate.
It’s
terrifying for a boy to see fear in the eyes of adults he’s been trusting all
his life. But I had also learned this amazing method, this thinking tool, that I
could use to solve any problem, and I felt the way out of the mess of the
modern world – nuclear arms proliferation, ecosystem collapse, overpopulation – was in
front of us. Science. All we have to do is use it on ourselves. I believed that
then and I believe it now. There is hope for us if we follow science well. Even
History, Sociology, and Anthropology – our human tribal ways – could be understood by
science.
So,
I set a challenge for myself: use the scientific method to discover why we
humans act the way we do, and if that much could be solved, then use the model developed
via this line of research to hypothesize how we could act to reduce the odds of
our destroying ourselves. If an effective model of human group behavior can be
found, this model could guide us to a universal moral code. A code that is
science-based and that tells us how we should treat each other. We could use it
to redesign our societies so that we dramatically improve our survival odds.
What
follows in the rest of this essay is what I have been able to conclude so far from my studies
of the humanities and social sciences and of people in my everyday life. My
hope is that some young persons will pursue this project, develop the model of
history that I present here, make a strong case for their version of that model,
and then persuade enough of their brothers and sisters of its accuracy to form
a critical mass: a group of people resolute and skilled enough to update the operating system of this pale blue dot.
That
operating system, of course, is the human species. Us.
And
here, to end this Introduction, I’ll address one last group, namely people who
say this whole project, this reprogramming of the nations of the world with a
new moral code, even if we could articulate a one, is just too huge. They have
lives, and those lives are so stuffed with worries as to be barely bearable as
it is. They’re worn out just holding on.
President Kennedy and cabinet meeting (Oct. 29, '62)
