{"id":1436,"date":"2018-06-17T19:39:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-17T19:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2018-06-18T12:14:54","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T12:14:54","slug":"from-me-to-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/morality\/from-me-to-morality","title":{"rendered":"From Me to Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

From inside the brain to very large groups of people, this text tracks the origin of morality through the ages as well as at any single point in time.<\/h3>\n

Morality is like the Nile<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Searching for the \u2018source\u2019 finally gets one somewhere far inside a strange continent, where one doesn\u2019t find one source but many. In case of morality, this continent is called \u2018brain.\u2019 So, let\u2019s be the Livingstone of morality, but starting from the source(s) and getting to the moral delta into the sea.<\/p>\n

When confronted with a moral issue, no \u2018moral\u2019 part of the brain gets activated.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Instead, many parts of the brain are triggered that are not straightforwardly linked to morality but to being a social creature, to being an \u2018I\u2019 and even to plainly \u2018being\u2019. As to the \u2018ACE principle\u2019 [see: \u2018ACE in a Moral World<\/a>\u2019], nature continuously reuses what\u2019s already there, combining things and enhancing where needed.<\/p>\n

Everything flows, yet we carry our distant past at every moment in the brain.<\/p>\n

Staying alive<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your brainstem and hypothalamus (most \u2018primitive \u2018 parts of the brain) have one clear focus: to stay alive. Eventually, this is where any natural notion of \u2018good\u2019 comes from. In order to attain this, of course they need something that \u2018lives\u2019 over longer periods of time. But everything changes all the time. Cells divide and die. Structures continuously change. Neuroplasticity comes around at every corner of the brain.<\/p>\n

More durable is a striving for \u2018homeostasis\u2019 \u2013 a kind of wanted-for balance \u2013 of the brainy milieu around which everything keeps turning. The perfect homeostasis is never reached, yet as goal<\/em>, it is durable and engenders a notion of individuality. Which brings us to:<\/p>\n

living as an individual.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This \u2018individual\u2019 strives to stay alive. For this, it needs to deal with the outside world. The brain, mainly oriented to its own internal milieu, communicates with the outside world through the sensory organs.\u00a0Two important factors in this:<\/p>\n