Week 9-The Evolution of Morality

In my anthropology class everything always comes back to the “socially constructed”. Gender is socially constructed. Emotions are socially constructed. Senses are socially constructed. It gets very tiring. But when asked the question of where morality comes from all I can think about is how it must be socially constructed. All this means is that it isn’t an inherent aspect of humanity; that it is something learned. We may not even be able to recognize that we are teaching it to the next generation, but we are in our actions and words. I personally don’t think that “morality” is an inherent aspect of human behavior. I do believe humans have an innate desire to protect those that possess similar genes as themselves, such as siblings and children, but I don’t think the desire to protect those outside of that circle is something we are born with. I think that like so much of how we act it is based on a story that has been passed down from the generations and generations that have come before us. I just find it impossible to believe that genetics could have selected for something so seemingly detrimental as morality. It goes against the whole concept of survival of the fittest. If not for morality the strong humans would be able to easily out compete the weaker ones. But I think the use of morality comes in that it allows humans to move forward intellectually. By removing the constant competition it gives an opening for people to think less about surviving and more about exploring the world around them. But this is something learned by children when they discover that it is so much easier to share then get yelled at by adults or told that they shouldn’t laugh when another child is teased because they could be next.

From "The Five Biggest Neuroscience Developments of the Year" in slate.com

"2. The neural alteration of morality. Six people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were presented with moral dilemmas (e.g., would you smother a baby to prevent bad guys from finding and killing people in hiding) and were found to be two to three times more willing to kill than people without brain damage. The advertised conclusion is that such willingness to kill is objectively immoral. The feared conclusion is that if brain design determines what's moral, you can change morality by changing the brain—and once technology manipulates ethics, ethics can no longer judge technology."

I know that people think that the characters in Howards End are not moral or have all different morals, but isn’t this true of all of us.  If we didn’t have different morals there would be no need for the term or the idea of morals, it would just come installed in humans like a computer.  By showing that not all character are moral and do not consider the same things moral perhaps Forster is really displaying us as we truly are.  We talk about this book as not being generative because it is so stuck in time but these issues over morals are not.  Perhaps Forster did not intended the story line of Howards End to be completely understood and cherished through the ages but rather the underlying themes about morality are the true message.  Just a heralding back to the bipartide brain part of this course, it’s all in our brain and morality is just our brain telling stories to other parts of our brain, therefore can we really expect morality to be the same for all?

i think all the characters try to be moral but forster shows that they all screw up. so while he seems to put forth a moral code in his book, about connection and all that, he is also making the question more complicated. people are moral by their own standards, but not by each other's. this isolates people so they can't connect. a really good contemporary example of this is that show, so supposedly low-brow that no one can believe i watch it (religiously): the apprentice. all the businessmen and women on this show, who are trying to show that businesspeople are cool, are well aware of the reputation their group has of being immoral and cutthroat. so they make a big deal of talking about how they have integrity and the other players don't. in one episode, the teams have to sell side by side and one team lies that their price is cheaper when the prices are the same and they win the task. the other team accuses them of being immoral, but they say they did what they had to do to sell and that the other guys are sore losers. trump sides with this team. so they all feel they have integrity as they make sales and the other team thinks they're the ones with integrity because they would not resort to devious methods and consequently made fewer sales. i think that everyone is petty and morally dubious on the apprentice, but the fascinating thing there is that they don't know it.

I think that morality has a lot to do with connecting, because I think that to be moral is a conscious choice and that this overall choice involves many smaller decisions.  For example, what if:

 -Someone had not studied for a test that was the next day, that there was no chance of passing unless he cheated and that test was one half that person's entire grade...

-That person knew he needed to pass the test in order to not flunk out of school

-He knew that it would be possible to cheat and never get caught....

 This would be a situation in which lots of intermediate decisions would  be made to solve this dilemma.  Firstly, that person would have to decide between the two extremes: passing the test and knowning he cheated, or failing the test and knowing he wouldn't graduate.  Next, once he made his decison whether or not to cheat, he would have to make a series of decisions as to what he would do next in either case.  He would also have to decide if it was possible to talk to someone and see if he could get some help/advice, and so on.

 In any case, the person's decision to be moral or not to be moral would involve many smaller decisions, all of which are connected to each other.  They all lead to the same ultimate purpose, which is either to "do what's right," or to "do what's wrong."  

Finally, I think a key component of morality is continuity, or connection, between one's thoughts and one's actions. For example, if this person realized that it would be immoral to cheat, but did it anyway, would that be moral?  I don't think that it would be.

There is an interesting segment on page 252 of Howards End that deals with the notion of morality in combination with evolution. It is at the point where we meet Margaret in her process of thought on how to react to Henry’s affair with Jacky. The passage reads:
“Are the sexes really races, each with its own code of morality, and their mutual love a mere device of Nature to keep things going? Strip human intercourse of the proprieties, and is it reduced to this? Her judgment told her no. She knew that out of Nature's device we have built a magic that will win us immortality. Far more mysterious than the call of sex to sex is the tenderness that we throw into that call; far wider is the gulf between us and the farmyard than between the farmyard and the garbage that nourishes it. We are evolving, in ways that Science cannot measure, to ends that Theology dares not contemplate.”
The term immorality is what struck me the most in the passage, though it is full of other sticking points for analysis. The term immorality here is used to refer to sexual misconduct. Its interesting that Forster links this form of morality with sex because in the natural world sex is used for the good of evolution (to pass on ones on genes). It’s hard to say that it is morally wrong (immoral) or that it implies misconduct of any sort. In a broader sense it vaguely links back the article Anne posted on the origins of human morality through the study of primates, because based on what I know of the animal kingdom sex is extremely important and is unlikely to be considered an immoral act (in fact it may be incorporated into the “social rules” primates are said to adhere to).

I don’t find the majority of the characters in Howard’s End to be ‘moral’. Maybe the problem is that they all have different ideas about morality and none is moral in the eyes of another. Henry’s lack of morality comes from his lack of emotionality and his inability to clearly see. Margaret says he is “eternally tired. He has worked very hard all his life, and noticed nothing. Those are the people who collapse when they do notice a thing.” I think Henry has been blind to what is right and wrong, and living a somewhat scripted life. He only realizes that he has been immoral after Margaret spells it out for him, and he becomes ‘eternally tired.’

Leonard Bask suffers so much in this novel that maybe he is meant to be the only one experiencing true morality. Morality is a concern for right and wrong behavior and he is always chewing on some idea of right and wrong. Leonard ascribes moral weight to class placements; his failure in class position becomes a moral failure that he can’t free himself from. He is certainly upset by his own affair, more so than anyone in the upper classes is concerned with their affairs. The upper classes are more concerned with actions of others than with their own actions. Henry cannot see the similarity of his situation to that of Helen’s. Charles is so angered by Leonard’s lack of morality that he kills Leonard.

“Only connect…” may be Forster’s way of urging us to recognize one another with compassion before passing judgment. I would argue that Helen is more of a moralist than Margaret as she doesn’t sway from her desire to help people and it is from her that we get the idea that ‘personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever’ (181).

For Leonard, the only way to come clear of his immorality was to confess. I found it interesting that the only place religion is mentioned it is also said to be “un-English,” and the desire to confess is “proof of a weakened nature,” though ‘Leonard has a right to decide upon it” (334). This desire to be moral and see Margaret to confess is what gets Leonard killed.

…still thinking…

Danielle

To me it seems that in Howard's End the characters place too strong an emphasis on the importance of culture and intellect, and to teh extend that it is overrated and almost frivolous, though such things are not.

When Mrs. Munt found out about Helen and Paul she questioned about the Wilcoxes, saying "Could they appreciate Helen....Do they care about Literature and Art? That is most important when you come to think of it. Literature and Art. Most important." (23) Upon reading that I couldn't help but think what a silly, shallow, pretentious woman she is for there are much more important things in a mate than being culture, such as things like integrity, kindness, etc.

 I feel like the girls also share the same thinking. Margeret once expressed that she would support Helen even if she loved someone poor, but I think that is only because she failed to take into consideration that someone poor would most likely not have the luxury of time to invest into being cultured. The correlation in lack of culture and poverty is most pronounced in the situation of the young man she met at the concert. while her talk of culture was "fluttering away from the young man like birds" (52) he was thiknin " Oh, to acquire culture!....But it would take one years. With an hour at lunch and a few shattered hours in the evening, how was it possible to cath up with leisured women, who had been reading steadily from childhood."