Our Moral Obligations
Establishing rightly ordered conduct founded on human nature
Introduction
Many have built faulty systems of morality that lack foundation by incorrectly assessing who we are as humans. Some have exalted us to supermen without limitations. Some have likened us to blank slates, bereft of passions, instincts, or consciences—like clay to be molded. And some have described us as entirely selfish savages to be bound in chains and subject to imperial decree. We are none of these things, and moral systems built on these bases invariably lead to catastrophe.
I offer here a system of morality that accords with our nature and limitations. I explain our moral duties, distinguish right from wrong, and draw boundaries for our actions, within which we may act freely and morally.
The axioms upon which a worthwhile system of morality rests
There are two axioms that our system of morality rests upon.
The first is that we live in an objective reality with constant underlying laws which we can observe with enough clarity to make falsifiable claims and draw enduring conclusions. Without this assumption, we couldn’t trust anything we observed, communicate anything consistently applicable, or make any reliable predictions, making it impossible to construct a robust moral system. You could say that existing evidence suggests that reality follows universal and timeless laws, but even the supporting force of evidence itself presupposes that we live in an objective reality.
Observations and logic can tell us about things that are, but by themselves cannot tell us what’s fundamentally valuable, nor how we must conduct ourselves.
The second axiom then, which asserts value, is that there is intrinsic merit in how human nature—qualities which are present in all or nearly all people—assesses that which is moral.
A moral system founded on human nature protects and promotes our survival, our connections, our societies, and our rights and freedoms—though as it turns out, we find these to be indispensable simply because it’s in our nature to believe so. We can’t go any deeper than human nature as our basis without speculation, and we can’t get any more crude without loss of applicability.
From our observations of that which is most valuable and agreeable to the most prevalent parts of our nature, we can establish a strong, sensible, and applicable system of morality.
A description of human nature
In order to determine what’s most valuable to us according to our nature—and thus what is worth gearing our moral system towards protecting and upholding—we must first describe what the most widespread elements of our nature actually are.
Our consideration for ourselves
Perhaps the most salient parts of our nature involve our strong sense of self-care.
We don’t want to die. We have an intense instinct to preserve ourselves. If someone attacked you, you’d have an involuntary stress response, and you’d either fight back, run away, or shield yourself. If you noticed a car careening towards you, you’d likely try to leap out of the way without thinking. And if you were stuck in a prolonged life-or-death scenario against overwhelming odds, there’s a good chance that you would endure rather than quickly submit to despair.1
We don’t want our bodies to be hurt. Physical pain points to potential threats to our lives. This sense is so strong that even without thinking about how pain aids in our survival, our immediate instinct is to seek comfort for, withdraw from, or shield ourselves from sources of pain we did not subject ourselves to.
We don’t want our property damaged or stolen. We have a visceral sense of things rightfully belonging to us. Property aids in our survival and pain avoidance, since material wealth—such as food, clothes, shelter, tools, and weaponry—protects us from uncertainty, privation, wild animals, and mortal enemies. But this sense is so strong that we feel violated even when possessions unnecessary for our survival are stolen or destroyed.
We are free moral agents. We don’t want others dictating how we live—especially if we’re not acting immorally. Our free will accords with our well-being since we typically have the best understanding of what we value and how to improve our circumstances, making us better suited to pursue our happiness than anybody else could on our behalf. But even absent this consideration, we each innately wish to control our own fates.
Our consideration for others
Nothing explained so far tells us that we must not harm others. If we only cared for ourselves, then sure, we might “refrain from infringing on someone’s rights” after gauging his strength and deciding the trouble isn’t worth it—like lions competing for territory.
Our reluctance to wrong others however, regardless of the private benefits, runs deeper and broader than that, and extends even to those who are weaker than us or whom we can easily dupe. We are sentimental creatures. We recoil at the thought of inflicting on others what we would not want done to us. And when we wrong others, we rack ourselves with guilt, shame, and self-loathing. Our sentimentality is so ubiquitous that we regard those who defy or lack this sense as having lost their very humanity.
On top of that, we are social creatures. We engage in familial ties and friendships, partake in communities, work alongside colleagues, enter into contracts, and produce goods for people we’ll never meet. We form connections, ranging from the brief and cordial to the intimate and lifelong. We endure hardship, make sacrifices, and forgo personal gain for the sake of those we’re close to. And we uphold the trust of those who have faith in what we promise or advertise.
The peaceful, free, and secure societies that have risen out of our collective sociability are immensely advantageous to our survival and happiness. Our combined abilities allow us to shelter ourselves from inhospitable wilderness, bring criminals to justice, and overcome otherwise insurmountable problems. Plus, we have the liberty to explore a vast wealth of richness, beauty, refinement, and meaning otherwise inaccessible to us outside of society and our connections. It accords with our sociability and our sense of self-preservation to find such societies worth preserving.
Our limitations—and things outside our obligations
To prevent ourselves from constructing a system that demands of us more than we can give, we must consider our limitations.
I’ve already implicitly mentioned one of our limitations—we are vulnerable. Our senses of self-preservation and pain-avoidance steer us away from death and pain. Since it’s in our nature to regard our lives and bodies as crucial, heroism is not among our obligations.
We’re also limited in our knowledge and brainpower. This manifests in two ways. First, each of us understands what we value better than anybody else, so it’s fitting that we detest having our rights and freedoms infringed upon, and our ability to determine our destinies stymied. And second, lacking perfect knowledge, others can deceive us. Because we wish to act with correct information, we treasure those who are honest, trustworthy, and loyal to us, and disassociate from those who mislead us. And if deception underlaid the majority of our interactions, our resulting suspicion of everyone around us would drive us into isolation, preventing society altogether.
Furthermore, we’re limited in the time and effort we can spend. This restricts the number of connections we can have—the closer the connection, the fewer similarly close bonds we’re able to keep. At any time, we can have a few family members—such as a romantic partner, young children, or ailing parents—whom we dedicate significant attention to. We can have a small inner circle of close friends, and our bonds with them don’t require as much care. We can retain a larger number of distant friendships, and have even more acquaintances, for these ties require little to no effort to “maintain.” Beyond that, we have trouble even grasping the billions outside our social network more concretely than in the abstract, let alone hope to sustain a meaningful connection with most of them. Each one of us can only stay connected with a tiny portion of humanity.
This limitation on the time and effort we can expend prevents us from being universally benevolent—to step in as saviors and satisfy everyone’s needs—which would demand more of us than we could possibly give. We’d be forced to disregard virtually all consideration for ourselves—to the point of self-destruction—and to spread our time and attention so thinly that we’d neglect our actual moral obligations to society and to those we’re connected to.
Our rights and obligations
Given this account of human nature, we can lay out our rights and obligations, drawing from our strong sense of self-care in conjunction with our sentimental and social nature. The resulting moral system, rightly ordered and well-founded, takes into consideration the preservation of life, limb, and property by forbidding injustice, and demands that we act with fidelity so that we may each have the trust in our fellow citizens necessary to enter into and sustain society—all without having to exceed our limitations.
We have a right to life, limb, and property, originating from how immensely valuable these things are to us, our sentiments thereby recognizing the wrong inherent in violating these things belonging to others, and the collapse of society that would result from these things no longer being held sacred.2 Concomitant with that right is an obligation on our part to not murder, assault, rape, steal, or vandalize.
Additionally, we have a right to our autonomy—within the bounds of our moral obligations—originating from our nature as free moral agents, the repugnance of tyranny to our sentiments, and the threat that tyranny poses to a free society. We therefore must not coerce or oppress others.
In short, we have an obligation to be just.
Given our wish to act in the world with accurate information to avoid making costly mistakes, we naturally distrust those who mislead us. Deception is thus abhorrent to our sentiments and our sociability, and furthermore erodes society. Therefore, we have a duty to act with veracity. It’s fine to withhold information if candor would put life, limb, or property in jeopardy. It’s fine to keep irrelevant private matters to ourselves. But otherwise, tell the truth when it needs to be told, and do not omit that which properly concerns others.
Both justice and veracity are essential to rightly ordered conduct as they promote our well-being and accord with our sociability. But they are insufficient in fostering the trust between people necessary for society to persist. For instance, we must uphold the duties that we’ve been entrusted with, including the promises and contracts we’ve agreed to. We must repay our debts and compensate for any damages we’ve caused. We must follow just laws that have been enacted via the consent of the governed, and not twist their meanings to the whims of our personal reinterpretations.3 We must not deceive or betray our fellow citizenry, whose collective sociability society depends on. And we must not betray our country, whose political force provides the sole accountable means for enforcing justice and protecting us from enemies abroad.
These duties, and others like it, enable and foster our confidence in the people, goods, services, infrastructure, and institutions around us, and thereby strengthen and maintain society. We therefore have an obligation to act with fidelity—to act in a trustworthy manner, and to abstain from undermining society or taking advantage of the loyalty and good will of others.
Such are our obligations to others in general.
Our rights and our sociability are not the only things which generate obligations; so do our connections. For example, we have a duty of benevolence to those we love and cherish, in proportion to the closeness of those connections and the particular fidelity demanded of us in those relationships—otherwise, could we really say we love and cherish them? We also have a duty of benevolence to our young children—in accordance with the fidelity owed to them—whom we are responsible for bringing into the world, or whom we have sworn to take care of, and who utterly rely on us.
Outside of our moral obligations, we are free to pursue meaning, happiness, and refinement however we please.
Our moral duties may not ignite the same feelings of esteem as virtues like generosity or heroism do, and they may not be enough by themselves to make any of us “great”—but we must follow them if we are to be good.
Moreover, these obligations are within everyone’s capabilities. We don’t have to try and fix all of humanity’s problems, for that would be beyond our limitations. But as it turns out, and as Lord Kames so aptly remarked: “It is better ordered, that in most instances individuals should have a limited aim, what they can readily accomplish. To every man is assigned his own task; and if every man do his duty, the general good will be promoted much more effectually, than if it were the aim in every single action.”4
Our sense of self-preservation isn’t absolutely overriding however. The instinct for self-preservation can itself be muted and overcome, like in the midst of suicidal ideation, or during an act of heroism. And by itself, our sense of self-preservation alone, unaccompanied by reason, is too crude to recognize and stop us from engaging in self-destructive behaviors—like chain smoking or overeating—before they take their toll.
Our sense of self-preservation is imperfect in other ways too. For instance, in scenarios where jumping out of the way would be better, we may instead freeze—much like a deer in headlights.
Nevertheless, almost none of us are completely without a sense of self-preservation, and in most of us, this sense is very strong indeed.
In accordance with a right to our lives is a right to defend ourselves from those who are threatening to kill us or those we’re trying to protect. To defend ourselves or others is to properly shield life (which we have a right to) and to act with justice proportional to (and hopefully sufficient in stopping) the injustice befalling us or those we seek to protect.
That we may wind up killing our attacker in the heat of fierce battle would merely be incidental, rather than an intentional and egregious violation of his right to life—assuming our defense was proportional to the perceived injustice at hand. And to guarantee our attacker’s life in the midst of such battle, with circumstances rapidly changing in mere fractions of a second, would in many cases be beyond our limitations.
The “consent of the governed” does not necessitate unanimous approval, which would be virtually impossible, nor is it subject to whim. It’s a sustained (though not necessarily permanent) approval from something that reasonably represents the will of the citizenry—like a majority of voters, or a majority of elected representatives—that grants civil legitimacy.