“Butchering approximately 200 million sperm, there’s only one sperm that finally succeeds in reaching the fertilized egg and that becomes you, me.”
Surprisingly, no one bothers about those poor sperm while celebrating the newborn. After weeding out lakhs of candidates, a few hundred are chosen, and everyone adores them. Nobody cares about those failed candidates. The point is that society only celebrates greed and selfishness-driven outcomes; morality and ethics are only found in fairy tales.
After obliterating an entire species of Neanderthals, we Homo sapiens have finally ruled the earth. Do we feel sorry for those poor Neanderthals? I don’t think so.We don’t because it benefits our self-serving greed!
Consider what you were told when you were younger. Always go with the truth. Would you be truthful to the assassin looking for your brother’s hideout? Certainly not! But I might be true to the killer if he or she is not one of my blood relatives.
Greed and selfishness are hardwired into our genes. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, dubbed this a “selfish gene.” We’ve been genetically and psychologically programmed to be selfish.
That’s probably why being selfish or greedy appears liberating, while being moral appears suffocating and imposing.
Given that greed and selfishness are in our genes, it often confuses me why society has pushed us to adopt a so-called “socially constructed morality” (e.g., altruism). Even when the rest of society is spitting on us, we are asked to serve humanity.
The answer is “moral opportunity.” Humans exploit opportunities to earn social currency by demonstrating their morality. For example, I have never seen the maid dining with us at our house, but that hasn’t stopped me from posting on social media about social equality. Personally, I have never donated a penny to a cause, but I will certainly raise my voice when asking others to donate to the cause. I promote gender equality and feminism, but that doesn’t mean I won’t continue to share misogynistic double-meaning jokes and memes. In my opinion, all government agencies, with the exception of the one where my father is employed, are corrupt. There are numerous examples, but the essence remains the same.
We exchange morality for social currency. I consider it beneficial to society that humans care for “moral opportunity.” Because of this, issues are at least being shared and discussed on social media. People comment, like, and react to issues even though we are actually not Morally obliged to them…