For most of my life, I've been thinking about moral codes. What they are, why they exist, and how one can justify having them. I've come to a surprising conclusion: morality is a bad idea. I have ample justification for this conclusion, but in order to explain it, I'll have to steer you through some rough waters. Just bear with me, and I'll ferry you to the other side.

It turns out that the moral dilemma has been captured marvelously in Plato's Republic, especially by Glaucon and Adeimantus in Book II. I'll be quoting liberally from that book throughout this post. If you'd like to check up on me, the whole book is available in plaintext form from Project Gutenberg.

Why be moral?

The fundamental question is put forth in the Republic by the poet Plindar:
"Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may be a fortress to me all my days?"

I'd like to rephrase the question slightly: Given the choice between acting moral and acting immoral, what would make me happier?

I'll begin by quoting what Glaucon said in the Republic:

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; - it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honored by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did.

This is essentially the "social contract" theory of moral societies. The phrase was coined by Thomas Hobbes, who wrote in Chapter XIII of the Leviathan:

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law: that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing anything he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right, as well as he, then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself of his: for that were to expose himself to prey, which no man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace. This is that law of the gospel: Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them.

I edited this a bit and added the bold type in both quotes, because they bring up an interesting point. Certainly Hobbes' "State of Nature" (the "war of every man against every man") is no good, and the society where every man obeys the social contract is the most moral society. But if you obey society's rules while other people do not, you will be worse off than if you didn't obey the rules in the first place (since you will not even have the opportunity reap the benefits taken from others). Even better is when you don't obey society's rules, while everyone else does, for then you can take what you want without fear of reprisal.

This is a classic example of the Prisoner's Dilemma. I'll explain the game itself, but curious people might also want to look into Game Theory, which talks about this more extensively and rigorously.

The game is relatively straightforward. A felony crime has been committed, and in the process, a misdemeanor has also been committed. Two prisoners are brought in for questioning, and have no way of communicating with the other. Each prisoner can either confess to the crime, thus implicating the other as well, or they can maintain their innocence. There is no question of both parties' guilt for the misdemeanor, but the police need a confession to get a conviction for the felony. If both confess, they will be given a reduced sentence of three years apiece. If one confesses but the other doesn't, the authorities will consider it a plea bargain; the one who confessed will go free, and the other will get ten years. If neither one confesses, they will convict both prisoners for the misdemeanor, but this only carries a six-month sentence.

If your only interest is in reducing the total jail time for both players, then the best thing to do would be for both people to stay silent. (The moral analogy would be the goal of reducing the total amount of suffering in the world.) But let's assume that each player cares only about minimizing his own jail time. If the other player confesses, it's in his best interest to confess (and get three years rather than ten); if the other player does not confess, it's still in his best interest to confess (and go free rather than serve six months). In other words, it's in each individual's best interest to confess, even though this is the most "immoral" thing to do. A rational, self-interested prisoner would always confess, no matter what the other prisoner did.

Douglas Hofstadter wrote about the Prisoner's Dilemma extensively in Metamagical Themas. If you're having trouble understanding this whole thing, he suggests a similar but different game called the Closed Bag Exchange:

Two people meet and exchange closed bags, with the understanding that one of them contains money, and the other contains a purchase. Either player can choose to honor the deal by putting into his bag what he agreed, or he can defect by handing over an empty bag.

Since defection is allowed by the rules, there is no reason to do anything but defect - and nobody with any degree of common sense would even play this stupid game in the first place. ("Hey, buddy, there's a watch in this bag - ten bucks and it's yours. No, I can't show it to you, you'll have to trust me... Hey, where ya going?")

Now, some of you may disagree about the values of the payoffs in terms of gain versus loss. You might believe that the "State of Nature" is so catastrophically bad, that it must be avoided at any costs. Or, you might believe that the benefits reaped from a peaceful society outweigh even the benefits of being bad while others are good. The first is equivalent to the game of "Hawks and Doves" (actually, the game of Chicken, which is just a different version of the same game). The second situation is equivalent to the game of Stag Hunt. I do not find these particularly helpful, however. In the case of Hawks and Doves, there is no useful solution to the dilemma (in game theory terminology, there is no single Nash equilibrium). The only solution to the game is if you do the opposite of what the other player does - and if you don't know that, you simply play the "hawk" an average number of times (dependent upon the "payoff ratio" of gains to losses). But there is no universal strategy; there is no reason one tactic is more "moral" than the other.

In the case of Stag Hunt, the solution is rather obviously to obey the rules at all times, since even if you get screwed by the other guy, you're still better off than you would be otherwise. (In simpler terms, morality would be its own reward.) But if life actually were like a Stag Hunt, there would be no defection at all - nobody would ever break the rules. Obviously this is not the case, even if you allow for such things as irrationality (such that a person acts against his own interest) or differences in values (what one person consider good, the other considers bad). Quite clearly people often act immoral even when they know it's immoral, and do so solely for their own benefit.

So a moral society is like the Prisoner's Dilemma, where it's always better to defect and betray others. But this doesn't seem realistic. In real life, if anyone tried to give us an empty bag, we'd never trust them again (and probably try to kick their ass). This is because life isn't simply one moral decision. Real life is a series of decisions, and if we betray someone, we get a reputation as a person who can't be trusted. In other words, we play the game over and over again, keeping track of other peoples' track records.

In game theory terminology, this is called the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD). Robert Axlerod coined this phrase in 1984, and in order to determine what is the best long-run strategy to adopt, he actually formed an IPD tournament. The "payoff matrix" was abstracted, so that you got more points for the least amount of "jail time," and your decision to defect or cooperate was determined by a computer program. (The program itself was what you actually entered into the tournament.)

As it turns out, there is one strategy which consistently beat out its opponents (with one exception, which I'll talk about in a second). That strategy is called "Tit-for-Tat," and was developed by Anatol Rapoport; it was also the shortest program entered in the tournament, consisting of five lines of BASIC. What it does is simple: it cooperates on the first round, then mimics its opponent's previous behavior on each subsequent round. If the opponent defects, then on the next round the program defects; and if the opponent cooperates, it cooperates in turn. In other words, it "rewards" good behavior and "punishes" bad behavior, and in the end it always comes out the winner (even against much more complex programs).

Many people believe this shows that altruistic behavior is a better long-run strategy than selfishness, and that the Golden Rule is fundamentally grounded in rational self-interest. But a closer look reveals that "Tit-for-Tat" is not the Golden Rule at all - at least not as expressed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount ("Do unto others as you would have others do unto you"). Instead, it's closer to the retributive justice of the Old Testament: "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" (often called the "lex talionis").

In Plato's Republic, Polemarchus summed it up quite nicely:

Justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.

The problems with this are obvious. The criticism given in the Republic is that this attitude doesn't make actions immoral, only their consequences to you and your friends; rape, murder, betrayal, and so forth are perfectly moral, so long as they're practiced against the other side. Another problem is escalation, where the punishment is worse than the crime, and so leads to a cycle of violence; in Gandhi's words, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless."

Is Lying A Virtue?

There is, however, a much deeper criticism to be made. In order for the "Tit-for-Tat" strategy to work, we must know with certainty what the player's last move is, so we can respond in kind. But people lie, and in fact immoral people probably lie more than moral ones. The strategy doesn't deal with good and evil; it deals with our perception of good and evil. In other words, it rewards lying as much as morality. So if we have the opportunity to be selfish and get away with it, we have a moral obligation to do so, even if it hurts others.

This objection was also raised in the Republic, by both Glaucon and Adeimantus. To illustrate, I'll let Glaucon tell you about the Ring of Gyges.

Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a dead body of stature, having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company. He was astonished at this, and made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.

Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.

I edited this somewhat, and added the bold text, because I think it's absolutely brilliant. And in case you're wondering - yes, this was the inspiration for the Lord of the Rings.

Let's hear a little more from Glaucon:

Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man entirely just. Let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody): for the highest reach of injustice is: to be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice.

And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing to be and not to seem good. Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.

The just man who is thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound - will have his eyes burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to be, just.

[The unjust] is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will; also he can trade and deal where he likes, and always to his own advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice and at every contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to honour in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the life of the just.

Then, Adeimantus takes up the attack:

The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honour them both in public and private when they are rich or in any other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others.

For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. But I hear some one exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness is often difficult; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we would be happy, to be the path along which we should proceed.

On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather than the worst injustice? Knowing all this, how can a man who has any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears justice praised? He only blames injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that when he obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.

Altruism and Tyranny

So maybe we're on the wrong track here. Maybe, instead, we should adopt altruism as our moral standard. We should live by the Golden Rule, regardless of whether we benefit or not; morality should be defined strictly as acting in the interests of others, and selfishness should be seen as evil. The technical phrase for altruism is deontological ethics, or deontology. This is the approach that Kant took, when he considered the golden rule to be a "categorical imperative."

There are some huge problems with deontology, as you can certainly imagine. If even a single person acts in his own interest, things fall apart completely - it would be like a Prisoner's Dilemma program that never defected under any circumstances. And so, deontological ethics must be enforced by strict moral laws - laws that make it illegal to act in your own interest at all.

The word "altruism" was coined by Auguste Comte, the French founder of both positivism and sociology. This was the founding premise for his version of the moral society, which he called his "normative theory." He was not a huge fan of individualism. From his Catechisme Positiviste:

[The] social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service.... This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely.

Even if we were to buy his "normative theory," and willingly sacrifice our individual rights, there is still a huge problem. If there was ever one group in a society that were allowed to behave as it wanted, it would automatically become immoral with impunity, and the majority of society would be powerless to stop it. Society has, almost by definition, such a group: the ruling class, whose job it is to enforce moral codes.

So therefore, enforced altruism leads to nothing other than "moral" totalitarianism. And, in fact, the reason altruism is so valued in society is because it universally supports the ruling class. This is expounded at length by Thrasymachus in the Republic:

And now I will not have you say that justice is duty or advantage or profit or gain or interest, for this sort of nonsense will not do for me.

Listen, then; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.

You fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or tends the sheep or oxen with a view to their own good and not to the good of himself or his master; and you further imagine that the rulers of states, if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep, and that they are not studying their own advantage day and night. Oh, no; and so entirely astray are you in your ideas about the just and unjust as not even to know that justice and the just are in reality another's good; that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger, and the loss of the subject and servant; and injustice the opposite; for the unjust is lord over the truly simple and just: he is the stronger, and his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his happiness, which is very far from being their own.

My meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable - that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the property of others, not little by little but wholesale; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any one of them singly, he would be punished and incur great disgrace. But when a man besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice. For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it. And thus injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the stronger, whereas injustice is a man's own profit and interest.

If all this talk makes you think of Nietzsche, you're not alone. Nietzsche was a big fan of Plato, and his philosophy of morals almost certainly germinated from this passage.

Plato's response to this is to compare the ruling class with artisans, who only care about their art, and not for themselves; and to convince Thrasymachus of some definitions of "justice" that seem unhelpfully tautological. In my opinion, it's one of the least convincing arguments in the whole of philosophy.

In fact, Plato's ultimate answer to the question of morality was to define the just state, then work downwards towards the just individual. The individual, in his eyes, is a citizen only, body and soul. This seems appropriate, given that his hero Socrates drank hemlock out of a moral duty to Athens.

The "republic" that Plato espoused was not in any way a free or open society. The way one would become just is by building up "moral" habits; the idea was that you became so well trained, you couldn't even think immorally. It had strict, unchanging laws about what you could read, the type of music you could listen to, and the type of plays you could watch. Eugenic practices were enforced. It was divided up into the ruling and the ruled, with "philosopher kings" monopolizing the upper echelons of society. In fact, it's so much like the society in George Orwell's 1984, that Plato's descendents should sue for royalties. And I'm not the only one that thinks so; in The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper gave Plato the dubious honor of being the philosophical founder of totalitarianism.

In fact, despotism is a major problem with all moral societies. Plato's republic, Comte's normative theory, and Hobbes' leviathan all have one fundamental thing in common: restricting individual self-interest is the very purpose of the moral state.

Psychological Police

But there is another, deeper, criticism to the whole notion of socio-political ethics. We don't want someone to refrain from rape or murder because of some vague duty towards a "just society." We want them to do it because they want to do the right thing. Ethics should not be at the same level as voting Democrat or Republican. By turning morality into a political problem, we're diminishing its importance.

What we need is a way for people to actually dislike immorality. People shouldn't just casually avoid evil; it should make them sick and angry. Something like the Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange, except self-administered and voluntary.

This is where Freud's structural theory comes in handy. The Id represents our selfish, amoral desires; the Superego is the ethical framework forced upon the individual by society; and the Ego is the neurotic individual that results. (I used to think I was pretty clever reading Freud in this pseudo-political way, but after re-reading him, it turns out this is what he meant all along.)

So, society imprints its altruistic morality on us for the express purpose of controlling our behavior; and we, in turn, internalize society's rules into our subconscious. But, unfortunately, because evil is defined as selfishness, we turn our distaste for immoral acts back upon ourselves. We can't despise evil without despising our own urges, and morality thus turns out to be self-hatred.

But nobody likes to hate themselves. So, we use all sorts of defense mechanisms. Most notably: splitting (turning acts and/or people into pure good and pure evil), reaction formation (taking the opposite approach consciously compared to what we want unconsciously - i.e. loudly espousing morality because we want to be immoral), projection (placing our own unethical urges onto someone else), and displacement (redirecting our immoral desires from a "dangerous" object to a "safe" one - e.g. onto "evil" people). In this way, we turn our self-hatred onto others, scapegoat "evil" people for the acts that we'd like to do ourselves, and do evil to them in the name of justice.

I'm sure we've all seen examples of this, both individually and collectively. To cite examples would suggest that only one type of person does it, but I've seen it in liberals, conservatives, religious believers, atheists, the rich and the poor, and all types of subcultures. It manifests in the belief that those who disagree with you are not just wrong in opinion or fact, but morally harmful.

It's obvious - blatantly, painfully obvious - that this type of "moral" stance is nothing more than a cheap excuse to act violently against people they don't like. In a classic case of reaction formation, they've adopted strict moral codes because they're intolerant, and justified their (occasionally violent) hatred by claiming they're fighting intolerance. Their morality is nothing more than an ethical version of the Ring of Gyges. When they wear it, they're free to act as immoral as they please; but their immorality remains invisible to others, and most importantly, invisible to themselves.

And if enough people agree with your morals, you can, and even should, beat up people in the name of the collective good. It's the same old story of tribalist warfare. They've drawn a thick, black line between themselves and the "others," dumped all their psychic garbage onto the other side, and used it as an excuse to set them on fire.

I used to think this was an unintended consequence of ethical codes - something people should take pains to avoid, but not an essential feature of human morality. Not anymore. I now believe that morality and intolerance are exactly the same thing. The ability to act immoral without guilt is the primary purpose of morality. If ethical codes don't give people the justification to enjoy their hatred, then nobody would be ethical at all.

Of course, to people who value social cohesion above all else, intolerance is a benefit, not a liability. To them, their code of ethics must be enforced as strictly as possible, using whatever means as possible, ideally with the punishment being far worse than the crime. This is true whether you're forming a religious sect, a socialist state, or a cohesive subculture. This is especially true of societies or communities that are hostile to law enforcement, hence have to police themselves. Intolerance is even more beneficial if ideology is the only thing that separates members from non-members.

Going back to game theory and the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, I mentioned there was one strategy that ended up beating the Tit-for-Tat strategy. A repeat of the IPD Tournament took place in 2004 (the 20th anniversary of the original), and you were allowed to enter as many programs as you like. A team from Southampton University in England entered a group of 60 programs into the competition. Through a series of opening moves, they were able to recognize each other. Once they did, they were designed to immediately assume "master and slave" roles - one would sacrifice itself so the other could win repeatedly. If the other program was not a Southampton entry, it would immediately defect. The society itself, taken as a whole, lost to the Tit-for-Tat programs, and the "slave" programs came in at the bottom; but the programs that assumed the "master" role won out over everyone else.

So to anyone with an authoritative role in society, fanaticism and xenophobia are beneficial moral strategies. But to anyone who values such things as independent thought, artistic freedom, or individual rights, intolerance is the greatest of evils. To them, then, morality is like a weed in the garden, to be rooted out and destroyed so that the flowers can bloom. Because my tastes and opinions are pretty far from mainstream, I naturally pitched my tent squarely in the individualist camp.

And I've been trying to rid myself of morality ever since.