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M Quotes

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All M Quotes

“Morality is dialectically trumped by something else – reason and logic. Smarter people – intellectuals – are the least likely to be immoral. It’s not because they’re “better” people morally; it’s because their rationality allows them to control their irrational, selfish impulses. A rational person understands that rationally he ought to treat others well if he wants them to treat him well. “Do as you would be done by” is a rational, not a moral, assertion. An immoral person couldn’t care less about treating others as he wants to be treated; in fact, he’s determined that he shouldn’t be treated that way. He wants complete asymmetry. Only a rational person will truly obey the Golden Rule. Why? Simply because it’s the rational thing to do. If you don’t treat others well, there’s no reason for them to treat you well. If you want a nice, civilized life, make sure you offer it to everyone else. If you don’t, the people having horrible lives will have something to say about it in due course.”

“Morality is essentially a suite of psychological mechanisms that enable us to cooperate. But, biologically at least, we only evolved to cooperate in a tribal way. Individuals who were more cooperative with those around them - could outcompete others who were not. However, we have the capacity to take a step back from this and ask what a more global morality would look like. Why are the lives of people on the other side of the world worth any less than those in my immediate community? Going through that reasoning process can allow our moral thinking to do something it never evolved to.”

“Morality is for everybody, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was what made the modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual position, so weak. If you gave people the chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That, in Mma Ramotswe's view, was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave to it.”

“Morality is like defecation. When you have the urge to defecate, do you ask an intellectual, what it is like to feel like defecating and how to perform the act of defecation, before you actually go to defecate! You simply feel it and go defecating. The same is with morality. You don't ask a scientist, a philosopher or a priest what morality really is, and how to perform it. You simply feel it and act on it.”

“Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.”