Which came first, morality or ethics?
I have run into some pessimistic types who tend to imply that it's the latter, suggesting that humans will be immoral and will thrust societies into chaos if not for laws, either human or divine. Those types tend to believe strongly in codifying laws such as "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not kill", believing that we would be plundering and killing otherwise.
This pessimistic view makes sense from the perspective of various religions, since it's often believed that one or more gods and prophets had to intervene and teach mankind divine ethics for them to start understanding right from wrong.
The view also makes sense because when we see large populaces struck by natural disasters, for example, leading to a temporary state of lawlessness, we can see the worst human behavior.
I've also run into some very optimistic types who don't believe we need codified laws at all in order to be good and decent human beings.
Morality First
I don't quite fit into either of these. I believe morality came before ethics, yet I do think ethics are necessary as populations grow.
I think ethics are somewhat of an extension of morality, albeit potentially branching in different ways depending on the society. Also I'm aware that ethics guide our notions of morality, though I still believe an intrinsic biological sense of morality came first.
In this take, I'll attempt to make a case for my views on morality and ethics and how they came about. This is admittedly based on conjecture and it's a bit oversimplified, but it's the best model I've come up with so far that fits what I've gathered about human history.
I'll be appealing to people's intuition here and would also suggest looking at human behavior, especially in small, primitive tribes, and see if any of this clicks. It can also be helpful to study the social behavior our evolutionary cousins: the great apes.
Intragood
For lack of a better term, I believe humans are inherently "intragood". That is, I believe humans tend to be cooperative and peaceful among those they identify as a member of their own group.
We can look at some horrible tyrants in history and even among the worst of the worst, they were often "intragood" in the sense that they weren't necessarily monstrous towards those in their inner group.
Humans are not necessarily peaceful and cooperative towards those they identify as outsiders. They are not necessarily "intergood".
Small Population
As an example, take a very small, primitive tribe living in the wilderness. The conditions are harsh, food is scarce and difficult to gather, lifespans are short, people have to sleep, and injuries and diseases have a high risk of being fatal.
It makes perfect sense in such a scenario for people to cooperate to survive and procreate. On top of this, the tribe is illiterate and incapable of communicating on a deep level.
Let's hone in on a single individual in this small tribe.
Note that this isn't necessarily a one-to-one representation for simplicity.
At the center is this individual with the orange outline. Surrounding him in black are those with whom he has the highest affinity (parents, child, mate, closest friends). In blue are people in the tribe he knows well and sees every day.
It seems improbable in this scenario that the individual would harm or steal from anyone else in this picture. If he steals a precious resource like food from one of the members in blue, it wouldn't take much thought for him to realize that the negative repercussions could easily trace back to him or those he most cares about in black.
Furthermore, this individual would generally still care for the members in blue given that he cooperates with them and sees them on a daily basis. He simply doesn't care for them quite as much as those in black.
Not Utopia
As a caveat, I'm not suggesting this hypothetical tribe above lives in a state of utter peace and bliss all the time. I'm sure there would be some "intraconflicts" (social conflicts within the group), but I believe this tribe is generally capable of cooperating peacefully and settling such disputes without harming and killing each other.
There may even be a rare anomaly, like a child born with a brain disorder who grows to become a psychopathic killer. In spite of this, I believe the tribe would be capable of dealing with this anomaly without feeling the need to codify a set of laws and establish law enforcers patrolling the area to ensure the peace.
If this wasn't the case, it would seem unlikely that human societies would have ever come far in the first place.
Interbad
Imagine a case where our little tribe encounters a foreign tribe.
We could have a problem. The two tribes may not recognize each other, their way of life, their clothing, the way they communicate, etc. On top of this, they may both be trying to gather a resource in a state of contention.
Here there's a good chance of fear, and where there's fear, there's often hostility. There could be some chance that the two tribes overcome their fears and cooperate, but perhaps also a good chance that they may end up killing and plundering from each other.
Humans appear to be cooperative and peaceful creatures overall within their own group, but they aren't necessarily towards those they fail to identify as one of their own.
Medium Population
Let's imagine that our tribe survives and grows to a larger scale.
In this case, the green members of the tribe represent those who are somewhat neutral in affinity to our individual. They do not cooperate closely with him and don't necessarily interact with him on a daily basis.
With the tribe growing larger, the group becomes more difficult to manage. Distributing and gathering resources becomes a more complex process. There could be times when nearby food is scarce. Mobilizing the entire tribe is a complex affair, and the group may have to split off into separate groups to scout and hunt and forage for food. Diseases grow in frequency with a greater number of members susceptible to them. Disputes among members may become more common.
A more formal power hierarchy may be need to be established to help control and guide the tribe and settle disputes.
In this scenario, if our individual at the center and those closest to him in affiliation (black) are starving, how likely is he to steal food from another member? It seems considerably more likely than the smaller tribe before.
Our individual may steal from one of the green members he does not care much about in order to benefit those he does care about. It would be difficult, in this case, for the potential thief to imagine how the negative repercussions could spill back to him and those he care about (remember that this is a lawless society).
If he chooses to steal the food, this could throw the entire tribe into disarray. It is at this point that I think the tribe will begin to realize a need for ethics.
Nevertheless, at this type of scale, I believe our individual's desire to steal food isn't necessarily motivated by malice, but rather the simple fact that he does not value all the people in the tribe equally. He values the lives of the black members far, far above the green members.
Large Population
Finally, let's look at a very large tribe.
In this case, the members in red represent those our individual distrusts. The tribe has grown and diversified to the point where people are failing to recognize members of their own tribe as one of their own.
Here we may begin to see far more vicious social conflicts within the tribe. It may even get to a point where a majority of the tribe subjugates the other, perhaps even enslaving certain members who are considered outsiders or even massacring them.
Some members may be caught in the middle of the conflict, sympathizing with those the majority consider outsiders even though they aren't, themselves, considered outsiders.
With growing tensions within the tribe and constant conflicts, there becomes a dire need for order to resolve the constant state of chaos.
Ethics
This is when I believe various human civilizations arrive at the need for ethics to control the growing populace. It's at this point that I believe we need codified laws.
"Thou shalt not kill or we will kill you."
"Thou shalt not kill or the gods, constantly watching you, will burn you for eternity."
Divine laws are some of the most practical if the populace can be made to believe that one or more deities are watching over them and delivering punishments or rewards in an afterlife.
This mitigates the need to have a militaristic group patrolling the area, establishing order through the threat of force.
Yet if we look at the ethics of various isolated cultures and world religions, they tend to often have some common denominators.
I think these common denominators reveal some insight about the universal qualities we tend to find in human nature: the biological seed of what we recognize as moral today. They can be obscured since morality can shape ethics which can shape morality and so forth, but the common denominators reveal traces of what humans might have intrinsically valued.
Leadership
Are leaders of small populations "good" or "bad"? Good and bad can be overloaded and ambiguous terms, but are they altruistic and empathetic towards their people? Are they peaceful and cooperative?
If we imagine a small tribe, would all elected leaders of such tribes end up abusing their power for purely selfish gain? Would they push their power to the limits, trying to get away with as much as possible at the cost of the suffering of their people for their own personal gain?
Some might say the people in the tribe are only peaceful and cooperative because of the presence of this leader.
All right, so let's look at the leader. Is the leader good or bad? Does he care about his own small group of people or does he only care about his own well-being? Would he end up stealing from and enslaving those he can easily subjugate, even if he identifies them as one of his own people?
Given that this was the very first leader of this culture, he could very easily establish ethics which cement his position of power over his people. If humans are inherently evil regardless of the scale of the populace, we should expect the very first form of ethics in such indigenous tribes to vastly benefit the leader alone far above all others, and I would generally expect this trend to continue over generations.
All such leaders of these indigenous tribes should be despots who rule through fear and take whatever they want, even from their own people, if humans don't even have natural "intragood" tendencies.
We can definitely find examples of large-scale populations that have done this by creating religions that establish divine rulers, cementing their position of power that way, and we can certainly find cases of such divine rulers being very cruel people who abused and exploited their position of power.
Can we find such a case of a small, indigenous tribe with a divine, abusive ruler? I don't know the answer to this. I'm thinking not. As far as I can gather, small, indigenous tribes are peaceful and cooperative and often selfless even when it comes to the leaders of those tribes who could be above any law or religion he/she establishes.
Skyscrapers and Beyond
Ethics and controlling the populace become increasingly difficult subjects as populations grow and become increasingly dense. On top of this, humans were not necessarily adapted to thrive in such complex environments.
Only the most microscopic time span of our evolutionary timeline was spent in complex civilizations. We're not necessarily psychologically fit to handle these types of scales and environments.
This raises some great challenges about how to stay peaceful and cooperative as the scale and complexity of societies grow and grow.
Conclusion
Anyway, this is a rough idea and it's the first time I've attempted to articulate it, but this is how I believe we arrive at ethics. Morality was always somewhat of an intrinsic property of the system as I see it, initially guiding ethics and then changing to some degree in response.
I tend to look at these things in the scenario of one giant simulation of human behavior starting from the most primitive tribes to large civilizations.
I've been accused before of being too optimistic about human nature and its ability to empathize and cooperate with others. That may be the case to some degree, but I never thought humans are intrinsically "good".
I only believe humans have a general tendency to be "intragood" within their own social group, and before the population grows to a point where they can no longer even recognize some within their own population as a member of their own group.
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