Morality exists because of “human nature.”\u00a0 In other words, it is a manifestation of innate behavioral traits that themselves exist by virtue of evolution by natural selection.\u00a0 It follows that morality has no goal, no purpose, and no function, because in order to have those qualities it must necessarily have been created by some entity capable intending a goal, purpose, or function for it.\u00a0 There was no such entity.\u00a0 In human beings, the traits in question spawn the whimsical illusion that purely imaginary things that exist only in the subjective minds of individuals, such as good, evil, rights, values, etc., actually exist as independent objects.\u00a0 The belief in these mirages is extremely powerful.\u00a0 Occasionally a philosopher here and there will assert a belief in “moral relativity,” but in the end one always finds them, to quote a pithy Biblical phrase, returning like dogs to their own vomit.\u00a0 After all their fine phrases, one finds them picking sides, sagely informing us that some individual or group is “good,” and some other ones “evil,” and that we “ought” to do one thing and “ought not” to do another.<\/p>\n
What does all this have to do with Einstein?\u00a0 Well, recently he was accused of expressing impure thoughts in some correspondence he imagined would be private.\u00a0 The nutshell version can be found in a recent article in the Guardian entitled,\u00a0Einstein’s travel diaries reveal ‘shocking’ xenophobia<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em> Among other things, Einstein wrote that the Chinese he saw were “industrious, filthy, obtuse people,” and “even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.”\u00a0 He, “…noticed how little difference there is between men and women,” adding, “I don’t understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which enthralls the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring.”\u00a0 He was more approving of the Japanese, noting that they were “unostentatious, decent, altogether very appealing,” and that he found “Pure souls as nowhere else among people.\u00a0 One has to love and admire this country.”<\/p>\n It goes without saying that only a moron could seriously find such comments “shocking” in the context of their time.\u00a0 In the first place, Einstein was categorizing people into groups, as all human beings do, because we lack the mental capacity to store individual vignettes of all the billions of people on the planet.\u00a0 He then pointed out certain things about these groups that he honestly imagined to be true.\u00a0 He nowhere expressed hatred of any of the people he described, nor did he anywhere claim that the traits he described were “innate” or had a “biological origin,” as falsely claimed by the author of the article.\u00a0 He associated them with the Chinese “race,” but might just as easily been describing cultural characteristics at a given time as anything innate.\u00a0 Furthermore, “race” at the time that Einstein wrote could be understood quite differently from the way it is now.\u00a0 In the 19th century, for example, the British and Afrikaners in South Africa were commonly described as different “races.”\u00a0 Today we have learned some hard lessons about the potential harm of broadly associating negative qualities to entire populations, but in the context of the time they were written, ideas similar to the ones expressed by Einstein were entirely commonplace.<\/p>\n In light of the above, consider the public response to the recent revelations about the content of Einstein’s private papers.\u00a0 It is a testimony to the gross absurdity of human moral behavior in the context of an environment radically different from the one in which it evolved.\u00a0 Einstein is actually accused by some of being a “racist,” a “xenophobe,” a “misogynist,” or, in short, a “bad” man.\u00a0 Admirers of Einstein have responded by citing all the good-sounding reasons for the claim that Einstein was actually a “good” man.\u00a0 These responses are equivalent to debating whether Einstein was “really a green unicorn,” or “really a blue unicorn.”\u00a0 The problem with that is, of course, that there are no unicorns to begin with.\u00a0 The same is true of objective morality.\u00a0 It doesn’t exist.\u00a0 Einstein wasn’t “good,” nor was he “bad,” because these categories do not exist as independent objects.\u00a0 They are subjective, and exist only in our imaginations.\u00a0 They are imagined to be real because there was a selective advantage to imagining them to be real in a given environment.\u00a0 That environment no longer exists.\u00a0 These are simple statements of fact.<\/p>\n As so often happens in such cases, one side accuses the other of “moral relativity.”\u00a0 In his response<\/a> to this story at the Instapundit<\/a> website, for example, Ed Driscoll wrote, “A century later, is the age of moral relativity about to devour the legacy of the man who invented the real theory of relativity?”\u00a0 The problem here is most definitely not moral relativity.\u00a0 In fact, it is the opposite – the illusion of objective morality.\u00a0 The people attacking Einstein are moral absolutists.\u00a0 If that were not true, what could possibly be the point of attacking him?\u00a0 A genuine moral relativist would simply conclude that Einstein’s personal version of morality was different from theirs, and leave it at that.\u00a0 That is not what is happening here.\u00a0 Instead, Einstein is accused of violating “moral laws,” the most fashionable and up-to-date versions of which were concocted long after he was in his grave.\u00a0 In spite of that, these “moral laws” are treated as if they represented objective facts.\u00a0 Einstein was “bad” for violating them even though he had no way of knowing that these “moral laws” would exist nearly a century after he wrote his journals.\u00a0 Is it not obvious that judging Einstein in this way would be utterly irrational unless these newly minted “moral laws” were deemed to be absolute, with a magical existence of their own, independent of what goes on in the subjective minds of individuals?<\/p>\n Consider what is actually meant by this accusation of “racism.”\u00a0 Normally a racist is defined as one who considers others to be innately evil or inferior by virtue of their race, and who hates and despises them by virtue of that fact.\u00a0 It is simply one manifestation of the universal human tendency to perceive others in terms of ingroups and outgroups.\u00a0 When this type of behavior evolved, there was no ambiguity about the identity of the outgroup.\u00a0 It was simply the next tribe over.\u00a0 The perception of “outgroup” could therefore be determined by very subtle differences without affecting the selective value of the behavior.\u00a0 Now, however, with our vastly increased ability to travel long distances and communicate with others all over the world, we are quite capable of identifying others as “outgroup” whom we never would have heard of or come in contact with in our hunter-gatherer days.\u00a0 As a result, the behavior has become “dysfunctional.”\u00a0 It no longer accomplishes the same thing it did when it evolved.\u00a0 Racism is merely one of the many manifestations of this now dysfunctional trait that has been determined by hard experience to be harmful in the environment we live in today.\u00a0 As a result, it has been deemed “bad.”\u00a0 Without understanding the underlying innate traits that give rise to the behavior, however, this attempt to patch up human moral behavior is of very limited value.<\/p>\n The above becomes obvious if we examine the behavior of those who are in the habit of accusing others of racism.\u00a0 They are hardly immune to similar manifestations of bigotry.\u00a0 They simply define their outgroups based on criteria other than race.\u00a0 The outgroup is always there, and it is hated and despised just the same.\u00a0 Indeed, they may hate and despise their outgroups a great deal more violently and irrationally than those they accuse of racism ever did, but are oblivious to the possibility that their behavior may be similarly “bad” merely because they perceive their outgroup in terms of ideology, for example, rather than race.\u00a0 Extreme examples of hatred of outgroups defined by ideology are easy to find on the Internet.\u00a0 For example,<\/p>\n Such alternative forms of bigotry are often more harmful than garden variety racism itself merely by virtue of the fact that they have not yet been included in one of the forms of outgroup identification that has already been generally recognized as “bad.”\u00a0 The underlying behavior responsible for the extreme hatred typified by the above statements won’t change, and if we whack the racism mole, or the anti-Semitism mole, or the homophobia mole, other moles will pop up to take their places.\u00a0 The Carreys and Fondas and Roxanne Gays of the world will continue to hate their ideological outgroup as furiously as ever, until it occurs to someone to assign as “ism” to their idiosyncratic version of outgroup hatred, and people finally realize that they are no less bigoted than the “racists” they delight in hating.\u00a0 Then a new “mole” will pop up with a new, improved version of outgroup hatred.\u00a0 We will never control the underlying behavior and minimize the harm it does until we understand the innate reasons it exists to begin with.\u00a0 In other words, it won’t go away until we learn to understand ourselves.<\/p>\n And what of Einstein, not to mention the likes of Columbus, Washington, Madison, and Jefferson?\u00a0 True, these men did more for the welfare of all mankind than any combination of their Social Justice Warrior accusers you could come up with, but for the time being, admiring them is forbidden.\u00a0 After all, these men were “bad.”<\/p>\n\n