As someone who considers himself a de facto atheist -- I'm not certain there's no God, but the facts as I know them seem to strongly support that contention -- one question I've been asked rather frequently is where my moral compass comes from.
The answer for me is that I like being kind. Treating other people well makes them feel good, and in general makes my own life better. Times that I've been mean or uncharitable, on the other hand, leave me feeling sick inside. I still remember with great shame times I've been nasty to people. It didn't, then or now, make me happier to be unpleasant, even when on some level I felt (at the time, at least) the person might have deserved it.
I agree with the wise words of the Twelfth Doctor:
The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what's to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn't have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.
This is why I was intrigued by a study that came out this week in the Journal of the American Psychiatrical Association, by Jessie Sun, Wen Wu, and Geoffrey Goodwin, called, "Are Moral People Happier?" And this -- finally -- provides an exception to Betteridge's Law: an article title in the form of a question where the answer appears to be a resounding "Yes."
The authors write:
Philosophers have long debated whether moral virtue contributes to happiness or whether morality and happiness are in conflict. Yet, little empirical research directly addresses this question. Here, we examined the association between reputation-based measures of everyday moral character (operationalized as a composite of widely accepted moral virtues such as compassion, honesty, and fairness) and self-reported well-being across two cultures. In Study 1, close others reported on U.S. undergraduate students’ moral character. In Study 2, Chinese employees reported on their coworkers’ moral character and their own well-being. To better sample the moral extremes, in Study 3, U.S. participants nominated “targets” who were among the most moral, least moral, and morally average people they personally knew. Targets self-reported their well-being and nominated informants who provided a second, continuous measure of the targets’ moral character. These studies showed that those who are more moral in the eyes of close others, coworkers, and acquaintances generally experience a greater sense of subjective well-being and meaning in life. These associations were generally robust when controlling for key demographic variables (including religiosity) and informant-reported liking. There were no significant differences in the strength of the associations between moral character and well-being across two major subdimensions of both moral character (kindness and integrity) and well-being (subjective well-being and meaning in life). Together, these studies provide the most comprehensive evidence to date of a positive and general association between everyday moral character and well-being.
What I find fascinating about this -- and relevant to the question about religion's role in morality -- is that these findings were robust with regards to such factors as religiosity. The sense of well-being that comes from acting ethically doesn't appear to come from the belief that God approves that sort of behavior. (At least not across the board; clearly different people could experience different sources of well-being from moral behavior.) The fact that just about everyone is happier when they behave with kindness and integrity indicates there's something inherent about good moral character that fosters a positive experience of life.
For me personally, I think it's a combination. As I said earlier, being nice to people and behaving fairly means the people around me are more likely to be pleasant and fair in return. But there's also an internal component, which I can sum up as "liking who I see in the mirror." Shame has to be one of the most deeply unpleasant emotions I can think of, and realizing I've been awful to someone -- even remembering those times years later -- leaves me feeling ugly. Perhaps I'm not motivated by the idea of some deity watching me, but I know that I'm watching me.
And that's enough.
Or, it usually is. I'm certainly far from perfect. I can act uncharitably sometimes, just like all of us. But I try like hell to treat people well -- even those who seem not to deserve it. I guess I'm aware that all of us are big messy morasses of competing motivations, emotions, and drives, and all of us have years of experiences that have shaped who we are in good ways and bad. It's usually best to give people the benefit of the doubt, and not to judge others too harshly.
After all, who knows who I'd be if I had their past and lived in their present situation? I might not even handle it that well.
It reminds me of something a dear family friend named Garnett told me when I was something like six years old. I had my knickers in a twist over something that had happened at school, and I was complaining about a classmate to Garnett. What she said flattened me completely, and I've never forgotten it.
"Always be kinder than you think you need to be, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."
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