Social Darwinism doesn't get any better when paraphrased:

In the jungle domination and competition are the order of the day. For humanity, these traits are still present and daily the powerful dominate the weak

Another self-serving myth that needs debunking is this notion that civilization, and its prerequisites such as morality, are a thin veneer over the beast. It implies that morality is something artificial that must be taught, and thus uniquely human; and that no other living thing posseses a sense of morality. It's this myth that encourages you to talk about morality as if it's nothing more than algebra.

The reality that emerges from study of primate behavior is that in fact our entire taxonomical family is blessed with an innate moral sense. Over thirty years of observation, Frans deWaal was able to piece together how it works. It starts with empathy; social creatures such as ourselves are born with an ability to relate to others, to be able to not just imagine what others are experiencing but to experience it vicariously as if it's happening to us. A room full of human infants will start screaming when one screams; a chimpanzee will show unmistakable signs of distress when another chimp is in distress. Panic too is contagious among all primates, and that's the clue that we possess it because it's a positive survival trait. Understanding the distress of another is often early warning of a threat to ourselves as well.

deWaal found that chimps, like many humans, act upon their empathy, and it's this that gives rise to an innate sense of right and wrong. We break up fights among others, we comfort each other, we share food and shelter, humans and chimps alike. Several chimps will band together to drive off a bully and protect the underdog...er, underchimp.

It must've been the time you were writing that post that I happened to be reading a chapter in de Waal's "Our Inner Ape" that uncannily seems to have been written as a rebuttal to you. He takes on Mr. Spock and that "the good of the many outweighs the needs of a few" intellectualized simulation of morality--indeed, now that I think about it, talk of sacrificing 10,000 to save a million is in fact a numerical simulation of morality. But it is not morality, SDAI-Tech1, not in any sense that a normal human would recognize it.

People rush into burning buildings to save others, pull strangers from flaming wrecks, dive into the water to save a drowning person, go back down in the collapsed mineshaft to try and save those trapped...all without any sign of having made a numerical calculation beforehand. Comrades make a pact that they'll all live or die together, despite the reptilian calculation whispering at the back of their minds that two might escape if they sacrifice one. The phrase "thrown to the wolves" perfectly expresses your moral calculation, yet it is universally understood to mean betrayal and craven cowardice.

When it comes to morality, emotion trumps intellect. You can lay out the calculation with impeccable logic and numeric precision, with all the trappings of rationality...and the human heart says that you are wrong.

Captain Kirk risked his own life, his ship and his crew, to try and save his friend Spock. That was the wrong answer in terms of moral calculus, but we in the audience got it. We understood what it meant; our hearts said that Kirk had made a profoundly right moral decision. Tell me the truth Techie, do you really think Kirk did the wrong thing? Or, despite the veneer of cold intellect, does your heart tell you right from wrong?

When Winston Churchill made the decision to sacrifice the 3,000 residents of Coventry to protect the secret of Enigma, by all accounts it was a devastating experience for him. He had to overcome his moral instincts to be able to make that cold-blooded calculation, and when I think about what he went through (exercizing that faculty for empathy), I feel a deep sympathy for the man. Churchill himself made a tremendous sacrifice then, taking upon his own soul the burden of a decision that could be justified intellectually, but not emotionally. If calculation alone suffices to create morality, why did Churchill feel so bad?

The fact that most of us can relate to Churchill's pain is very strong evidence of an innate moral sense in our species.

Well, I see I've devoted a post's worth to addressing just one of your points. Perhaps it was my distate at the thought of having to address the bulk of your post, all that stuff about the "higher" and "lower" "orders" of humanity. You already know how I feel about that nonsense; did you throw it in just to bait me?

It's so silly. Homo sapiens spread around the planet in the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. There has not been nearly enough time for the differences you imagine to have arisen.

Inhabitants of the interior of New Guinea were unknown to the outside world until early in the 20th Century. When first "discovered" they seemed to be primitives, living with only rudimentary agriculture and almost no technology; in other words, perfect candidates to be your "lower" order. But it was circumstance only. New Guineans easily master technology once they encounter it, and today they use computers and fly airplanes and drive cars just like every other member of our species. They had simply spent the last 40,000 years in a place with a poverty of natural resources; they had all the intelligence but little to work with.

There is no innate significant difference between examples of homo sapiens anywhere on the planet, only differences in the way that the standard-model human reacts to different circumstances. It's only rationalization to maintain that "that's just how it is and there's nothing we can do about it". The truth is that humans aren't inherently "higher" or "lower", and the "lower" can be "uplifted" simply by improving their circumstances. Poverty and wealth aren't mandated by God or Nature, and terabytes of RightWing rationalization won't change that truth.

And so we come back around again to deWaal and the primates. He's no romantic about apes or humans, and theorizes that the morality instinct and its expressions such as altriusm, sharing, and self-sacrifice, exist because they provide our species with positive survival-enhancing benefits. Humans, apes, wolves, some big cats, all cooperate to their mutual benefit; the species improves precisely because they've developed social skills to rise above the Conservative's "nature, red of tooth and claw". Dogs don't really eat dogs, and it's not really a jungle out there in the human world, unless we choose to make it a jungle...and to realize the Conservative dream and make it so requires us to abandon human nature and become something we're not.

One of the fundamental differences between Conservatives and Liberals is that Liberals pursue an enlightened self-interest consistent with deWaal's view of the moral instinct. We understand that our lives are made a little easier if we don't have to worry that one of our fellows might become desperate enough to kill us to get what we have; we and our primate relatives have learned that sharing pays off. We, humans and chimpanzees, not only recognize inequity, but understand through empathy that others recognize inequity too; and that those on the short end of the stick will eventually do something about it, to our pain and woe. It might surprise you to know that the "lower" orders aren't content with their lot in life. Strangely enough, they're self-aware enough to be able to tell you you're full of it. Our only choice is to stick our head in the sands and spout Social Darwinist nonsense until discontent erupts into violence, or to take the initiative and do something about it before it gets that bad.

It's no coincidence that Liberalism blossomed against the backdrop of race riots in the 60s. A person would have to be a fool to miss the connection between poverty and burning cities. Our burning cities, and the Great Society was a pragmatic solution to try and protect ourselves against that violence. You might call that giving in to blackmail, but I see it as being true to our own morality as well as advantageous.

Oooooohhhhh...I have gone on way too long. Sorry about that, but you do have a way of inspiring me, SDAI-Tech1. Just goes to show you that a person doesn't have to be right to contribute something useful. Bad examples are just as important as good ones...;-)