Moral Biology
Tom Donohue

Parts of this essay appeared in unrevised form in Green Egg. Since then I've
made some alterations in my thinking, primarily in response to a letter from
a reader, Mark Davidson. Mark, Thank you!

In August of 1990, I attended the Symposium on the Societal and Ethical
Issues of  Recombinant DNA, at U.C. Santa Cruz. I was excited! I expected
discussion groups wherein scientists shared their own moral and
ethical values. I hoped for a search for values and meaning in what
we, as scientists, knew of nature. I ended up disappointed.

The entire conference focused on ethical considerations about
biotechnological processes like cloning, herbicides or genetic
manipulation. The only moralists present were Christian theologians,
who insisted that we had no choice but to consider these issues in the light
of traditional religious morality and community and family values. I
approached one of these theologians after her lecture. She had made the
statement that all ethical systems required some moral ground and that
the only real sources were community tradition and holy writ, even if
the holy writ was of a secular sort like the US constitution.

When I told her that I had spent my life looking at Nature, via Biology, to
find my own moral ground, she reacted as if I had said something that
was at once, vulgar, blasphemous and dangerous. After a moment of
near horror, she scurried away as if from an apparition of a Priapic satyr.

Whenever I use the word, “morals” most Pagans and secularists remark,
"Don’t you mean ethics?”

No I don’t! Ethics are principles that we believe, about how we
SHOULD behave. We do often choose to adhere to our ethical principles.
Sometimes we don't Morals inspire what we actually Do! We espouse
our ethics,and try to apply them, but morals drive our actions. People will
usually do what feels right; sometimes they do what they think is the right
thing. When what we think is right and what feels right are the same
course of action, the moral/ethical choice is easy. When the two are
incongruent we need to resolve the dilemma.

The very words, “moral” and “morality”, cause Pagans to cringe because
they have been taken over by the religious right who seem to think that
morality is all about sex, and is used by them, to justify everything
from abortion clinic bombings to homophobia. To the great majority of
non-Pagan Americans, morality is about SEX! Pagans are among the most
moral people I know, also the most sexual.

We humans are, by nature, a moral/ethical organism. Some of the most
popular TV series of all time, E.G. Star Trek and its spin-offs, were
basically morality plays. Ethical dilemmas frequently provide the basic
plot line for anything from police dramas to sitcoms. Kindness,
compassion and altruism seem to be inborn in humans. We are
not the only such species. Richard Dawkins discusses the altruism
gene at some length in his book The Selfish Gene.  

Life is a moral process. We all make moral choices every day, taking care
of children instead of  relaxing, recycling aluminum cans, donating money,
time or effort to our favorite causes. Most people’s career choices
result largely from moral considerations.

As William Damon wrote, in the August 1999, Scientific American,
“ All children are born with a running start on the path to moral
development. A number of inborn responses predispose them to
act in ethical ways. For example, empathy-- the capacity to experience
another person’s pleasure or pain vicariously -- is part of our native
endowment as humans. Newborns cry when they hear others cry and show
signs of pleasure at happy sounds such as cooing and laughter.”

Other animals exhibit altruism, doing for another even at some expense
to one’s self. Parental care is the most obvious. Mother birds spend long
hours incubating eggs while their mates search for food for both of them. 
Bird fathers will feign attack against possible predators at the risk of
their own life. This is why male birds are so flashy and colorful. Mother
crocodiles disgorge food for their hatchlings; so do wolf  mothers,
fathers, aunts and uncles. Male musk oxen risk their lives defending
their herd. Milk production by all mammals is at great biological expense.

The great American novel, Huckleberry Finn, was essentially the tale of
one boy’s struggle between his own innate morality and the values
of the society that surrounded him. In the eyes of the law, Huck was stealing
Miss Watson's property; in his heart, he was liberating a friend from
slavery.

Piaget, Kohlberg and others have noted that human moral development
passes through distinct stages as we mature. Supposedly, the most mature
of these stages begins in early adulthood, when we begin to base our moral
view on abstract principles, most of which arise from cultural norms. These
principles are often in complete conflict with our innate senses of
compassion and altruism. I am reminded of a movie that I watched
while a graduate student at San Francisco State University. The title of the
movie was, “The Fifteenth Button”. It was a dramatization of a
psychological research project carried out by Dr. Stanley Milgrim at Yale
University in 1963. In this experiment, student volunteers were told that
they were participating in an experiment to determine the effect
of painful punishment on a subject’s ability to memorize nonsense
syllables. The students were paid a small stipend for their services. One
student was seated at a work table with an electronic device with a series
of fifteen buttons. The first twelve of these buttons bore no markings,
the thirteenth was labeled “DANGER”, the fourteenth,
“EXTREME DANGER” and the fifteenth, “VERY EXTREME DANGER”.
Another person was seated in a room visible to the first through a one
way mirror. The second person was not a student but a professional
actor whose hands were rigged with electrodes that allegedly delivered
a painful electrical shock. The operator of the buttons was told that this
was another student volunteer. The operator’s instructions were to push
the first button when the other made a mistake in reciting lists of
nonsense syllables. As the experiment progressed, each mistake was to be
punished by pushing the next button up the scale. The actors reacted as
if each sequential push of the buttton was delivering a more severe
electrical shock than the last. As the tenth button was
approached, the actors began to scream and cry and plead, “ No! No!
Please no more!” When the students asked the scientist supervising them if
they could stop, they were told flatly,” This is what you agreed to do.
You have no choice. No permanent tissue damage will occur.” Most
returned dutifully to their console. After the thirteenth button, the actors
feigned a brief period of unconsciousness, after the fourteenth they
pretended to remain unconscious.Finally, the students were told to push
the fifteenth button, sometimes several times, as a punishment for not
even trying to recite nonsense syllables. The majority of students
willingly pushed the fifteenth button. Apparently such principles as
obedience to authority and the obligation to do whatever one had
agreed to do was sufficient to override their inborn sense of compassion and
fair play. All of the test subjects were male. I’ve often wondered what women or
children would have done under the same circumstances.
We will probably never know because Yale University forbade
Dr. Milgrim, or any other member of their Psychology department ,
from ever repeating the experiment.

Sometimes community and cultural values can be at odds with our
natural morality as well. I am reminded of the events that occured
during a human physiology lab some years ago. My school has three
human skeletons for use in this lab, two of them are plastic and the other
one natural bone. A former colleague, the late Bill Stevens, was
skilled in forensic anthropology. He studied the natural bone skeleton and
determined it to be that of an adolescent female. The bones showed no
indication of systemic disease or malnutrition. There was no
obvious cause of death. The skeleton had been purchased during those
years when human skeletons were very available and very cheap.
In those days, most of them came from India. Someone at that time,
noticed that an inordinate number of the skeletons being sold, were
those of young women and adolescent girls. The government of India
began an investigation which uncovered one of the more heinous
crimes of modern times.

A criminal cartel had established a number of fake abortion clinics
throughout India.Potential clients were instructed to keep their plans
absolutely secret, to tell no one about the “clinic” or their plans. In a
climate of extreme disapproval of extramarital pregnancy, most of the
young women complied. On the day of the scheduled abortion, the young
women were asked one final time, if they had told anyone at all. If they
had confided in anyone, they were aborted and sent on their way. If
they had covered their tracks perfectly, they were placed under
anesthesia never to awaken. They were carefully dissected and their parts
were sold to medical supply houses.

Having learned this story, I decided that it would serve as a good
introduction to the human skeleton lab. After a few simple jokes
involving the plastic skeletons, I moved to the natural bone one
and said,” You know, I make a lot of jokes about the replicas, but I
would appreciate it if you treated this skeleton with the respect due
a person’s remains, because this skeleton is that of someone just about
your age. It is also quite likely that she was murdered.”  I looked out at the
class before beginning the tale of the abortion clinic murders and noticed
that one of the students, a girl,  was an immigrant from India. I told the
tale much as it is written here, but instead of specifying India, I simply
said, "a certain third world country.”

“WHAT      THIRD       WORLD      COUNTRY?” the student asked.

Before I could answer, she strode over to the skeleton, cradled its skull in
her hands and , looking deeply into the empty eye sockets, said,
“ INDIA!”. She then added, “It is from India, isn’t it Mr. Donohue?
Look at these teeth, exactly like mine. Look at the shape of the maxilla,
just like mine. This girl was from India. No doubt about it.” She then gave
me a long look and asked, “Can you do me a favor Mr. Donohue?”

“Anything,” I stammered.
“Can we call her Radhe?”
“Sure. Why?”
“For my cousin Radhe who learned that she was pregnant and thought that
she could confide in her parents. Instead of sneaking off to an abortion
clinic she told her father and the son of a bitch killed her.”
“I’ll call her Radhe for the rest of my teaching career, and, if you don’t mind,
when people ask me why I call her Radhe I’ll tell them about what you’ve
told me today.”
“It gets worse," she continued. "When my father told me about her I
was horrified and asked how her father could do such a thing. “What else would
you expect a father to do?” he yelled, and then I realized that if I got
pregnant that bastard would do the same thing to me!”

So much for cultural norms and parental values.

A study of the history of human moral values reveals an interesting fact.
Human morality has been evolving over the past few thousand years
according to a specific pattern, one of continued expansion.
Among the very earliest humans we can guess that altruistic behavior
was primarily extended towards one’s family, much as it is among
other organisms. The ten commandments basically applied to behavior
within the tribe. “Thou shalt not kill.” apparently did not apply to
Canaanites or Phillistines. “Love thy neighbor,” was a tenet of
ancient Judaism. Later, Christianity and Islam extended the definition
of “thy neighbor” to include all of the faithful.  The mahayana movement
in Buddhism included a similar expansion. The humanist movement
attempted to expand the realm of those towards whom we behave morally
to encompass all human kind. We are all one family.

Now that we are aware that we are closely related to all living things,
horizontally via the atmosphere, the water and the great lithic cycles,
vertically in our mutual descent from the same common ancestor,
and that we are aware that we are only a small part of the living planet,
it is time to expand our morality again. It is time to extend our altruism
and our benevolence to every other organism on earth and to the biosphere
herself. It has been said that self love lies at the root of all good behavior.
Evolving morality is the continued increase in what we recognize as being like,
or part of, ourselves. Perhaps altruism really is enlightened self-interest.

Unfortunately, compassion and altruism are not our only instincts.
Consider the case of Mao's Red Guard, the killing fields of the Khmer
Rouge, or the Japanese soldiers responsible for the rape of Nan King.
In all of these cases, teenaged boys and very young adults,were given the
power of life and death over a large number of people. In none of these
cases did these boys show any compassion. They were taken away from
their families just as the sudden surges of testosterone entered
their systems. With no family structure to inform them otherwise,
they acted without restraint.

Male violence and aggression seem to be stimulated by the steroid
hormone, testosterone. Testosterone also stimulates the sex drive in
both males and females. It occurs in much higher levels in
men than in women. Men produce it in our testes and, to a lesser extent,
our adrenal glands.Women's adrenals supply all of their testosterone.
That high levels of testosterone stimulate aggression, is not surprising.
Most male terrestrial vertebrates defend their mates and offspring against
predators, in fact, they are often equipped by Nature, with
special structures for this purpose. I've already mentioned musk oxen
where the males have larger horns and male songbirds with their
elegant plumage.

Naomi Wolf, in her second book, Fire with Fire, notes that, "...studies show
that men's testosterone and aggression levels fall with time; they become
more nurturing as they age. Women's testosterone levels rise with
time and they become more assertive in middle life. Research also
increasingly suggests that care taking responsibilities create caretaking
behaviors in men that mirror those traditionally attributed to women."

              I suspect that these caretaking behaviors have less to do with testosterone
levels than with another hormone, oxytocin.  Oxytocin is almost unique
among hormones. I say "almost" because there is a similar hormone,
vasopressin. These two are the smallest of all proteins being made up of
only nine amino acids. (Some antibodies are made of thirty thousand
amino acids.) Oxytocin is produced in the brains of both men and
women, but women produce much more of it_­_ and estrogen makes
them more sensitive to it, especially during pregnancy. It has been
called "the cuddle chemical" because it is released in response to any
romantic/erotic activity from flirtation onwards, peaking during orgasm
in both men and women. It is best known for it's ability to induce uterine
contractions during the last phase of labor. Pitocin, a synthetic form of
oxytocin, is often used in hospitals to induce labor. Oxytocin also facilitates
the release of milk in response to nursing.  It induces bonding behavior
between mothers and offspring and very probably between members
of a couple.  More specifically, oxytocin makes us feel good about the
person who causes the oxytocin to be released. Not only does touch
stimulate production of oxytocin, but oxytocin promotes a desire to
touch and be touched, preferably by the same person and in the same
way. Good sex with someone makes us want more sex with the
same partner. Nursing induces the desire to nurse. Handling a baby
makes us want to handle that baby more. A feedback loop is established
wherein oxytocin encourages behavior which causes its secretion. More
recently it has been observed to be involved in the formation of trust
between people.  Perhaps most significant is its ability to induce
"maternal behavior" I.E. nurturing, care giving, compassion and
altruism. It makes mice build nests, sheep accept their lambs and
prairie voles to pair bond.

A number of Pagan writers have extolled as "female" characteristics
,protection and nurturing of the young, cooperative labor, egalitarianism
and compassion. They have also labeled as "male", the desire for power over,
hierarchy, competition, aggression, violence and war.

            Starhawk sees the difference between "male" and "female" values as:
                               
          "... the difference between the dominator and the partnership models of society...
war is the organizing principle of [our patriarchal] society; its hierarchical
structures determine the management of corporations, schools, prisons,
hospitals,  universities,churches and, of course, governments....
When birth becomes our underlying metaphor, however, the world shifts. The
cosmos becomes a living body in which we all participate,
continually merging and emerging in rhythmic cycles."

It might be more valuable to view these behaviors as testosterone induced
and oxytocin induced as opposed to male and female. People of both
genders secrete both hormones and are capable of both sets of behavior.
Our hormones, like our stars, do not compel; they impel. Many social
systems based on compassion and gentle justice were advanced by men:
Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Hillel,
Mohandas Ghandi, etc. Our challenge is to construct a society that
values and encourages compassionate and non-violent behavior,
while providing safe outlet for the effects of testosterone.

This same dichotomy of dominator and partnership models can be seen in
several situations. One obvious case is the political polarization of
America into "liberal" and "conservative."

At first glance, neither side seems to be internally consistent. The right is
against abortion because of the "right to life" yet most of them advocate
capital punishment. The left supports constitutional rights but votes for
gun control. It has been said that the defining difference between the two
camps is whether they spank their children or not. Liberals value
empathy and compassion, conservatives mandatory obedience
to specific rules. The right believes in a prison system based on punishment
the left, rehabilitation. Democrats support public education, health care for all,
disability insurance and gay marriage. Right wingnuts say they believe
in "backbone" and individual responsibility, nose to the grindstone and
survival of the fittest.

They view sexual nonconformity as a major violation of their rules. Their
view on abortion seems to be based in an attitude of "you got yourself
pregnant, now you've got to suffer the consequences." In general, the
right abhors sex, the liberals, violence.

The Amazon basin is home to numerous tribal cultures. Some are farmers;
some are potters, some are gatherer/hunters. Because there is local
trade, most peoples specialize in some product or other and identify
themselves by what they create, calling themselves names like the
"pottery people," the "invisible people" etc. About half of all tribes are
peaceful, productive, kindhearted people with a more or less
egalitarian social structure. The other half are all Yanomamo, which
translates "fierce people" or "mean people." The Yanomamo live by
attacking and robbing the other tribes. They also are strictly hierarchical.
Child and spousal abuse are the norm in their society. Women have
very low status. Rules are numerous and strictly enforced. The male
dominator model reigns supreme.

Both groups share the same gene pool and the same environment, yet two
cultures have evolved that are as different as night and day. What seems
obvious to me is that the potential for either lifestyle exists in almost
all of us. Inside, we are all both nice people and Yanomamo.

At first it seems to be discouraging news. If the Yanomamo attitude lives
inside every one of us, how can we create a society without cruelty and
violence? Where can we find a model for a peaceful, loving culture?
Since our instincts are genetic in origin, can we really change our
nature as a species? I think we can!

We need to look at one more situation in which the same dichotomy occurs.
This time between two different species of the same genus, the chimpanzee
Pan troglodytes and the bonobo Pan paniscus. These two primates are our
closest relatives. Genetic research has revealed that we share
about 98% of our genes with each of these apes. They, in turn, share 98%
of their genes with each other. Studies of the so called "junk" DNA
suggest that our common ancestor lived about six million years ago during
that part of the pliocene frequently called, "the fossil gap". Readers
will note that this is the time period when our aquatic ancestor may
have evolved. To be more specific, the genera Pan and Homo diverged
about six million years ago, the species P. troglodytes and P. paniscus
about three million.

While the two species resemble each other physically, their social structures
differ dramatically. Chimpanzees are well known for male power politics.
Generally, males are larger than females, and males dominate
females most of the time. Male chimps are territorial and will regularly
patrol the boundaries of their territory watching for other bands of
chimps. If they encounter a foreign group, violence is the immediate
reaction. Many individuals will be brutally beaten, sometimes to
death. This type of violence between different populations can only be
regarded as intergroup warfare. Infanticide is also common.
A male chimpanzee will kill the offspring of other males in order to mate
with the bereaved mother. Chimpanzees have been described as
coarse and hot-tempered. Violence of all sorts is common.

In contrast to this, bonobo society is peaceful and egalitarian. One of
the bonobo's outstanding traits is their sensitivity to other individuals.
Their society has been described as a gentle matriarchy, wherein
female rank is based on seniority not physical intimidation. They have
been called the "make-love-not-war" primate because they use an
amazing variety of erotic interactions to resolve tensions, to cement
relationships, to soothe hurt feelings and simply for the sheer pleasure
of it. Bonobos substitute sex for aggression.  (N.B. Both behaviors are
facilitated by testosterone.}  Bonobos engage in sex in every possible
partner combination, males with other males, males with females,
females with females and adults of both sexes with juveniles. In adult/
juvenile sex, penetration is never attempted and ejaculation is rare.
Sex between bonobos sometimes seems more affectionate than erotic.
"French kissing" is frequent, as are fellatio and cunnilingus. Males often
rub their rumps and scrota together. Females will often rub their clitorises
together; males engage in penis fencing.

There is a widespread myth that female orgasm only occurs in humans.
It seems to be quite common among bonobos. I have even heard it alleged
that only humans enjoy sex. If this is the case, why do adult female
and adolescent male bonobos masturbate so frequently? The females
undergo uterine contractions at orgasm suggesting that oxytocin plays
some role.

                        " If the sounds and facial expressions of bonobos are any indication,
not only masturbation but also sexual intercourse must be
quite gratifying. Females frequently bare their teeth in a
pleasure grin during coitus, particularly towards the end when the
male slows down for his final, deeper thrusts. Furthermore, females
often utter characteristic screams and squeals before
or during coitus,as well as when they engage in genital/genital
rubbing with other females.  Sexual partners often face each other,
so they can closely monitor each other's facial expressions and sounds,
and the exchange becomes  quite intense and intimate."  

........Frans De Waal

             Some habits and innovations in groups of primates are passed on genetically,
but others are actually taught to younger generations. Primatologists
are ever more willing to regard these sets of traditions as culture. The
entire social structure of bonobos may be more cultural than
instinctive. How did bonobos escape the all too common human traits,
xenophobia and murderous violence? One thing is obvious, sex, in fact,
loving touch in any form, goes a long way towards reducing the human
male tendency towards violence. I am reminded of the "women who slept
with men to take the war out of them." Pagan polyamory may turn out to
be the key to a kinder gentler society. Make love, not war.