Month: December 2024

Among all cultures in all times, the following moral tenets were regarded as morally upright, whether individual people followed them universally or not. They are the minimum tenets a society needs to follow to survive, and they are the tenets that all great civilizations exalted until just before they stopped being great.

(Note that, until the coming of Christianity, the first two applied solely to “your people,” be it a family, extended family, tribal band, clan, tribe, etc.)

A moral person would: never murder (commit kinslaying), rape, or steal; didn’t bear false witness; didn’t commit adultery or fornication; and did honor his ancestors. All people are born with consciences, and the conscience of man forbids all these things.

(Again, all societies had strong taboos about sexual fidelity. Those who didn’t were usually remnants of a culture that had already self-destructed or were members of a society on its way out. These taboos are so strong that societies had to invent pagan religious rituals to allow violation of them, as doing so casually and without the benediction of “the gods” was unthinkable and a sign of low character.)

These tenets are held by all civilizations, both because of historical evidence but also because they are the minimum basic practical rules for society itself to survive. You can tolerate a tiny number of individuals abrogating their duty or violating their conscience, so long as there are laws or mores in place that restrain or punish them, but when large numbers of people violate them casually and as a matter of course, your society is on the path to disintegration.

If a large portion of society starts killing each other, the society will devolve into warring factions. If a significant portion become thieves, people will wall themselves up and stop buying or selling, and a similar result awaits. Infidelity results in the destruction of the family and, a generation or two down the line, thievery and murder. A blight of false witnessing is conmen stealing money (which impoverishes society), society jailing people unjustly, or a crisis arising when people can no longer trust the leaders and institutions in their society because they’re lied to constantly.

When you cannot trust the people around you, your neighbors, the police, or the government, society eventually devolves into its lowest state, and your civilization collapses. What comes next is bloodshed and horror.