Morality and the Crowd

The source of morality is disputed among secularists, some claim that it comes from evolution, some say it is based on society, some postulate other sources. People who have a materialistic view of morality cannot have a consistent moral standard, and end up with disastrous speculations when they suppress the truth.

Riot in the Galleria, Umberto Boccioni, 1909

I reckon it should be common sense that you can't follow the crowd. (Isn't following society's dictates a form of just "following the crowd"?) I don't like crowds, you never know when they can get mean. Things get out of hand, next thing you know, the saloon's ceiling is shot full of holes, the town marshal and his buddies show up, and guys spend a few nights in lockup, even after they get sober. Individually, if you asked these rambunctious patrons about right and wrong, they'd have told you differently than what they did that night in the saloon. Those jaspers knew better than to get rowdy and do bad stuff, but they done did them things anyhow.

You may want to keep an eye out for something, that people will (as I call it) recruit others to their "cause". It's very childish, like a school child who is angry with a teacher and wants people to join in with the hate. Mayhaps they'll scrape paint off the teacher's car or something. Then they get caught, and know they did wrong. Deep inside, they know they were doing wrong all along — even the hating part.

In the US, we see the Antifa sidewinders ("anti-fascist", my joyfully bouncing buttocks, they are the ones acting like fascists and then blaming others), Black Lives Matter racists, and others recruiting for their irrational causes. On the internet, you can find atheopaths who are furious at being shown the incoherence of their views, then banned from Pages or forums, seeking others to join with the trolling of those who were "unfair" and performed "censorship" on them.

What if you were able to talk to these people one-on-one? They know what is right and wrong down deep inside (Romans. 2:15). Get people into a crowd (or the larger crowd of a society), and the actions of others, groupthink, prompt them to suppress their inner knowledge of morality and follow what everyone else is doing.

“But everybody else is doing it!” Have you ever heard or made this argument? If “everybody else is doing it,” you should be allowed to do whatever “it” is too, right? A new study revealed that “our view of what is morally right or wrong is shaped by how widespread a particular behavior is.”

To read the rest of the article, click on "Is Morality Determined by Its Popularity?"