Do you really have a kind heart?

That's Philosophical #42

Gyges was a young shepherd out in a field. This was when he saw a giant crack in the ground after a recent earthquake. He decided to descend and check it out. There, he finds a skeleton holding a golden ring. Gyges takes it with him and later realizes that the ring has made him invisible. Gyges goes on to do some immoral stuff like stealing and it goes as far as taking over the kingdom.

This is a myth from Plato’s The Republic, written more than 2000 years ago. This story offers philosophers an interesting lesson: being just is not fundamentally in our nature. When Gyges realized he can get away with anything unpunished, he exploited that and stopped caring about being just or moral. Nothing could stop him, why would he hold himself back because of some stupid thing like honesty or justice?

2262 years later, another smart guy wrote about a similar thing. In his book Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche makes another bold argument, saying that we are not naturally virtuous. “Fear is the mother of morality”, - he writes. And this thought is brilliant.

Nietzsche’s arguments are often negative and pretty one-sided, often dissing humans, but let’s look at it deeper. Scrape everything from us and we are just the same as animals. Deep down, we are selfish and greedy. But why do societies work then? Why are crime levels going down?

It’s the fear of consequences.

If we were in Gyges’ situation where we didn’t have any fear over what our actions are going to cause, then most of us won’t pass the test and show that we are inherently selfish. We don’t care about others if there are no consequences for us. Nobody will know.

You know that moment when you can steal something but you don’t do it? According to Nietzsche, it’s not happening because you are morally virtuous. It’s the fear of what’s gonna happen next that holds us back. This is a sad reality of our psychology that Nietzsche believed in.

This reality check makes you think about your own morals. Are you really a good person or are you just scared of being caught? Would we act the same without laws? Probably not.

I believe that this philosophy applies to most people, but not all. There are certainly people who are inherently good, who were raised to do good and that’s their way of living. If this is you, I am jealous. And I am constantly striving to do better and be as kind as I can toward others. Just look at people who can donate their kidney to a total stranger. Is there anything for them to gain? Not really, some people are just here to do good stuff.

This makes me think of pro-social behaviour. When we do good stuff like volunteering or donating money, we don’t really gain anything from that. So can we call this action selfless? Or is the fact that we gain inner satisfaction from this already means we are getting something out of this interaction? Can humans really be naturally pro-social and righteous? In the end of the day, aren't we social animals meant to survive in groups?

What would you do with the ring of Gyges?

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of That’s Philosophical, see you soon!

How to Stop Capitalism