“How many songs did she say we will have?” – she seemed unsure about the instructions the manager gave her.

“Three”, I said firmly. My friends had arranged 3 consecutive lap dances (songs) for me, as part of my bachelor party, in spite of all my philosophical and economical arguments to forgo this tradition. None of my pleadings could satisfy their “Aise kaise?” monster, and they obviously had done some preparations by the time I got to know about the whole party. Tricky situation I guess: they had to do it for me, and I had to do it for them, even if both sides realized the futility of it. I am grateful to them (without naming them here for obvious reasons) for organizing an event to celebrate and spending time with me. But in general, I wish the rituals for such parties, birthdays, treats, gifts etc. were more flexible and not doing one of them in the usual way wouldn’t be considered a social blunder or a sign of incompetence. I guess not many people agree with me here, as these rituals seem to be thickening up over time; any birthday party among Indian students now is not considered complete unless you not only cut the cake but also smear it over the faces and give “birthday bumps”. These are all fun things in general and I have been often an enthusiastic participant in these activities, but wouldn’t it be nicer if we could leave room for replacing them by something else or even nothing, without a sense of guilt?

So, anyway, here I was sitting on that cold metal chair, as Sophia came off the bed after fiddling with the music player and stood next to me. She was a wearing a swimsuit sized exotic black dress. In her physique, she wasn’t as heavy as some of the other girls that had been on the stage earlier in the dance hall and looked beautiful, so she was unambiguously chosen by my friends from the lot to do the dance ritual for me. I must confess that I had experienced lap dance earlier in my life, so it wasn’t really going to be a brand new experience for me. I was calm.

“Have you been here before?”, she asked.

“No, first time”.

“You know the rules?”.

“No”, I went with the safer option.

“Well, you can’t do any touching. Just sit and hold your chair here”, she said pointing to thin metal handles on either side of the chair below the seat level. This conversation felt a little awkward. And I was really surprised that they actually had handles in the chair for this!

I looked at the young lady as she began her sensual dance moves. Looking at her wasn’t easy, mind you, as she kept getting within my least distance of distinct vision while smoothly juggling between dancing at a distance and dancing on my lap. She performed for the next couple minutes while I just sat there observing her and the room. I wondered if I was being too boring a customer for her, and if I should at least say something to her. “Nice!” was the only word of encouragement that came out. She continued professionally without seeming to care.

The first song ended in around 5 minutes. She climbed up the bed to start the second song in the music player.

“Are you excited about getting married?”, she asked casually as she came down and started the next dance. It looks like she did pay some attention to the manager and knew that I was there for my bachelor party.

“Yeah!”, I wasn’t expecting this question.

“..so you can have love!”, she added with a smile. I wasn’t sure what exactly she meant by love – I just smiled back.

“Are you married?”, I reciprocated with some curiosity. I now realize it was a stupid question to ask. If I were in her position and were married, and a customer asked me the same question, I would be pretty uncomfortable saying yes. Anyway, she said more than no – “No.. I don’t believe in marriage. I think I can live with a person for a long time without getting married…”. I wasn’t sure if she really meant it.

“Are you dating someone?”, I continued my series of inappropriate questions.

“Yes.. but we are not thinking about marriage. I am still pretty young..”.

“How old are you?”, 3 no balls in a row!

“I’m twenty six”, she didn’t mind answering. I finally shut up.

She continued with her dance, and I kept sitting in my chair, still keeping my hands on the handle bars by the side, although not really holding them, to make sure I don’t appear trying anything against the “rules”. Another couple of minutes passed by as she performed various moves. These were probably similar to the ones in the first dance, but I was not paying much attention anyway, so couldn’t tell. I wasn’t exactly bored as she danced well, but I was not excited either, and was just doing what I was supposed to do by sitting there. I felt a couple of times that it would be better to talk more to her instead of continuing with the dances, but I wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate to disturb her performance and if she would consider me silly if I did that, and if she would be interested in talking anyway.

“How long have you been working here?”, I finally broke the ice again.

“Around a year and a half”, she continued to dance but slowed down and looked at me.

“You don’t have to do this.. you can sit”, I suggested, encouraged by her reply.

“Really?”, she exclaimed.

“Yea.. My friends wanted me to do this for the bachelor party.. But I don’t really care”, I tried to show I was open to stopping the dance without saying that I didn’t enjoy it. She seemed to like my proposal, and sat down by the side of the bed. “I know.. many bachelors come in the same way!”, she indicated I was not the only one in this situation.

“This is actually my second last week here. My school is finishing. And my name isn’t really Sophia..”, she continued the conversation.

“What school do you go to?”, I was wondering if it would be SDSU.

“It’s a beauty school.. in the downtown”. I had never heard of that school before, or any “beauty school” for that matter. “What kinds of things do you do?”. She answered that with a whole bunch of things of which only manicure, pedicure and facial sounded as familiar names.

“What do you do?”, she then asked me. I should have expected this question, but was still taken by surprise. “I work in neuroscience”, I said in an unclear voice. “Euroscience??”, she didn’t get it. “Neuroscience”, I repeated twice, “about the brain”. “Oh cool!”. She then asked me about my school, and when I told UCSD, she mentioned that a friend of her came from Sweden to study “journalism” at UCSD.. ” to follow the American dream!”.

“How much money can you make here?”, I kept on asking.

“Hmm… at a minimum, I can make around 100 to 200 dollars but it’s more like 400 in general. On a good day, I can even make up to a thousand dollars”.

“Per day?”, I was amazed by her numbers.

“Yeah, in one night.”

“And you work here every night?”

“No.. I have classes on the weekdays.. Monday to Thursday in the morning. And then I have to go in the night. So I can basically work on a couple of nights only”, she replied patiently.

“You work whole night?”

“No… only eight to two”, she said as if it was easy.

“Do you like working here?”, I kept bombarding her with the questions.

“Hmm.. when I have down to earth people like you (!!), it’s fine. Sometimes there are people who try to break rules and touch.. the management is strict about the rules, but we sometimes get that kind of people”.

“Do people do nasty things sometime?”, I was really curious about how she felt about doing this job.

“Naah..  sometimes people try to..”, she wasn’t very cohesive in her answer. “They forget that we are also normal people….”. She paused for a second. “The other club next door.. there people can do more things and not get caught.. here the rules are followed more strictly”. She held her nerves and didn’t appear upset.

We talked for 7-8 minutes to fill the 15 minutes allotted for 3 songs. She told me about her family – she grew up in LA and has some family in San Diego and some in Mexico, but she is not Mexican as such. I asked her if her parents know about her job, to which she said only her twin-brother knows about it. ” I grew up in a poor family.. when I came here, this was the easiest way to support my education since there are no job openings”.

“Well, it was also not easy in the beginning”, she corrected herself.

I now don’t recall all the things she told me about herself. One thing she mentioned, I can’t remember in what context, was that she is a vegan!

The third song in the music player ended signaling that the time was up. She stood up, gave me friendly hug, wished good luck for my marriage and I did the same for her school and future life, and we left the room. She was given a new assignment and I went into the dance hall to join my friends there. Another dancer was performing on the stage at that time. Some time later, an announcement was made to introduce the next dancer coming up on the stage, something to the effect of: “Please welcome… Sophia… all the way from France”, as her fans cheered for her. I couldn’t keep myself from smiling at the ease with which the announcer lied.

Where care can be unlimited,
never running out of patience
Yet help can be given and taken,
without fear of expectations

Where one is present for the other
whenever the support is wanted
Yet there is never the arrogance
to take each other for granted

Where thoughts n’ideas are shared
and heard with open minds
Yet there is freedom to believe in
convincing what one finds

जमा-जमा इक-इक पाट सजाता
कील-कील कोने-कोने ठोकता जाता
माँझी आज हुआ दीवाना है!
छिद्र कहीं कोई रह ना जाये
एक बूंद ना अंदर आने पाये,
कश्ती को बहुत दूर जाना है!

——————————————————-

वहशत = horror, सकल = whole, पाट = plank, माँझी = boatman, छिद्र = hole, कश्ती = boat

Dobzhansky wrote, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. I think the same holds true for sociology, and perhaps most other disciplines as well.

Origin of Morality

When the early humans learned to interact with their neighbors and formed tribes, they also must have had to make some simple rules about the conduct of the tribe-members to avoid avoidable conflicts. As the tribes grew, these rules likely became more numerous. And among these, there were some rules that were honored more than others, and passed on from generation to generation. Eventually, these well-accepted rules became so ingrained in these tribes that they started to be simply taken for granted by the majority in these early societies as to how things should be or should not be done. I suspect this is the origin of morality. And thus the criteria of morality, by their very origin, are dependent on the tribe or community.

Note that while these moral rules probably started as enforceable (‘legal’ in today’s terms) rules, some of them would eventually become ingrained enough to survive even if they weren’t enforced anymore, because the overall community is so used to them that it will respect them and pass on to the future generations. Thus it became feasible that the moral code could be slightly different from the legal code, even though they were the same to start with. This difference between legality and morality often varies greatly from community to community. In today’s world, an Arabic nation, for example, might have smaller distinction between law and morality compared to a European nation.

Growth, Conflicts and Resolutions

Moral precepts follow simple rules of logic. If A is morally right, and B can be deduced from A, then B is also morally right, in most cases. For example, it is bad to hurt someone, and since people figured that bad-mouthing someone can be hurtful to the subject, it can be inferred that it is bad to bad-mouth someone. One can infer rule B from A, C from B, D from A and B and so on. This recursive nature explains the presence so many moral rules. In a sense, it is good – this inference method allows one to check the morality of some new action by seeing how it relates to known action whose morality is known, without having to memorize every single rule. However, there is also a problem – the set of rules to start with is not self-consistent. What that means is that we can end up in contradictions through our inference approach. Consider the case of abortion. Freedom is moral; abortion is a matter of freedom of choice of the couple, so abortion should be moral. Killing is immoral; abortion is a matter of killing a baby that might otherwise be born, so abortion should be immoral. So starting with two well-established and accepted moral principles, we end up in contradictory conclusions. That is at the root of so much fight over what is moral and what is not, when different people try to justify their conclusion based on different starting precepts (besides other things of course).

The problem of internal inconsistency within moral code must have baffled early societies a lot. The problem arose because the set of moral rules was not scientifically designed to be internally consistent – these rules just got added over time haphazardly in the societies. In fact, the inconsistency would have been much larger, if it were not curbed from time to time, which happened in two ways I think:
1. By the institutions of nations/religions/creeds that attempted to provide a set of moral rules that were reasonably consistent internally. So within a homogeneous society following a single religion faithfully, there would be much less conflict.
2. By a process of correction/adjustment or clear specification: Even though slow and rare, moral rules can be changed with effort initiated by some people (who must convince the larger society). For example, while it was moral among some white communities to not interact with the black people, it is the opposite now. In other cases, for example killing, conflicts may be resolved by clear specifications such as killing an innocent person is immoral while killing a war-enemy or serious criminal is moral.
However, not all conflicts can be resolved amicably, especially the ones that have recursive ramifications for many moral rules, or the ones that have their preference ratio sharply divided in the society (a conflict with 95-5 distribution of supporters is likely to resolve more easily than one with 50-50). Also the larger the size of the population, for any given ratio, the more difficult the resolution will be (because more people need to be changed in their views).

A big problem arises in moral judgments when two societies that have grown in isolation from each other began to interact or merge with each other. These two societies may have many inconsistencies between their moral rules. For instance, there were a lot of moral conflicts (besides the political ones) in either community when British came to India and had the opportunity to interact. However, given a continued interaction (because of trade or cultural exchanges), the societies begin to mingle with each other, and their moral codes also begin to slowly align with each other through the process of adjustments. There are much less moral code differences between the people of Mumbai and London now, compared 100 years ago.

Future

This cultural homogenization leads to an interesting speculation. Since the size of the world is limited, and different societies are increasingly mixing with each other, ultimately leading towards a relatively homogeneous global society, the level of diversity in the moral code on the planet is also reducing. It seems that we might ultimately end up with, in engineering lingo, a steady state of moral code when the process of major changes in the code subsides (all resolvable conflicts having being resolved). If we look at the state-space of this global moral code, the steady state first achieved at the end of homogenization process might not be global minimum (conflicts reflect the energy of the system), it may just be a local minima that we happened to get trapped into! But the ray of hope here are the activists or revolutionaries who try to push the system into various directions, and even though most of these attempts will fail (as they lead to more conflicting states overall), a few rare ones might succeed in finding more optimal energy states (as in a Monte Carlo search method). Eventually we might find the global minima, after which the moral code will be sealed forever. Any more attempts to resolve conflicts or change the code will lead to even more conflicts, making the system fall back into the global minima again, and thus making it permanent for the life of earth!

Unless a giant comet hits the poor planet and restarts the game of creation of life: from non-living material to Homo sapiens.

——-

Disclaimer: (1) There are just my observations regarding the concept of morality/ethics in the world – my perception of “how things are”, and have nothing to do with “how things should be”. (2) I do not intend to claim any moral prowess here by stating these views – I am very likely more immoral than an average person.

p.s. These thoughts were seeded in a discussion with Aneesh, after watching a documentary on racial hygiene/eugenics, Homo Sapiens 1900.

Morality is a function of both the action under consideration, as well as the specific society in which the action is evaluated (the roots for this go back to the origin of morality). In other words, morality of an action cannot be judged without exactly specifying the society in which it is to be judged. For instance, the question “Is abortion moral?” is meaningless, because it doesn’t tell where the question is being asked – whether the society under consideration is the whole world or Russia or Iran. And the response to the question depends on that. The answer may be a “yes” in Russia, a “no” in Iran and “unclear” in US. There is no absolute measure of morality – it completely depends on the views held by the living members of the society under consideration – and in isolation from these views, any judgment of morality is meaningless.

But we hardly ever actually specify a region when asking such a question! Indeed, people often ask “Is abortion moral?” instead of “Is abortion moral in India?”. Isn’t that conflicting with what I said above? No. I think there are two subtle reasons to it:
1. There is usually an implicit region or society under consideration when such a question is asked, even if not explicitly stated. For example, if this question is raised in a religious meeting, it is very likely assuming the followers of that religion as the society for the purpose of this question. Or otherwise, the society implicitly assumed in such questions is usually the country in which the question is being raised.
2. Often people discussing such questions fool themselves into thinking that they are answering the question for the whole mankind, while they may simply be judging it for the society of their country or religion. For example, let’s say this question results in a “yes” in US after resolution of the debates. And it’s likely that some people in US discussed it just in the form of “Is abortion moral?” believing that they were thinking for the whole world. However, this “yes” has no validity for the Iranian society, unless the discussion was truly done is a global context i.e. the discussions actually included the view of the Iranians in making their judgment (in which case the answer might not be a “yes” in the first place!).

The abortion example shows how the notion of morality on the same subject could vary from place to place. But even more interestingly, it could vary at the same place, depending on your “zoom” level, i.e. how big a society you consider. Consider a hypothetical situation: A strong, vigilant and loyal student of his school finds a thief breaking into the school laboratory and stealing some costly equipment. He can’t bear the sight, so he goes ahead and beats up the thief, resulting in severe wounds to the thief, and saves the school property. Is that moral? I can say with some confidence that if such an incident took in the school that I went to in my childhood, his acts would be deemed quite moral whenever discussed in the school premises, while at the country level, they would be immoral (and perhaps punishable).

So to summarize, the morality of any action can be defined only in the context of the society in which it is judged. There is no absolute morality.

—————

Disclaimer: (1) There are just my observations about the concept of morality/ethics in the world – my perception of “how things are”, and have nothing to do with “how things should be”. (2) I do not intend to claim any moral prowess here by stating these views – I am very likely more immoral than an average person.

ज़िद उनकी कि हर बात दिल की कह दूँ
धूल क्या मिटेगी धरती की झड़ाने से

खींच कर ना देखो मज़बूती डोर की
कमज़ोर ही तो होगी गाँठ लगाने से

जवाबों से अंत नहीं होता सवालों का
अंधेरा कितना कम होगा शमा जलाने से

पर कुछ है भरोसा उनमें ऐसा कि
रात जाती है हर बार सूरज के आने से

चीज़ें मरघूब मिल जाती हैं
आशायें ना फल पाती हैं
आशायें पूरी हों कैसे,
आशायें खुद बदल जाती हैं
बेदाग लगे मिलने से पहले,
फिर कमियां नज़र आती हैं
अगर खुदा मिल जाते होते
कब तक खुदा कहलाते यहाँ?

पाने की आरज़ू हमेशा,
पर नहीं उम्मीद पाने की
ख्वाबों के किले में जहाँ!
मेरा खुदा महफ़ूज़, आज
कल से ज़्यादा अज़ीज़ वहाँ

Below is an almost literal translation of the above Urdu/Hindi text:

They ask me, O’ naive, where is your God?

Desired things are found, but hopes remain unfulfilled.
How can hopes be over, when the hopes themselves change?
(Things) appear spotless before they are found, but shortcomings appear afterwards.
If Gods were to be found, how long would they be able to maintain their name here?

There is a constant wish to meet, but no hope of meeting
where in the castle of dreams!
My God is secure there, closer to my heart today than yesterday.

Will the blue always persist?
Yes! in this world full of apathy
While cheer evokes doubts,
The blues invoke empathy

Next day radio aired the accident
Amid all the captivating coverage,
They had a small point to make
It wasn’t the driver’s mistake.

Stopping at a green light is wrong. Stopping at a red light is right. Why? That’s what the established traffic rules tell us. If everyone follows the rules, traffic moves more or less smoothly. If someone acts different, accidents happen.

So the point is that we are all better off if we follow what is considered right according to the society, which I will refer to as the “right thing” or the “moral” act.

What about the “free will” then? What about choice? Why should I subscribe to a norm, when I know for sure that the alternate way I want to do a thing is no worse than the accepted “right thing”?

This is like asking why must I drive on right-hand side in US, when I can prove that a left-handed driving systems is as good as a right-handed driving system. Truth is that in many cases like this, the various choices are all equally good. It does not matter which one has been chosen. What matters is that one of them needs to be chosen and then followed properly. Having both in parallel will ruin the traffic for everyone. Similar is the case with social norms. Several things that are prohibited by the society may actually be, in absolute terms, no worse than the accepted norms. The “right thing” in that case just happened to be one of the options that was chosen. But once chosen, it needs to be followed by everyone.

Isn’t that unfair? Why do I have to follow the option that some other people felt right? What if they didn’t have the prerequisites to even consider my option.

It’s like the condition of a Porsche driver with a top speed of 200mph, who has to stick to a 65mph on the freeway. Even though he knows he can control his car well at 150mph, and while accidents may happen, they will probably be because of the mistakes of other drivers who are not used to driving close to such fast cars. When cars of different abilities move on the same road, the rules are made to satisfy as many of them as possible, but it is inevitable that some will be left unsatisfied. Setting the norm at 150mph or at 30mph would have caused much more trouble. Unless I can find a solution that could better accommodate everyone, I must stick to the existing rules.

This leads to the next question. What if the alternative I am suggesting is actually better than the existing “right thing”? Doesn’t whole human progress depend on new thinking, by breaking the existing norms and finding something better?

A parallel question is, how can traffic situation improve over time. What if someone finds a better way to regulate traffic that requires drastic changes in the existing traffic rules? A better way to allow a wider range of speeds? That is great. That must be done. But it has to be done properly. Let’s say I found that alternative way. I can’t just go on the freeway and start using it; that will cause accidents. The new way needs to be recognized and incorporated into the traffic rules, before it can be safely used. Same for social norms. I need to convince people around me. Ofcourse, not the easiest thing to do, but can be done. Raja Ram Mohan Roy did it, so did Dayanand Saraswati. The social norms do evolve with time, partly by the inputs of such people, and partly by the gradual impacts of technology and interaction with different communities.

[ See newer posts on the evolution of morality, and its context dependence ]

___________________________________________

Disclaimer: (1) There are just my observations regarding the concept of morality/ethics in the world – my perception of “how things are”, and have nothing to do with “how things should be”. (2) I do not intend to claim any moral prowess here by stating these views – I am very likely more immoral than an average person.

ps: Thanks to Ankit, whose recent posts (here, here and here) got me into thinking today and gave the much needed impulse to actually write down something.