Does Morality Depend on Culture?

One of the questions in yesterday’s survey has shown interesting results today:

Morality depends on…

Culture – 59.07%

Intelligence – 28.84%

Men and women – 11.40%

Modern youth games – 0.70%

I personally voted for “intelligence” and here’s why.

Morality, as well as culture, is a man-made concept and achievement, which has developed and is still developing due to the collective intelligence of men and women all over the world.

As a historian, I have studied a good amount of different cultures, and in terms of their moral concepts, they are all the same. Do you want me to mention religions as well? Aren’t they part of the culture, too? What are their main concepts? The same! Where do these concepts come from? I’m sure everyone knows the answer.

If you say that morality depends on culture and not intelligence, it’s like saying that ancient Greeks were more moral than ancient Romans, for example, or vice versa. What about the Egyptian, Indian, Arabic, Slavic, etc. cultures. How can you classify them as to which one is more or less moral?! I certainly can’t.

On the other hand, if we talk about individuals, it makes much more sense, doesn’t it? It’s easier to compare and judge certain people against others in terms of morality. And what are the criteria then? One of them would be intelligence, right?

Let’s go a step further and turn to some formal definitions about culture. Google’s dictionary, for example, says this:

1. the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.
2. the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society.

And here’s Wikipedia’s contribution: “Culture is the social behavior and norms found in human societies”.

So, whose product is morality in the end? What is the key ingredient for it to exist or what does it depend on? What’s at the core?

Tania Ivanova