The second law of thermodynamics says that isolated systems will deteriorate at an increased rate in time. Entropy is just the opposite of order; entropy is disorder, the breaking down of things. In order to oppose this law, systems must engage in interactions with the environment at large as well as each other. All living things are, in a sense, defiant of this law at least for as long as they live and desire to live.
Morality, I would argue, functions the same way in human society. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the monster says to Dr. Frankenstein that he is abandoned and alone. Men abhor him and so he commits murder against them. He tells the doctor that he was supposed to be his Adam but rather, have become his fallen angel.
'Misery made me a fiend. Make me happy and again i'll be virtuous.'
I believe this is a condition mankind is also inclined to. Morality is a function of society, and inclusion in society makes morality a function of each man. Ousted from his fellow kind, a man is a monster. This is also why religion is such a efficient propellent of morality, because it simultaneously promote social cohesion and moral values. But, we will save that discussion for another time.
I think you've a truth here as regards morality, but then I always think of morality itself as a stop-gap sort of a quality which with luck will come into play when other things fail but in favorable circumstances has little or nothing to do. There seems at least a very widespread truth too in Montaigne's observation that "every time I go among men, I come back less of one". Not, I expect, less ready to conform to general ways and standards... hence and otherwise the dependable readiness of totalitarian regimes and religious cults to endeavor to prevent their citizens/adherents having too much time to themselves, in which the prescribed standards and beliefs might find themselves actually questioned rather than constantly reinforced by words and behavior.Forcible exclusion from human society does seem more often than not to promote attitudes and conduct hardly to be thought of as desirable: then, perhaps voluntary abstention - any detachment from received ways - renders one no less a monster, if it can be allowed that the quality of monsterhood itself is ethically neutral. Soloviev remarked of wine that it made a good man into a better one, a bad man into a beast: perhaps the tendency of social inclusion is by contrast to level us all into tolerable citizens, average in our cares and our hypocrisies alike...
I know what you mean. Unfortunately social inclusion can only pull a man into some sort of gray area, and that medium could migrate to extremism with persuasion and coercion, like Nazis... Cults and religious fanatics, though, i wouldn't put on the same scale as that. because then you still have to see how included that group is within the larger social framework. collective minds can still be marginal. where as forced marginal identity, i think, "relieves" a person of his social obligations, which i consider morality to be a part of.
i don't know, if we really had this figured out. there would be no crime and suffering left in the world, right? :P
What are you talking about? there really is no crime or suffering left in the world! Have you read the newspaper today? Ethics and morality are topics of yesterday, this is the 21st century. We're robots now, everything is fine.