It's not about good versus evil

But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where:
No creature owns it in the first degree,
But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he!
Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

As noted by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man, morals are relative, and may not even be about morals. You all know the famous George Carlin quote “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” Here we are looking at a sliding scale situated somewhere between the extremes of staying in second gear and total recklessness. A different scale, one that we might characerize as more a moral scale, operates when we find a wallet on the ground. For someone not scrupulously honest many factors come into play, starting with how much cash is in it? Did anyone see you pick it up? Does the wallet contain the owner's ID? Is the owner an attractive potential mate? Is there anyone nearby you could hand it in to, and could they be trusted not to pocket it themselves? Not everyone praises honesty in such a situation. Some might call a poor person who passed up such a windfall an idiot for having missed a chance to change his life. Like the driver in Carlin's example, we judge others' reactions to this situation by comparing it to what we would do faced with the same variables (Amount, presence of ID. etc.). They are either too honest (handed the wallet in with no ID) or really stupid (could have been 700 dollars better off).

In nature we see a sliding scale between peaceful symbiosis and raw predation that has little to do with scruples and everything to do with survival imperatives. Parasitism and invasiveness complicate the picture somewhat, but at a more abstract level we can describe the sliding scale as stretching between a conservative attachment to the status quo and a violent urge to overthrow it. Ancient History has highlighted the dichotomy between agriculturalists and pastoralists, or settlers and herders. The conflict in Darfur is only one recent resurgence of this age-old opposition, now mirrored in the hubris of Corporate Power as it continues to herd and manipulate the supine, tasting-panel-simulated consumer-hobbit. Tolkien saw it all coming!