The Loch Ness Monster is now called The Awakening.

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The right used to be sleepless: Vigilance (French for Vigilance) was the name of a populist and xenophobic party in Geneva that in 1985 became the second most powerful political force in the canton. In 1991, the militia was disbanded. Today, our leftists have “woken up” and are looking for social injustice and racism in our society. Meanwhile, conservatives imagine themselves in a nightmare and see in the Awakening the new Loch Ness monster.

“The awakening is described by those who despise it as the supreme beacon that heralds the final fall of the golden era of freedom and the rule of law,” writes the German Hanno Sauer (40) in his recently published book on The Invention of the Good. and Evil. A professor of philosophy and ethics at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands shows that the awakening is just the latest event in the long history of human morality.

According to the ethicist, it all started five million years ago: our ancestors descended from the trees and united in groups. “The specific form of cooperation that has shaped human morality,” says Sauer, “is to put aside the interests of the individual in favor of the greater common good, from which everyone benefits.” At a very early stage, this altruistic behavior towards relatives was manifested so that one’s own genes could live on.

But humanity continued to evolve, which meant that it wasn’t just blood relatives who came into contact with each other. How can one demand morality in such an environment? By punishment. “As far back as about 500,000 years ago, we learned to make non-cooperation disadvantageous through social sanctions,” writes Sauer. It is not uncommon for the most aggressive and ruthless to be killed, while the rest survived: “We are the descendants of the friendliest.”

A thin, tired and miserable person looks compared to furry and formidable animals. “Spears and arrows made physical force unnecessary, the norms of exchange and help got the better of the dominant male,” Sauer says. However, the transition from prehistoric small groups to pre-modern large civilizations with the division of labor and the accompanying increase in wealth has led to an increase in inequality.

The abolition of slavery, the introduction of suffrage for women. Many inequalities have disappeared due to changing moral attitudes, but others have remained to this day, with the result that society is becoming more divided. But the author is sure: “Political polarization is surmountable (…) Polarization is largely an emotional phenomenon.” We hate other people even though we have more in common than what separates us.

We must remember this after five million years of moral development.

Source: Blick