Loyalty and Disloyalty: The History of Morality

Imagine yourself transported to live with an early human hunter-gatherer group of 100 or so individuals, back about 250,000 years ago. Think of them as similar to one of the few forager societies still in existence today. As a basis for this exercise, it will do for now. Can you see any reason why human actions and emotional reactions to those around them in the group were likely to be fundamentally different then to our relationships now? No, me neither, and so you and I should fit in there pretty well. The theme of this book is simple enough I hope, back then the Group and Loyalty to it was our whole world, was everything, because without it you would starve to death, or be killed by predators. Loyalty to the Group was everything, and Disloyalty was a crime - the only crime. My proposition is that that same Disloyalty, projected forward into the enormous 'groups' called countries we live in today, must still be the basis of most, if not all crimes. Therefore Loyalty and Disloyalty must also lie at the core of human morality. The same feelings now as then, the same reaction in you as in me, we stretch out the same accusing finger you and I, we point and we say 'that is wrong'. And despite all the arguments we humans have over right and wrong there is a point, a split second as it were in those disagreements, when we all point at the same thing, at the same derivative of Disloyalty. I put it to you that this 'same thing' is nothing other than the basis of human morality, all of it, in every society everywhere.

Table of Contents:
Foreword; PART 1 - THE CONTRACT; 1. Introduction page - 1; 2 Loyalty to the Group 5; 3 Other Groups 14; 4 Bullying and Manipulation 20; 5 Definitions 25; 6 Who is bullying whom? 30; 7 Incest 35; 8 Sex in Public 38; PART 2 - BEYOND THE CONTRACT; 9 Self-governance, Sin and Skilfulness 47; 10 Obscenity 53; 11 Pornography and Censorship 59; 12 Dress Code 62; 13 Prostitution 68; 14 The Law 70; 15 Divine Command - Medecine Man 75; 16 Divine Command - Metaphysics 80; 17 Blasphemy and Belief 85; 18 Left and Right 89; PART 3 - THE CONTRACT THROUGH TIME; 19 Torture and all that 97; 20 Democracy appears 101; 21 Large Groups 106; 22 Groups judge Groups 112; 23 Kant and Utilitarianism 116; 24 Dirty Bomb 120; PART 4 - HUMAN RIGHTS and FORGIVENESS; 25 Animals and Humans 129; 26 Universal Declaration 134; 27 Human Rights 140; 28 Unnatural 144; 29 Not Playing God 147; 30 Limited Forgiveness 153; 31 Trust 158; 32 Can't help it 163; 33 Unlimited Forgiveness 169; 34 Death Row 174; 35 In its entirety - 179; Appendices; Appendix 1 - Green Issues and Terms of Trade 185; Appendix 2 - Sub Groups and Asylum Seekers 188; Glossary 199; Bibliography 203.

About the Author :
When I was 14 or 15 my grandfather said something that has stayed with me for all the years since his death. He spent his life mining coal in Haydock, a Lancashire village on the eastern edge of St. Helens, where I was born in 1952. He said 'you can learn all there is to know about life without going any further than Billinge' another village, on the northern edge of St. Helens. Well I went off to University, became a Structural Engineer, and lived in the Midlands and then the South West for awhile, but after the 1970s were over came back to where I started. He was right, that tough old man, I could have figured it all out without moving away, see what you think...