Master morality vs. slave morality

In my previous post, I talked about how the alpha animals desire to crush and oppress the weak animals, for the sake of the domination of their genes.  These natural instincts go beyond mere survival, as many alpha males use their power to forcibly take as many females, food, and land as possible even when their basic comfort and survival are already secured.

Clearly, we see similar tendencies among humans.  Dictators with absolute power are notorious for hoarding power, sex, and wealth beyond any practical necessity and at the great expense of their subjects.  Until very recently, every civilization in human history has utilized slavery to enable the powerful to profit at the expense of the weak.  Dynastic empires feel entitled to invading weaker countries, often even pillaging their resources and brutally abusing the people of the conquered nations. Aristocrats and businessmen are often exclusively concerned with their accumulation of resources, often content to completely ignore or even exploit the needs of the less fortunate.  Criminals feel entitled to using brute force to steal goods from others and even to traffic human beings into sex slavery.

Willfully engaging in this sort of behavior, which is primal and selfish in essence and clearly mirrors the way of the animal kingdom, is what Nietzsche coined as "master morality".  In short, master morality values pride, strength, nobility, and self-indulgence. 

To modern Western civilization, master morality seems barbaric and completely inhuman.  Yet it is essential to look back at history and realize that until the rise of Christianity, the mantra of master morality was widely adopted by nearly every civilization on the globe.  This should not be surprising, because master morality is a very natural and instinctive worldview for people (like any animal) to possess.  It took something supernatural, something that cared more about mere survival or selfish domination, to subvert the mantra of master morality. 

The notion that weak, poor, and unlikable people should be selflessly and unconditionally loved and provided for is a key tenant of Jesus' teachings and is what Nietzsche termed "slave morality".  Slave morality cherishes Christian values, such as kindness, charity, forgiveness, and compassion.  It is called slave morality because it actually benefits the powerless, rather than the powerful.  It is an inversion of the natural order. 

Modern Western civilization has assumed the morality of slave morality, as evidenced by the widespread existence of churches, hospitals, non-profits, aid to disadvantaged nations, and government programs for the poor and handicapped.  Indeed, Christianity has been so successful in spreading slave morality that it is easy to to forget that this way of thinking didn't even exist to most cultures before the revolutionary Jesus diffused his radical teachings around the world.

The most epic battle between "slave morality" and "master morality" culminated in World War 2.  Hitler believed in the natural order of things, in the survival of the fittest and the removal of the weak.  Hitler once said to his inner-circle that  “The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest.  Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature.  Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.”  Thankfully, the "slave morality" of the Christian nations in Europe and North America won over the Nazi party, and for the better part of a century has remained the de facto standard of ethics.

But will slave morality last forever?  Over the past few decades, Europe and now North America have become increasingly secular.  For the most part, secular humanists and atheists have clung to the Christian notions behind slave morality, but can these values survive divorced of their Christian inspiration?  Nietzsche, among many other philosophers, believed that once nations moved past the influence of Christianity, their compassion for the weak would also perish.  I challenge people who do not believe in Jesus but value compassion and charity, do these values derive from the natural world, or do they transcend nature?  I would assert that atheism and naturalism must lead inevitably back toward the "master morality" cherished by Nietzsche, Hitler, and the animal kingdom.  Only Christianity seems to provide the logical framework and divine nature that justifies the "slave morality" that even many non-believers hold so dear.