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I feel we tend to assume that 'the moral' or 'the ethical' are ideas or actions imbued with some special quality or ingredient, something which sets then apart from regular, has-itch:scratch-arse behaviour if you like. It's not surprising given the intellectual history of the exploration and articulation of the good, the noble, the virtuous, etc, from Aristotle to Kant and beyond.
Let's say that the has-itch:scratch-arse behaviour is an evolved trait or capacity. I don't think that's a controversial thing to say. Children don't have to be taught about itches or trained how to respond to them. It's just an 'is', so to speak. Nor would we generally think about scratching our itchy arses as being a matter for moral deliberation, even if we could, intellectually speaking, argue "It is good to scratch your itchy arse" (perhaps things would be different if Aristotle's infamous Treatise On Itchy Arses hadn't been lost to the void of time!).
Where has-itch:scratch-arse does become a subject for moral consideration though is in circumstances where scratching an itchy arses is considered a bad, even if our haemorrhoids are peeling like the bells of St Pauls. For example, 'digging a hole to Denmark' would not be considered appropriate while we politely waited in-line to meet the Queen, and thus, in certain circumstances, has-itch:scratch-arse is an impulse:response that becomes imbued with moral weight, and perhaps even a certain amount of moral necessity - specifically, the moral necessity of not 'giving in to temptation', which becomes a good all right-minded moral agents should acknowledge and aspire to. If we were to transgress this circumstantial moral standard by, say, clawing at our hoop while looking Her Majesty in the eye, then that would surely be something which brought harm to us (shame, embarrassment, guilt, dishonour) as well as to others (embarrassment, revulsion, an entitlement to condemn, anger) - not to mention our possible summary dispatch to the Tower of London.
OK, so the point I'm tippy-toeing towards is this: we assume that what passes for 'the moral' and 'the ethical' are things which appeal to a certain kind of virtue - kindness, compassion, altruism, some kind of social or communal good, etc - but they also include things which involve and invoke social stigma, taboos, denigration for some perceived or actual personal or social weakness, and other things that fall under not following the rules. Which in turn makes a virtue of 'not weakness', which here is a synonym for 'following the rules' - or as I like to call it: Power.
Shame, embarrassment, guilt, denigration, revulsion, anger etc, are the shock-collar society uses to impose norms and standards upon itself. The conditions of these norms and standards are defined and enforced by Power, and it calls them morality and ethics even as it sets up two competing sets of virtues: it's good to be compassionate and altruistic, but it's also good to be accepting and conform, and, importantly, it is good to have power and to be powerful. If Power is virtue interchangeable with kindness, compassion and altruism etc, then Power doesn't need to appeal to any wider moral principles beyond itself. In other words, Power justifies itself as moral and ethical because it defines and enforces those norms and standards as goods.
This is the morality of the patriarch, the sheriff, the courts, the state, the monarch, and the supreme celestial dictator. It isn't Power that stops us casually killing others, but Power does stop us scratching our itchy arses, as well as telling us that bombing a hospital from the air is a good thing if there is a terrorist on its roof.
As atheists, we question and ultimately reject the Power of celestial dictators to define and enforce their moral whims. As secularists, we question and ultimately reject the idea that the votaries of any and all celestial dictators are entitled to enforce Power over us. And yet, as members of society we buy into the moral whims of Power in so many ways we rarely notice it. Why is that?
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