Morality Matters for the Future

“Morality matters for the future no less than it did in the past. We were not made to live alone. To be sure, some have sung the praises of solitude, but for the most part our hopes, our happiness, our very identity are shaped by face-to-face interactions with others, which is where the moral sense is born, where we learn what it is to love and be loved, trust and be trusted, where we internalise those rules of conduct that allow us to engage in collaborative enterprise, where we gradually develop our instincts of empathy, sympathy, compassion, pity, kindness, generosity, hospitality, charity, and the rest. We are who we are through what we give to others.”

Morality, Chapter 22, p. 314