While emotionless ethical codes tend to be ineffective, morals can and have been engineered. This is done by careful manipulation of the binding layers.
The “Ten Commandments” by itself is a prescriptive set of Ethics. The story of “Moses bringing the Ten Commandments” is a binding mechanism for that set of tenets, including an appeal to emotion (fear of God’s wrath, as demonstrated in the story). Additional stories highlight each commandment, binding them with references to positive and negative emotions. The Torah as a revered source of stories packages these stories and adds another layer of binding with meta-stories about its own origin.
The document is considered a holy and perfect source, with rituals for precisely copying, using, and destroying the physical scrolls. Several covenants between God and Man are detailed in the scrolls and provide emotionally-backed reciprocity. The stories are interwoven with sacrificial acts, including a ritualized and bloody sacrifice of the first born son with a lamb as a proxy, which hits primal communal and animal emotions. Outside of the text of the Torah, which contains stories and meta-stories, a set of rites and rituals related to the Torah itself increases emotional impact and exposure. This is a deliberate act of engineering by the Deuteronomist editors, who had to amalgate stories from multiple cultures (at minimum a nomadic, sheparding culture and an agrarian crop-based culture), to create the Temple religion.
Rabbinical Judaism—Moral Engineering
The destruction of the Second Temple was disasterous for the Temple-based moral system. Despite early use of writing and a fairly advanced scholarly culture, the reliance on a specific physical location had prevented any real territorial expansion. Significant parts of the moral code were supported by visceral sacrifice at the Temple for both internal consistency and emotional binding. Only two cultural branches seem to have survived continiously from that point.
The Pharisees were flexible enough to engineer a Rabbinic Judaism that was sufficiently traditional, while shifting focus from the temple practices to the scrolls themselves. In modern Judaism, the Scrolls are anthropomorphized to the role of the tribal elder. They are dressed in ritual clothing to invoke feelings of empathy, and have their own dwelling place when not in use. That dwelling is analogous to the “holy of holies” that existed in the temple, and any reading takes place in a community ceremony. Before reading, there is procession and veneration to invoke emotions for a tribal elder. New rituals are patched in to deal with the contradictions of a missing temple, and to refocus on tradition, insularity, continuity, and precise inter-generation copying.
For example, the Passover ceremony is originally a celebration of the “opt in” of the Israelites through blood sacrifice, which is repeated for each new generation and reaffirmed through an annual renewal of vows (including the ascetic diet of unleavened bread). This is completely re-written in the Seder Hagaddah to obfuscate the “opt in,” instead focusing on community and a mandated identity. After patching over the consistency issues from the missing temple, and the fidelity issues from the opt-in meme, the modern Hagaddah redirects the holiday to be about the destruction of the Temple and militant reclamation of Jerusalem from the Romans. Commandments that don’t support this message are met by rote if you follow the Hagaddah. Ones that do are presented in a more appealing form, including an emotional vinnette portraying Talmudic Rabbis peacefully discussing the Exodus in a reclaimed holy land (all participants in this scene are associated with the Bar Kokhba revolt, an uprising fifty years after the destruction that lead to a couple years of independent rule). The seder concludes with a communal recitation about destroying unbelievers and a cry of “next year in Jerusalem!”
Needless to say, this ceremony did not evolve organically from the original form, and it provides a great example of moral engineering that survived an evolutionary environment. Rather than creating a single and distinct ethical code like the Ten Commandments, the Hagaddah creates a single ceremony that uses community, active participation, repetition, narrative, and multiple senses (smell, taste, sound, sight, and kinesthetics) to instill the desired Moral behaviors.
It is probably worth noting that the Hebrew “Hagaddah” (Telling your son about the Exodus, in the religious language of the Torah) and Aramaic “Agaddah” (Telling others about the oral law, in the spoken language of the Temple Jews and early Rabbis) share a semitic root in “Telling/Tales.” Traditionally an “Agaddah” is a talmudic writing that contains an “overt” layer and one or more “covert” layers; naming this document a “Hagaddah” adds to the overt/covert concept
Embedded within other cultures, modern Judaism is fairly stable because changes to its core tenets lead to assimilation (tribalism), destruction (paranoia, lateral thinking, and a mother tongue), or inability to thrive (scholarship/education). A few major sects exist, but divided mainly on ethnic grounds without serious doctrinal differences.
Christianity—Ritual as self-correction
The other surviving branch with significant continuity is Paul’s sect proclaiming Jesus as the final sacrifice, obviating the need for a Temple (the third branch, Islam, percolated through tribal religions for several centuries before re-emerging). Rabbinic Judaism specifically cuts down on word-of-mouth transfer, limiting itself to inter-generational transfer to convey a large body of memes. Christianity transfers a much smaller set of concepts and rituals through more incidental contact.
Without Judaism’s immune system that reduces contact with competing memes and their effectiveness, Christianity mutates rapidly. It has splintered into thousands of denominations and sects that have in turn hybridized with other belief systems. After Paul lost control of the initial sect, periodic councils were held between opposing branches. The losers were often excommunicated or executed, and the winning side refined Catholic doctrine until the next split.
Early decisions are generally about beliefs instead of morals; some seem fairly random (Jesus was divine in body, the material world is not evil in nature), while others seem to be the most acceptable resolutions to Jesus-related inconsistencies (worship of the trinity is monotheism). When the central church emerged and gained political power, decisions shifted more towards behavior modification. The showdown with Martin Luther reaffirmed behavior-related salvation, specific behaviors such as indulgences, and the Church’s ultimate authority in setting ritual. Catholicism focused on common ritual, and stayed together with a fairly consistent set of values. Protestant sects focused on common values without mandated rituals and exploded into thousands of branches.
Some Examples:
Temple Judaism—Moral Development
While emotionless ethical codes tend to be ineffective, morals can and have been engineered. This is done by careful manipulation of the binding layers.
The “Ten Commandments” by itself is a prescriptive set of Ethics. The story of “Moses bringing the Ten Commandments” is a binding mechanism for that set of tenets, including an appeal to emotion (fear of God’s wrath, as demonstrated in the story). Additional stories highlight each commandment, binding them with references to positive and negative emotions. The Torah as a revered source of stories packages these stories and adds another layer of binding with meta-stories about its own origin.
The document is considered a holy and perfect source, with rituals for precisely copying, using, and destroying the physical scrolls. Several covenants between God and Man are detailed in the scrolls and provide emotionally-backed reciprocity. The stories are interwoven with sacrificial acts, including a ritualized and bloody sacrifice of the first born son with a lamb as a proxy, which hits primal communal and animal emotions. Outside of the text of the Torah, which contains stories and meta-stories, a set of rites and rituals related to the Torah itself increases emotional impact and exposure. This is a deliberate act of engineering by the Deuteronomist editors, who had to amalgate stories from multiple cultures (at minimum a nomadic, sheparding culture and an agrarian crop-based culture), to create the Temple religion.
Rabbinical Judaism—Moral Engineering
The destruction of the Second Temple was disasterous for the Temple-based moral system. Despite early use of writing and a fairly advanced scholarly culture, the reliance on a specific physical location had prevented any real territorial expansion. Significant parts of the moral code were supported by visceral sacrifice at the Temple for both internal consistency and emotional binding. Only two cultural branches seem to have survived continiously from that point.
The Pharisees were flexible enough to engineer a Rabbinic Judaism that was sufficiently traditional, while shifting focus from the temple practices to the scrolls themselves. In modern Judaism, the Scrolls are anthropomorphized to the role of the tribal elder. They are dressed in ritual clothing to invoke feelings of empathy, and have their own dwelling place when not in use. That dwelling is analogous to the “holy of holies” that existed in the temple, and any reading takes place in a community ceremony. Before reading, there is procession and veneration to invoke emotions for a tribal elder. New rituals are patched in to deal with the contradictions of a missing temple, and to refocus on tradition, insularity, continuity, and precise inter-generation copying.
For example, the Passover ceremony is originally a celebration of the “opt in” of the Israelites through blood sacrifice, which is repeated for each new generation and reaffirmed through an annual renewal of vows (including the ascetic diet of unleavened bread). This is completely re-written in the Seder Hagaddah to obfuscate the “opt in,” instead focusing on community and a mandated identity. After patching over the consistency issues from the missing temple, and the fidelity issues from the opt-in meme, the modern Hagaddah redirects the holiday to be about the destruction of the Temple and militant reclamation of Jerusalem from the Romans. Commandments that don’t support this message are met by rote if you follow the Hagaddah. Ones that do are presented in a more appealing form, including an emotional vinnette portraying Talmudic Rabbis peacefully discussing the Exodus in a reclaimed holy land (all participants in this scene are associated with the Bar Kokhba revolt, an uprising fifty years after the destruction that lead to a couple years of independent rule). The seder concludes with a communal recitation about destroying unbelievers and a cry of “next year in Jerusalem!”
Needless to say, this ceremony did not evolve organically from the original form, and it provides a great example of moral engineering that survived an evolutionary environment. Rather than creating a single and distinct ethical code like the Ten Commandments, the Hagaddah creates a single ceremony that uses community, active participation, repetition, narrative, and multiple senses (smell, taste, sound, sight, and kinesthetics) to instill the desired Moral behaviors.
It is probably worth noting that the Hebrew “Hagaddah” (Telling your son about the Exodus, in the religious language of the Torah) and Aramaic “Agaddah” (Telling others about the oral law, in the spoken language of the Temple Jews and early Rabbis) share a semitic root in “Telling/Tales.” Traditionally an “Agaddah” is a talmudic writing that contains an “overt” layer and one or more “covert” layers; naming this document a “Hagaddah” adds to the overt/covert concept
Embedded within other cultures, modern Judaism is fairly stable because changes to its core tenets lead to assimilation (tribalism), destruction (paranoia, lateral thinking, and a mother tongue), or inability to thrive (scholarship/education). A few major sects exist, but divided mainly on ethnic grounds without serious doctrinal differences.
Christianity—Ritual as self-correction
The other surviving branch with significant continuity is Paul’s sect proclaiming Jesus as the final sacrifice, obviating the need for a Temple (the third branch, Islam, percolated through tribal religions for several centuries before re-emerging). Rabbinic Judaism specifically cuts down on word-of-mouth transfer, limiting itself to inter-generational transfer to convey a large body of memes. Christianity transfers a much smaller set of concepts and rituals through more incidental contact.
Without Judaism’s immune system that reduces contact with competing memes and their effectiveness, Christianity mutates rapidly. It has splintered into thousands of denominations and sects that have in turn hybridized with other belief systems. After Paul lost control of the initial sect, periodic councils were held between opposing branches. The losers were often excommunicated or executed, and the winning side refined Catholic doctrine until the next split.
Early decisions are generally about beliefs instead of morals; some seem fairly random (Jesus was divine in body, the material world is not evil in nature), while others seem to be the most acceptable resolutions to Jesus-related inconsistencies (worship of the trinity is monotheism). When the central church emerged and gained political power, decisions shifted more towards behavior modification. The showdown with Martin Luther reaffirmed behavior-related salvation, specific behaviors such as indulgences, and the Church’s ultimate authority in setting ritual. Catholicism focused on common ritual, and stayed together with a fairly consistent set of values. Protestant sects focused on common values without mandated rituals and exploded into thousands of branches.