Moral Shrinkage vs. Moral Expansion

Beware

Moral concerns have a long history of expansion or shrinkage in western consciousness. Recently, the dominant culture was starting to move toward moral expansion, towards a broader circle of moral concern that included diverse others (e.g., non-binary which is common across species). Beyond humans, pockets of western scientists and others have been advocating moral concerns towards the sentience of plants and the agency of animals (e.g., Gagliano, 2018; Simard, 2021; Singer, 1975). But with the rise of domination politics and supremacist attitudes in recent decades, the world is being pulled back to moral exclusiveness.

Fearfulness fuels moral exclusion, especially if in babyhood the individual felt existential threat for any length of time (from physical separation from nurturers, non-responsiveness to signals for help—common practices in western-Europeanized contexts), fostering a biology of fear. The individual has to grow a big ego, a defended self, and find reassuring beliefs about their specialness (the opposite of what they feel deep down). Subsequently, their existential insecurity is easily triggered when they’ve been marinated in rhetoric that points to “those dangerous, disgusting people” to explain feelings of discomfort, distress and insecurity (instead of realizing that their dysregulation in the moment is due to their misdeveloped neurobiological response, not due to the Other) (Narvaez, 2014). Our Indigenous ancestors and cousins are welcoming to strangers and diverse others (Narvaez, 2019).

The ancient Greeks had a narrow morality, focused on the virtue of wealthy men, excluding women, children, slaves from the circle of concern except as property. The 18th century’s expansive morality in Europe included stands against genocide. Enlightenment philosophers emphasized natural rights and equality (e.g., Locke; Rousseau), widening the circle of moral concern. Christian sensibilities, too, were expansive, moving some to advocate for abolishing the Atlantic slave trade.

But these inclusive attitudes were countered in the 19th century. European and US territorial expansionism required supportive moral arguments. In fact, during the eras of world exploration, colonialism and missionizing (with religion, capitalism), moral shrinkage was prevalent. It was promoted by empowered elites, including scientists and politicians. Justifications for racism were sought scientifically, even incentivizing the field of anthropology (Lindqvist, 1996).

For example, Robert Knox, in The Races of Man: A Fragment (1850), claimed scientific evidence for the inferiority and inevitable eradication of the dark races. He was a member of the ethnographical Society where racial consciousness was dominant. His followers broke away in 1863 to form the Anthropological Society which was markedly racist. The first lecture emphasized the ‘Negro’s close relationship to the chimpanzee.’

Domination is a form of species-shrinkage, back to primate hierarchies. Humans evolved beyond those to egalitarianism, mind-reading, and lifelong sharing. These un-chimpanzee-like behavior are attributed to cooperative child raising because it shapes the brain and intelligences for human species-unique capacities (Burkart, Hrdy & von Schaik, 2009).

From the perspective of humanity’s nested pathway, moral shrinkage starts with the domination of babies. An orientation to domination emerges from early undercare and resulting misshapen human nature (and then culture). Cruelty can be ingrained in one’s sociality by early harsh treatment, common in European society until recently (deMause, 1995). Among the upper classes, piled onto these indignities were harsh nannies and traumatizing boarding schools (Turnbull, 1984). Only in the last century or so have an increasing number of countries forbidden corporal punishment of children.

Domination has never left the thin atmosphere of economic elites who justify their accumulation and hoarding. They pull out justifications for it from here and there. In the 19th century, it was Darwin’s theory of natural selection that became a rationalization for the worldview that continues to haunt WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) societies today, especially in the USA: The economically wealthier are the bigger dogs and deserve more.

Herbert Spencer, known to have been abused as a child, promoted a dog-eat-dog view that came to influence the interpretation of Darwin’s theory that became widespread in 19th century Europe and the USA. With Darwin’s emphasis on the evolution of organisms and Spencer’s interpretation of it as “survival of the fittest,” a common understanding of European-vs-other emerged. Spencer believed that progress occurs through punishment, that “Nature appears to be an immense reformatory in which ignorance and incompetence are punished with poverty, illness, and death” (Lindqvist, 1996, p. 67).

Genocide was viewed as the inevitable byproduct of progress.

Beginning in the 16th century, Europeans became the military masters, nomadic warriors, of the world. With a monopoly of ocean-going ships outfitted with cannons, they conquered a third of the world within a few hundred years. Early on, the art of killing from a distance grew into a European specialty. In the middle of the 19th century, the invention of better rifles made a difference. When flesh-tearing ‘dum-dum’ bullets were invented, they were reserved only for big-game hunting and colonial wars. Europeans considered military superiority a sign of intellectual and biological superiority.

Colonialists, eager for resources, justified their genocidal actions towards Natives as “progress.”

Examples of genocide by USA and European countries:

• Since the 17th century, settler-colonial forces in the ‘new world’ (Turtle Island) expanded across the continent under the aegis of ‘manifest destiny,’ often with the intentional elimination of Native Peoples. Structural genocide became the norm (Wolfe, 2006). Some overt genocidal attempts have been well-documented (e.g., California in the middle of the 19th century; Madley, 2016).

• The British Empire’s genocide in Tasmania (1804-1835) was justified by the ladder of creation whereby the higher races exterminate the lower, the “savage” races. “After Darwin, race became the wholly decisive explanation in far wider circles. Racism was accepted and became a central element in British imperial ideology…After Darwin, it became accepted to shrug your shoulders at genocide. If you were upset, you were just showing your lack of education. Only some old codgers who had not been able to keep up with progress in natural history protested. The Tasmanian became the paradigm, to which one part of the world after another yielded” (Lindqvist, 1996, p. 130).

• In the Algerian Sahara, the French wiped out the Zaatcha (1849) and the Laghouat (1852).

• Starting in 1891, Belgian King Leopold II declared a monopoly on rubber and ivory in the Congo, which Natives were obliged to supply in labor without payment. Refusal led to village removal, murder of children and cutting off of hands (as a sign to authorities that the problem was ‘taken care of’).

• The German extermination of the Herero people in Southwest Africa in 1904 (during Hitler’s childhood), followed the prior models of British and USian governments.

Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel, The Heart of Darkness, was inspired by the genocides conducted by Europeans across Africa. Hannah Arendt recognized his inspirations in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, contending that imperialism requires racism as a justification. She wrote that imperialism fathered totalitarianism and its use of genocide.

In examining Conrad’s inspiration from the brutality of the Europeans in Africa, Lindqvist (1996) rightly points out that the German holocaust of the 20th century was not the first of its kind but emerged from the widespread culture of imperialism.

“The air [that Adolf Hitler] and all other Western people in his childhood breathed was soaked in the conviction that imperialism is a biologically necessary process, which, according to the laws of nature, leads to the inevitable destruction of the lower races. It was a conviction which had already cost millions of human lives before Hitler provided his highly personal application” (Lindqvist, 1996, p. 141). NOTE: The notion that there are different races of humans is false. Different cultures and physiological appearance, yes, race, no.

“European world expansion, accompanied as it was by a shameless defense of extermination, created habits of thought and political precedents that made way for new outrages, finally culminating in the most horrendous of them all: the Holocaust” (Lindqvist, 1996, p. xii).*

Eliminationism begins with media personalities and politicians demonizing and dehumanizing a target group, as occurred against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 and for centuries in western culture against Jews (Dallaire, 2003; Goldhagen, 2009). Unfortunately, the world today has media and politicians moving us in the demonizing direction instead of away from it.

In the USA, we are living in a system pressuring us to shrink our morality. We should be worried now that the dehumanizing, contemptuous discourse that was common before past genocides has been rising in the USA. It has been promoted by voices across media over the last few decades, from talk radio to TikTok, rapidly accelerating through social media (Niewart, 2009; 2017).

A fearful, uninformed populace is easily triggered into believing what they hear.

We should understand that with hierarchical civilization in the last 1% of human existence, moral shrinkage against Nature became part of the dominating culture. Instead of recognizing the rest of Nature as a set of sentient, purposeful partners, over centuries humans learned to feel superior to the rest of Nature, condoning the extermination of anything in the way of one’s goals (insects, animals, plants). This imperialism and non-recognition of Nature’s sentience have brought us to climate havoc (Crist, 2019; Narvaez, 2025).

To morally expand, we must refuse to disrespect the lives of others, whether human or non-human. We must carefully select the media we immerse ourselves in. We have to be careful not to fall into the same traps of feeling separate from and superior to others, which can lead not only to insensitivity to injustice towards those others but even eliminationism.

Here is a forthcoming inspiring film, The Eternal Song, to help us recall and return to our species’ nestedness.

Lindqvist’s book inspired a soul-grinding television mini-series by the same name, Exterminate all the Brutes.

*NOTE: “The words “concentration camp,” invented in 1896 by the Spaniards in Cuba, anglicized by the Americans, and used again by the British during the Boer War, made their entrance into German language and politics.” (Lindqvist, 1996, p. 150)

References

Arendt, H. (1973). The origins of totalitarianism. Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich. Summary

Burkart, J.M., Hrdy, S.B., & Van Schaik, C.P. (2009). Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology, 18, 175-186. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.20222

Crist, E. (2019). Abundant Earth: Toward an ecological civilization. University of Chicago Press.

Dallaire, R. (2003). Shake hands with the devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda. New York: Carroll & Graf.

deMause, L. (1995). The history of childhood: The untold story of child abuse. Psychohistory Press.

Goldhagen, D.J. (2009). Worse than war: Genocide, eliminationism, and the ongoing assault on humanity. Public Affairs. Review

Knox, R. (1850). The races of man: A fragment. H. Renshaw.

Lindqvist, S. (1996). Exterminate all the brutes (transl. by J. Tate). Granta. Summary

Madley, B. (2016). An American genocide: The United States and the California Indian catastrophe, 1846-1873. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Summary

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. Norton.

Narvaez, D. (2019). Original practices for becoming and being human. In Narvaez, D., Four Arrows, Halton, E., Collier, B., Enderle, G. (Eds.), Indigenous sustainable wisdom: First Nation knowhow for global flourishing (pp. 90-110). New York: Peter Lang.

Neiwert, D. (2009). Eliminationists: how hate talk radicalized the American right. Routledge.

Neiwert, D. (2017). Alt-right: The rise of the radical right in the age of Trump. Verso.

Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation. New York: Avon Books.

Simard, S. (2021). Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering how the forest is wired for intelligence and healing. Knopf.

Turnbull, C.M. (1984). The human cycle. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240