Morality: Does It Come From the Heart or the Head?

For me, to be guided by the heart while constrained by the rational is the best approach. It is not always successful. Sometimes the heart gets suckered, and sometimes the rational is cold. My state is not static, and my response is not always the same faced with similar decisions. What is key is to not discount others, to see them as equally valid in my eyes as I am. This is not easy and we run into limits. Almost everyone has a hierarchy of importance, (self, family, friends, community, others.) When I give to a stranger, I make a decision to give some portion of what serves me to serve them. But, here is the rub, the altruistic or charitable impulse also serves the giver. We are a social species, and altruism is a survival trait. To become successful we rely on others: We are all in it together. This is often recognized most clearly from an intuitive, emotional aspect of mind more readily than from the rational. The two are not mutually exclusive, even though we tend to get the gut/emotional/intuitive (GEI) reaction first. This says that the GEI reaction is an older evolutionary one, which has obviously served us.

Nothing is simple though. The oldest, fight or flight reactions are excellent survival mechanisms, but these often need to be checked by higher GEI and rational faculties to become ethical. Responding immediately out of fear usually does not yield a good ethical response, but sometimes it does, (as in the soldier who throws himself on a grenade.) These things are not simple. Further research will probably yield some very interesting results.