The morality that we've been taught

Bragging and complaining are fun. They are too of the most fun things that people can do together socially. Bragging together with other people is also fun. Sitting around with a few friends and going back and forth with each person talking about his or her past accomplishments and speaking highly of his or her own abilities is a really enjoyable way to socialize (if you can find other people who are sufficiently amoral that they feel comfortable doing it with you.) Bragging is fun because we evolved to enjoy it, and we evolved to enjoy it because it was beneficial. When you brag you increase your social status directly and indirectly (assuming you brag honestly). You directly increase your social status by letting people know how great you are and implicitly how lucky they are to know you. You indirectly increase your social status by letting people know what you do well, increasing the chance that they will come to you for help with challenges that you are well-suited to face, and decreasing the chances that they will come to you when they need to you with unsolvable issues that they just need to talk through with somebody; people don't want to bother important connections with petty matters.

And yet, those of us who grew up in remotely religious settings or settings that otherwise preserved any semblance of traditional morality almost certainly were taught not to brag and not to complain. Bragging is fun and beneficial. It's something that people like to do together. It's something that increases the value of each other, something that increases the value of their friendship, and something that increases the likelihood of them spending their time doing things they do well. It benefits the people who do it. It benefits the people who listen, and it benefits the people who are later impacted by the improved ways in which people spend their time. Yet, almost all of us are taught not to do it. Why?

Because morality is systematically perverse.

In the modern world morality propagates itself  by being taught. Behaviors get spread by word of mouth and by discipline, by someone with some degree of power of other adults imposing his will on them and by someone with significant power over children imposing her will on them. These two forms of power are extremely gendered in the modern West. Authority over the grown-up world is distributed among a few men, none of whom directly control anybody, but with all influential men indirectly controlling behaviors of large populations. In the past an even smaller number of men had even more power, at times amounting to direct control over large populations. In contrast, most women occupy a role that gives them autocratic power over a few children. Adulthood begins around the time of puberty, not at the age of legal adulthood. Children in elementary school are assigned to a single classroom taught by a single female teacher for the whole year. When children reach middle school and high school, they begin circulating through classes taught by several different teachers each with far less power over them personally than their earlier teachers had, each also with more total influence over the grown-up world of the school than earlier teachers had (high school teachers have much less social status than college professors, but much more than elementary school teachers). As children go from the complete authority of one teacher in lower school into the distributed influence of many teachers later on, they also transition from living and studying in a female-dominated world into living and studying (and eventually working) in a male-dominated world. The rules of morality taught to young children are beneficial to the adult women who control them and not to the children that follow them, and the rules of morality taught to youths are particularly helpful to established (male) authorities and particularly harmful to anybody who has the ability to flourish independently from the establishment. Obvious gender differences exist in moral beliefs that are copied into these epochs of moral education. Men are about six times as likely as women to view their personal ethics as consequentialist. Unsurprisingly, children are taught deontoligical rules to guide their behavior; whereas, adolescents are taught to think about the consequences of their actions. A child can just as easily understand "because it will hurt you if you do" as "because I sad so" in response to a "why" about not touching the stove. A teenager can just as easily understand a "because it's illegal" as a "because it will fry your brain" explanation for why not to do drugs. The dichotomy comes from the source of influence. Children are not taught the morality that is best-suited for children. Children are taught the morality that women believe in. Whereas, teenagers are not taught the morality that is best-suited for teenagers. Teenagers are taught men's morality (which they first ignore and reject along with the moral teachings of childhood, until a little later on teenage males grow up a little more and embrace men's morality for the first time; whereas, teenage girls grow up a little more and return to women's morality. Obviously, these patterns are routines not categorical rules. Some women are consequentialists. Some men are deontologists. Some college professors are female, and some elementary school teachers are male, and some children are taught consequentialism from birth, and others never rebel against deontological ethics at all. But the patterns point to something obvious: morality is the teacher's morality. It is not the student's.

Here we get to the crux of the matter. How does morality propagate itself? Morality propagates itself by being taught. Not everyone who learns it teaches it (not by far) and not everyone who teaches it practices what s/he teaches (not by far). These types of information (analogous to viruses in biology) are selectively propagated according to how well they benefit those that spread them and not according to whether they benefit those that receive them. Things that people learn through imitation are the behavioral equivalent of genes, which get passed down because acquiring them is beneficial.

Once you realize that morality exists for the sake of the people who spread it and not for the sake of the people who adopt it, the pattern is obvious.

Obey. Be loyal. Forgive. Be generous. Don't brag. Don't desire power. Respect authority. Be generous. "Bless them that persecute you; pray for for them that despitefully use you" (Jesus, the sermon on the mount). "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" (JFK, the head of state, the state personified).

The word Islam means submit, and the pentacle of all virtue, goodness, and love in Christianity: "Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who being in very form and nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but took upon himself the form of a servant and became obedient unto death, even to death on a cross."

Christ on a cross.

That is morality. Let people beat you and destroy you. Become weak, become easily abused.

Why?

Because morality exists if people gain an advantage over you by teaching it to you, not because adhering to it is good for you.