The seeds of the 'morality; to love contains the 'moral' need to commit violence

Nancy Pelosi, argues that the Wall that Trump wants to build is not moral.

What a loaded word 'moral' is - it is like some weapon employed against one's enemies - a quasi religious depth charge:
that is if you are naive enough to believe in its overbearing value.
So where from does this emotive notion 'moral' derive from.  It is not causa sui
(self originating) so from where?


Researchers have proposed that the biological prototype for all sociality among mammals can be found in mother-infant interactions. Evolution co-opted the parts of our brain that engage during these early interactions and use them for the rest of our social relationships

But moving on, say to the current playing fields of American Politics, where some argue that a civil war will ensue.  For the most part, people who commit violence view themselves as victims and their targets as moral wrongdoers. Again, for the perpetrators violence is morally motivated. The left are the chief

bearers of the moral cloak, like medieval murmuring monks they employ the word 'moral' to justify every argument as they do so they cannot conceive of themselves as being the villian in their moral strivings.  In a book titled Virtuous Violence  the authors claim that violence is mostly morally driven. People are violent because of their morality, not in spite of it.

Moral Violence

As they put it, “When people hurt or kill someone, they usually do so because they feel they ought to: they feel that it is morally right or even obligatory to be violent.”

They go on to write, “The perpetrator is violent to make the relationship right—to make the relationship what it ought to be according to his or her cultural implementations of universal relational moral principles. That is, most violence is morally motivated. Morality is about regulating social relationships, and violence is one way to regulate relationships.”

It can be hard, though, to accept that morality motivates violence. Maybe there’s something wrong with thinking of violence as moral. Isn’t the point of morality to care for people, or at least not hurt them?

The Unlovely Hormone

Let's take a look at what makes people care for others. One factor is a hormonecalled oxytocin. It’s a neurotransmitter that some have called the “love hormone.” It appears to have evolved to bond mothers and infants.

Throughout pregnancy and after giving birth, oxytocin floods the brains of mothers. This creates a powerful attachment to their children. While oxytocin likely evolved to enhance the mother-infant bond, it’s not just mothers. The rest of us have oxytocin in our brains, too. And we respond to oxytocin.

Researchers have proposed that the biological prototype for all sociality among mammals can be found in mother-infant interactions. Evolution co-opted the parts of our brain that engage during these early interactions and use them for the rest of our social relationships.

But the love molecule is not always so lovely. Studies have found that oxytocin can increase aggression and hostility to those perceived as threats.

As Matthew Lieberman puts it, “In nonprimates, oxytocin leads individuals to see all outsiders as possible threats, thus enhancing aggression toward them.”

And administering oxytocin to humans “facilitates caregiving toward both liked groups and strangers, but it promotes hostility toward members of disliked groups.”

A neurotransmitter that evolved to make mothers care for their infants also heightens hostility toward others. If you really care about a person, you're more willing to protect them from perceived threats. This includes a willingness to do violence.

The evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein has said, “The same parameter that makes a mother love her children also makes people commit genocide.” What bonds people together can make them violent against outsiders.