MORALITY AND QUASI-MORALITY: MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOURAL REGULATION AND THEIR EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS

Abstract

The article develops a conceptual demarcation between morality proper and "quasi-morality" — multilayered simulacra serving the interests of elites and bureaucratic apparatuses. Morality is reconceptualised as an evolutionary mechanism of social behavioural regulation that operates not as a system of universal norms but as a dynamic instrument of intra-group integration.
Morality is defined as a mechanism of cultural-genetic selection grounded in a cultural prototype of the "worthy person," a system of social sanctions, the internalisation of norms, and emotional regulators including shame, guilt, and pride.
The central thesis is the distinction between morality and quasimoral forms of regulation that emerge in complex societies. These include religiously centred systems of authority, prestige beliefs and ideological fashion, performative conformism, and moral grandstanding. All such forms are interpreted as derivative or parasitic modifications of the foundational moral mechanism, severed from its primary function of sustaining group cooperation and viability.
The article demonstrates that, as social systems expand and xenophobic barriers erode, morality becomes entangled with political-legal coercion and instrumental rationality, generating complex hybrid systems in which moral language is deployed as a resource for status competition and symbolic domination. Particular attention is given to the mechanism of "ethics washing," whereby institutions publicly perform loyalty to values while effectively pursuing reputational, bureaucratic, or power-oriented ends.
The study concludes that contemporary quasi-moral forms do not displace morality but are superimposed upon it as additional layers of social regulation, systematically distorting its original function.