Universal Morals

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Universal Morals Rhetorician 03/17/15 (Tue) 18:20:09 0e3bd2 No.79

Are morals universal? If murder is wrong in the US but justified on an island on the other side of the world, who says which moral prevails? Is one "better" than the other, and if so, what criteria defines the quality of a moral?

Rhetorician 03/19/15 (Thu) 21:41:41 ee46d4 No.139

The basis of morals are universal, as they well from a very simple, common set of practices - before it was "thou shalt not kill," before there were even words to describe it, it was "Thou shalt not kill within thine tribe, for strength in numbers and unity is our primary asset against this harsh world".
Morals evolved from guidelines that helped ensure humanity's survival and/or growth.

To remain in the given scenario, let's look at killing and murder. In almost every case, it is generally considered immoral to kill another. In places where it mightn't be so demonized, we can simply see morality interacting with hubris.

For example, "honor killings" are still quite common in yuropistan, but this does not go against what I just laid out. Why? Because there were no moral reasonings behind those killings. It's always honor.
>that family kicked my dog and littered on my lawn.

These are people that don't go around shooting everyone, just one particular person or family that insulted them. This shows that these are not motivated by morality (or lack thereof), but ego.

tl;dr morality at its basest core is universal as it stems from the instinctual drive to thrive. If we were to quantify a morality's quality, one would have to judge which better fosters growth.

Rhetorician 03/24/15 (Tue) 15:56:36 bd7191 No.141

>>139
While I agree with the premise of your argument, in my opinion it no longer holds in this day and age.

The origins of morality probably did have much to do with survival of the species, but in the last couple of centuries, we've reached a point where survival is just taken for granted. Basic needs and safety are things no one really worries about anymore. The roots for this mindset have been sown for millenia now, but it's especially flourished after the industrial revolution.

Much of our morality in the present time deviates strongly from what would guarantee our survival. If you were to define the quality of morality by the chances of survival it caters to, then by that definition the last few generations of humanity have undergone a severe collective degradement of morality.

We should be euthanising the mentally/physically challenged and limiting their reproductive rights, while favouring the geniuses *since natural selection no longer does it for us*. Yet, if you try suggesting this anywhere outside of /pol/, you'd just be looked down upon as a lunatic. Perhaps another millenia of evolution will get us to a point where this will be the norm, but for now, it seems we're stuck in tribal morality.

tl;dr - if 'high quality' morality fosters survival, why aren't we killing all the retards and cripples yet?

Rhetorician 03/25/15 (Wed) 17:39:00 ee46d4 No.142

>>141
Imagine my surprise to see someone else in this board.

Now, for what it's worth, I would like to go on record as saying I do, for the most part, believe that human achievement has rendered moot darwinistic evolution. Because of this I also believe we should, as a species, be much less attached to zygotes than we are presently.
As an aside tangent, it seems to be tied closely to the "political correctness" cycle, which ebbs and flows with time. Looking back at an admittedly limited frame of time, it looks to me like we might be on a downslope and saying/doing "what's right" will be preferable over feelings and emotions relatively shortly, and I'm looking forward to that day.
Given that we both accept the same premise I've put forth for OP as true, this is going to be a boring debate.
I move that we instead shift focus to your rhetorical question posed in the tl;dr.

Rhetorician 03/26/15 (Thu) 13:08:56 bd7191 No.143

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>>142
Ah yes, I think I found this board either through >>>/8lounge/ or >>>/cyber/. This has potential, even if it could get up to a few posts a day.

As for the debate, I'd like to point out that my post was more of a Devil's Advocate kind of thing than my actual opinion, just to test the waters. Since you seem to concur, I'll expand on my philosophy.

>pic slightly related

As a casual overview of evolutionary history will reveal, almost every single thing about our lives has been (or is in the process of being) engineered so as to enhance our survival capacity. Be it the ideal female/male, or the size of our brain, be it the pleasure you get from an orgasm, or the bad feelings associated with pain/injury. Pretty much everything helps us, in some way, to live. And yet, there's nothing inherently good about 'living'. The mere response that we as a society show to death is amusing.

I think chan culture with all its gore, scat, guro, vore, crush, torture, necro, animal abuse and whatnot has, to a large part, helped me be far more objective about life than was possible within the confines of society.

Tangent - I dropped to the brink of depression and jumped back, with one single epiphany - nothing any one does matters in the slightes, in the grand scheme of things. Sounds edgy/tryhard, I know, but at the moment it turned my life around.

Tiny subtangent - Read some of Terence McKenna's work if you haven't already.

Now if you imagine for a moment that life has no inherent worth, that death is but another event, and nothing more, then in such a world morality has no meaning. Just something we came up with to help us live. And to be clear, ours is not a species that is inherently better than others, just one that's most adept at surviving. (And that's not necessarily a good thing.)

It is this that I finally think of the origins of morality: Animals obsessed with surviving trying to survive and in a meaningless world.

"Looking back at an admittedly limited frame of time, it looks to me like we might be on a downslope and saying/doing "what's right" will be preferable over feelings and emotions relatively shortly, and I'm looking forward to that day."

I would disagree here, for I believe there is no ultimate 'right' to be done, and if indeed we progress far enough, we'd implode and kill all of humanity in mutually assured destruction.

Whew, that was a long post. Reminds me of the quote, "We're intelligent enough to question what our brain does, but not smart enough to know the answer."

Rhetorician 03/26/15 (Thu) 17:26:02 ee46d4 No.144

>>143
>I would disagree here, for I believe there is no ultimate 'right' to be done, and if indeed we progress far enough, we'd implode and kill all of humanity in mutually assured destruction.
Sorry for the confusion of context, Anon. When I said "right", I was simply talking in the limited scope of political correctness - Remember how in the late 80's/early 90's, it became taboo to say "fireman or policeman or any other gender-implying titles? CBS even banned the terms "anchorman" and "weatherman" for a while.
When I said "right," that was improper wording, for sure. Perhaps a better way to rephrase my statement would be:
>Looking back at an admittedly limited frame of time, it looks to me like we might be on a downslope and saying/doing what objectively conveys the proper information will be preferable over feelings and emotions relatively shortly, and I'm looking forward to that day.
In another way, a couple years ago, we were knee-deep in the PC wave and if you called a "policeman" to help, they wouldn't because that was an improper title. Once we're in a trough of the PC sine wave, that won't matter much any further. The side effect of this shift in mentality is that people will be able to harbor differing opinions and undertake different courses of action than are right now deemed "wrong".
It was a tangential statement with a smaller scope than the discussion in whole, aiming to color my feeling that my opinion that selective childrearing is good can't be held today, but it, and controversial stances like it, will be able to be held in the future.

Digression aside
>Animals obsessed with surviving trying to survive and in a meaningless world.
So, we agree that morality is a tool, that is: Morality is to survival as a hammer is to a house. Seems to me, however, that we disagree on what color the house we're building is painted.
I'd like to point out the language we each used, presumably subconsciously, which do quite a bit to allow me to understand you.
When I defined morality as a tool, I said it was used to thrive ( >>>139 ). You have stated, to the common man the very similar "trying to survive." ( >>>143 ).
The difference between surviving and thriving, in this species-wide context, I believe is thus: To survive is a selfish endeavor, to be focused on the good of oneself. To thrive, while not totally selfless by any means, suggests a focus on the good of one's pack, tribe, community, or group otherwise.
Can we agree with this definition of terms?