Where do your morals come from?

[magister343]

I don't care for the term morals. Moral comes from the Latin mores, meaning customs or habits, possibly of the individual but generally of society. To be moral is to be normative or a creature of habit, neither of which is generally good.

Ethics comes from Greek Ethika, which has precisely the same meaning as mores. This term is slightly more acceptable to me though because in its early use it was short for Ethika Arete, GOOD habits. I still tend to think we ought to pay less attention to the Ethika though and focus instead on Arete.


To ensure that our morals remain good, we need to focus less on the habits themselves as on maintaining the good will from which good habits arise. The principle most important to this is "love your neighbor as yourself," which is from the bible but can be derived without reliance on the text as well. Rather than bicker over what should or should not be considered immoral, I say "love, and do as you will."

 

[sassafras]

I collect morals like I collect the lint in my pockets. I don't know where they come from, they're just there.

No, seriously, where ethics are concerned, I think morals are a fine blend of instinct and social conditioning. You know it's wrong to kill someone for stealing your girlfriend not because you've been touched by some inner guiding light, but because over the course of your life you've observed the behavior of those living in the society to which you also belong and have internalized its values as part of your identity. If society happens to hold itself to the lofty principles of justice and does not believe that killing another human being is justifiable by them stealing your girlfriend, in accordance to those principles, you know that such an action is wrong.

It is my opinion that we are oriented first and foremost by our self-preservation instinct. We attach ourselves to others because one of our primary needs is belonging; in the wild, there is strength in numbers. You have a better chance at survival and a more comfortable living arrangement if you are part of the pack instead of playing lone ranger. Our desire to belong has us fusing our identity and desires with that which can afford us that security and safety. That's not to say that the human condition is no more complicated than that, of course, but when you strip it down to its foundations... there you are.

I think we create and ascribe to ethics because we're rational creatures and we want to safe-guard our own comfort in society just as much as we are interested in safe-guarding the comfort of others. You've all heard the old adage: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If you want to guarantee your own rights and freedoms afforded by the social contract that's been established you must make sure everyone (including yourself) abides by it.

It doesn't at all surprise me that certain ethics and morals are 'universal' either. Kind of makes common sense that you establish spoken or unspoken laws against murdering, stealing, lying or cheating if you don't want the same to happen to you-- and these are problems pervasive to all human societies, regardless of where they live and/or what God or gods they ascribe to.

Religions were created to codify these ethics and in order to maintain and translate them, built an impressive mythology that equipped people with reasons of a higher order explaining the what's, the how's and the why's that might surround a person's misgivings and inclinations in subscribing to these beliefs. Religions are going out of style now because we are no longer an oral culture, nor are our primary modes of modern communication and understanding oriented by archetypal expression. We're more empirical and literal than our predecessors ever were in their way of navigating our lives, and thus it is only natural that we find a new and appropriate justification to fit with our modern understanding of why we do the things we do. But it would be foolish of us to entirely dismiss the fact that the foundation of our present-day ethics rests entirely on mish-mash of religious codexes that shaped the societies that came before us.

Our ideas about ethics do not exist in a vacuum; they come from somewhere and that somewhere is the thousands of years of civilizations that came before us and the evolving social contracts that guaranteed their success and bore future generations. As much as I would optimistically like to believe that everything we ascribe to today is thanks to our individual reasoning, I have to disagree. As humans, we are dynamic creatures and we're shaped by environment; none of us have developed independently of others and their ideas. You may have arrived at your own conclusions after extensive reading of Nietzsche or Kierkegaard or the observation of human behavior, but all of that comes from using the faculties which have also been developed with the influence from something outside of yourself. So no, I disagree that ethics can be derived independently from our naked essence as humans-- certainly not in the degree of complexity that makes up the code by which we all live.

That's my reasoning behind this, anyway.

 

[Jack]

One's personal moral standards can come from anywhere, however there is no OBJECTIVE basis for morality absent a God or ultimate reality of some kind.

Without the Bible or any particular holy book or given law, there can still be an objective basis for morality.

Absent God, however, morals have no value at all except that they are a personal preference.

 

[Galileo]

Absent God, however, morals have no value at all except that they are a personal preference.

ah, but you see, I'd prefer it be someone's personal moral not to kill me because they were choosing not to do it, rather than someone up there in the sky told them not to do it, however, if he didn't say not to, that would be a totally different story, so just watch out....


and surely, above everything, it doesn't matter if your morals are based on your personal choice and that of your religion, surely it only matters that your morals are acceptiblly within societies values and laws?

surely the 'why' of those morals is only secondary?

 

[Barnabas]

ah, but you see, I'd prefer it be someone's personal moral not to kill me because they were choosing not to do it, rather than someone up there in the sky told them not to do it, however, if he didn't say not to, that would be a totally different story, so just watch out....


and surely, above everything, it doesn't matter if your morals are based on your personal choice and that of your religion, surely it only matters that your morals are acceptiblly within societies values and laws?

surely the 'why' of those morals is only secondary?

The "Why" can't be secondary, it's what defines the "answer" and what if society is atrocious and it's laws abominable? What if your morals directly contradict the law?

surely this means that your morals are more important then society and it's laws.

 

[Jack]

ah, but you see, I'd prefer it be someone's personal moral not to kill me because they were choosing not to do it, rather than someone up there in the sky told them not to do it, however, if he didn't say not to, that would be a totally different story, so just watch out....

and surely, above everything, it doesn't matter if your morals are based on your personal choice and that of your religion, surely it only matters that your morals are acceptiblly within societies values and laws?

surely the 'why' of those morals is only secondary?

So, in other words, in the presence of 'God' as a moral 'why', normal people lose their personal distaste for killing, while 'usefulness to society' is your better 'why' for morality?

 

[Morpheus]

My morals stem from cultural knowledge, personal intuition and logic. A basis without a basis, but pretty much everything is.

 

[KazeCraven]

Life experience filtered by my feelings, though I get upset if I can't make sense of the logic behind my feelings.

Maybe higher up it comes from something else, like God.

 

[SamE]

Subconscious expression of energy. We are living in an ethical age currently, this would translate the further we become conscious I hope. Who knows where my morals come from, I have them at least and rarely stray.

 

[Io-]

Compassion, fear, and the need for control

 

[RedOrange823]

As Christopher Hitchens once said, "Human decency is not derived from religion, it precedes it." When speaking on morality, Hitchens brought up the point that (assuming the Biblical account is true) when Moses led the Israelites to Mount Sinai, they had not yet been given the Ten Commandments, yet they were not all killing and raping each other. He suggested that the Israelites made it to Mount Sinai because they already knew

 

[~jet]

Frankly, in my experience, this group of people seem to follow their 'morals' far less often than those on the left follow their 'ethics.' Given the nature of my work, I'm stuck in the middle of quite a collection of both, so my anecdotes in this regard are... myriad squared; not enough for a scientific survey, though... just an insight. I've also noticed that those who genuinely follow EITHER concept do so at the smallest of levels (such as not allowing a co-worker to suffer through 15 minutes of waiting for a water-filter to recharge because they couldn't be bothered to take the 30 second to KEEP it refilled in the first place.) Small things SEEM trivial and mindless, and yet I think they're almost a truer demonstration of morality or ethic simply because of that... it wasn't for fame or recognition or self-satisfaction, but out of simple thankless concern for a fellow human being. I don't see my religious/righty co-workers doing that... but then again, the staunch liberal in the office doesn't do it either.

 

[slant]

family; those you grow up with
culture; that of which surrounds you
education; the scope and diversity of which you see things from
internal; your own interpretation of all of these factors

I'm totally a ethical egoist DUDE

 

[Quinlan]

From millions of years of evolution.