Morality

The favorite topic of every liberal, Judeo-Christian, idealist, nihilist, in short Modern, in our time.

The first thing to do is define the word, as it is encoded in human books....

Online Dictionary wrote:

mor·al
[mawr-uhl, mor-]
adjective
1.
of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes.
2.
expressing or conveying truths or counsel as to right conduct, as a speaker or a literary work.
3.
founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom: moral obligations.
4.
capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct: a moral being.
5.
conforming to the rules of right conduct (opposed to immoral ): a moral man.

A repeating term "right", suggesting the "wrong".
The terms have no meaning outside human preferences, inclinations, hopes, fears, ideals; objectively, that is.
Subjectively it can have any definition the dichotomies of "right/wrong" suggest but never illuminate.

The first thing to note is a general understanding of words, and language.
In this case the word/symbol refers to a category, a manmade category, pertaining to a behavior.
The behavior is indifferent to the manmade category, because the human word is a human tool, and not a universal truth.
The behavior is a social behavior, and indicated a particular kind of behavior which is only possible within social organizations, pertaining to social species.
The behavior involves a risk taking, a cost undertaken with no foreseeable, and/or obvious, benefit.

Humans, having studied the behavior have reached a hypothesis.
It relates to blood ties, identities forged within groupings, and an altruism based on ensuring a return for a cost - an investment, to put it in economic terms.
The investment grows in time, and after repeated stresses, building what we call trust.

All of this, of course, originally happens on an intuitive, subconscious, level; a behavior promoted through natural selection methods, producing a particular demeanor, personality trait.
The behavior becomes innate, part of a species psyche, an automatic response to stimuli.
No thinking required, beyond the superficial, reactive, instinctive.

The fact that this word refers to a human construct, which then refers to a phenomenon, makes it malleable, as all words are.
A word can be detached from the phenomenon, gradually, and over time, making it a pure noetic symbol referring back to another human construct, or a human sensation, feeling, ambiguity.
This is the process of deification, purification...making of the word into a holy, spiritual symbol.

When detached it can then be defined in ways that contradict the original use, or slightly changing it to where it loses its original intent.
This is the nihilistic process.

Some other words where this process has advanced to a level where it can be discerned are the words...female/male....humanity....love...human...and, of course morality.
The slight alteration increases the scope of the original to where from an intuitive, genetic behavior, it becomes a learned, enforced, memetic one, and where the tribal ties built on trust and bloodlines become some vague universal ideal called humanity.

Now morality becomes institutionalized, enforced by using some absolute judgment of good/evil, and the threat/benefit of the eternal. The trust, mutual interests, genetic relationships, are morphed into some love for all...a thou shalt, under the penalty of a peer enforced penalty of shaming and exclusion and isolation, and genetic impotence - social castration.

Like with everything human morality has a theoretical and a pragmatic face, corresponding to the ideal and the real.
The ideal is how things should be, in a perfect, totally human world; the real is how this theory applies in pragmatically despite the theoretical and ideal.

In nihilistic dogmas, moral systems, the ideal is so detached from the real, so unrealistic, that no man can ever meet its standards resulting in the shame and guilt, as a form of self-deprecation.

Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" to describe a set of behavioral traits that may not benefit the actor immediately but do benefit the actor's genes, which make the actor act.
Plants can be said to exhibit moral behavior from a human point of view, but it is not moral behavior as there is no code no logos, no 'thou shall not'.
What there is, is a selfishness where the other plant by sharing in the same genes is identified not as an otherness but as partially or completely Self.
The plant has no ability to discriminate visually. It relies on chemicals to discriminate, and when these chemicals (inter)act with its receptors (sense organs) it senses a similarity or a difference.


This advances in sophistication reaching the visual stage, where an organism is both mobile, unlike the pant, and also visual, managing to discern similarity/difference over longer distances.
Distance being in space, and space being possibility - the distance is the possible movement toward, and is temporal.
Action towards within an environment of known and unknown possibilities - cost/risk, the object/objective being the potential, not yet realized, benefit.

This shift in sensory medium create a shift in strategies and methods of evaluating good/bad, cost/benefit.


Cooperative social behavior is what makes morality, or moral behavior possible.
It also relates to time, over spatial possibilities.
Probability being the term which has evaluated the possible by using first-hand or second-hand, in man, experiences....in other words the past precedent.
With cooperation precedent is used. Precedent is called trust.
That the sun rises every morning makes me trust that it will so again this morning.
When another organism has helped me accomplish something I needed makes me trust in him/her doing so again.
Right there we see our probability evaluation rising, within an environment of unpredictable variables.
a comforting, comfortable, feeling.

Order, ordering/becoming, which is another way of saying organism, are emerging unities built on consistency, predictability.
They are attracted to it whenever they perceive it so as to become comfortable - to increase their level of comfort within the agon, the environment requiring vigilance, constant effort and so on.

The aesthetic appreciation is this perception of predictable consistency, comforting us.
It is why a particular distance form it is sometimes required.

In the case of a painting, where the chaos of the brush strokes, gives way to a simplification/generalization of forms, from a distance, where order is perceived.
In the case of a jungle, where the vibrant colors, the arrangement of trees, is enjoyed from a distance where the rotting flesh of dead carcasses the mosquitoes, the snake lying in wait are lost in the jumble/jungle.
The distance, detachment, offers the mind the potential to simplify/generalize sensual data losing the uncertainty, the chaos, the details, in the process.

In the case of cooperative behavior the other becomes this unknown, which slowly is known by its consistency and predictability....yet only from the comfortable distance of I/Other.
The other is simplified/generalized using its actions, is behavior to formulate a probability.
This increases comfort, trust.

Even if the other is dangerous to me I can trust that my evaluation of its method and behavior will be repeated.The trust is in my evaluation, built upon experience, precedent.

The other is always different...and similarity is then discovered in the other.
Not the other way around.
First there must be divergence before common ground is found....just as first comes consciousness, of otherness, before self-consciousness discovers self as another other....making Know Thyself a process of self discovery.

Morality begins not as a code, but as a trust.
I trust that you will help me rather than not help me or threaten me...nd in turn I will act in ways to increase your trust in me.
The possibility of a different option is always present.
This is called moral only by a mind raised in Judeo-Christian paradigms.
In nature there is no good/evil....there is only constructive/destructive....more beneficial less so, more costly less so.

The standard is time.

Why do I feel more inclined to help a gazelle drowning?
If the cost/benefit is positive, towards me, I ma more inclined to help because I can relate to the negative nature of existence.
I know the agon, I feel the need, and the anxiety/fear...I project myself and empathize.
I empathize with suffering, not so easily with pleasure, the latter might even make me suffer the pangs of envy, because suffering/stress is what I feel continuously to varying degrees.
The other now becomes an extension of me, from a distance...if I know nothing of it, its character, its past.
I see in it the order, and I want to preserve it...because I am ordering, and I am attracted by ordering.

If the distance is bridged and the particular organism is known to me, then precedent takes over.
If i dislike this particular organism then I may opt to watch it suffer, and feel pleasure in this, because now its ordering has come into conflict with mine, and mine always dominant.

In the struggle between predator and prey, why, is it, that we mostly side with the prey?

It's because we intuitively relate to the suffering, anxiety, stress, vulnerability, because we are it in relation to the vast expanse of possibilities, we call space/time.

It's a matter of identifying.
Why does a mother defend its young with its life?
Because she identifies with the 50% of the genes in them.

Why does a man go off to die for an abstraction, an idea, a nation?
Because his identity is part of it, or attached to it.
For him he does not die, because he is the Idea, the Nation, and nothing else outside of that.

Identification is another word for ego, self.

And this is what is called the "expansion" of the self, the greater Self, which can then reach the extent of an ALL, or a ONE.
In Modernity the smaller, organic, ego/self, is projected/exaggerated/inflated into an imagined hyperbole: the Nation, the Ideal, God, Humanity...
The smaller self is assimilated, devoured, immersed, buried, and it because the private personality/personae, the secret self, and in the forefront emerges the Character/Caricature of the public Self, in line with the cultural, moral, codes.
The smaller self is a delusion, it is shameful, primitive, little....the larger Self is liberating, eternal more real than real...it is the Idea(l) Platonic form of Self.

To sacrifice the smaller for the bigger becomes an easy transition from mortal to immortal, through the process of self-rejection, self-denouncement, self-hatred.
This process is called enlightenment...to be made light, as all ideas are light, airy, unburden by anything earthly, primal, natural....they are pure notion, holy spirit, detached and cleansed of anything vile and worldly.

Society destroys the identity of selfhood of the individual, and redefines self as "we". This creates a dichotomy, difference, and distance between the "I" of individuality, and the we of the group.

Most people, a vast majority, automatically associate self with "we", not I. Most people do not have a strong sense of individuality. The individual is against morality for the most part. Because morality is a controlling mechanism, a system of social laws and altruistic instincts. Society demands self sacrifice from the individual, a literal sacrifice. The individual destroys any difference within himself, then his "I" is destroyed and he becomes absorbed into the "we". A man who resists integration, as the masculine specie is prone to do, is deemed a "hater". Or there is something "wrong" with him. Anti social.

Absorption into society is similar, or the same as, emasculation, domestication, feminization, and castration. What is required most immediately by the male, not the female, is a suppression of his sex drive.

While females are encouraged to "express themselves" sexually by the liberal aspect of society. Conservatism is different in that it attempts to suppress female sexuality in addition to males. Liberalism seeks to suppress only the male sex drive. There is no social ideology that wishes to free the male sex drive, except perhaps anarchism. Because freeing the male sex drive, specifically, is anti social and destroys all moral codes.

A "free man" is a criminal. Because then it would not be wrong, automatically, to lie, cheat, steal, kill, rape, etc. All these moral laws are directed at males first and foremost, due to the nature of the genders. Females have no reason to commit crimes. Because they do not need to, in order to live and thrive successfully in society.

Males commit crimes for women, and on behalf of women.

What is this though but, by and large, human morality reduced down to a series of words defining and defending other words.

Pertaining to actual human conflicts revolving around such things as abortion, hunting, capital punishment, animal rights, homosexuality, the role of government, separation of church and state, gun control etc. etc., what constitutes "nobility"? What constitutes "intelligence"? What constitutes behaviors that preserve or increase it?

Isn't it always what you insist that it is? And, if others refuse to accept that, doesn't that make them retards. Axiomatically as it were?

Satyr wrote:

Ha!
This is you "bringing it down to earth"?
Really?

Morality, boy, has to do with survival and social interactions.
Not pulling shit from your arse, or dismissing it as "skyhooks", you sad pathetic boy.
Morality refers to a behavior that increases survival potential, you fucked up nothing.
It is not magical, nor is it irrelevant.

The projected ideal is immortality....survival is a towards that....morality, like many other words referring to human behavior, like love, value, hate, envy, and so on, are survival tools.
Defining them is connecting them to the world.

I can have a field-day with you....for now read Lyssa's reply.
I must splishy-splashy the dirt away.



But...I could be wrong...
HA!!!

You just can't help yourself, can you? For years and years now you have dispensed didactic contraptions like this. Words that are said to be true by yet more words that are said to be true by yet more words still. The logic going around and around self-referentially in circles.

And, really, how in the world is lyssa any different? She just copies and pastes more of the same. But what does any of it really have to do with real people out in the real world who struggle mightily with "the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty". And the deeper you delve into the complexity of human interactions down here the more you come to grasp the confounding nature of conflicting goods.

That's what I think we should explore pertaining to a particular moral conflict we are all familiar with.

hmm I agree with the list of lies (that they are lies), although I must say that immortality should not be the end goal, but immortality with unending Pleasure. And not the retard's form of "pleasure", but with the intellect that would develop through immortality one could eventually discover the secret to unending Pleasure. the intellect, knowledge and safety provided through immortality would be a great tool.

"unending pleasure".

Pleasure or happiness is a result or a symptom of a healthy life. The pursuit of pleasure and happiness for their own sake will especially in the long run result in utter misery.

novice wrote:

"unending pleasure".  

Pleasure or happiness is a result or a symptom of a healthy life.  The pursuit of pleasure and happiness for their own sake will especially in the long run result in utter misery.  

This is a simplistic way of looking at it. What you refer to is man's constant search for simple pleasures to feed his insatiable appetite for things and novelty.

I refer to something much more grand, and infinite, and I cannot describe it at the moment because I do not yet understand it.

In the so called "healthy life' a species in the wild, is usually driven by animal needs, hunger, lust, and is unsatisfied the majority of it's time.

Well there is always the hard-problem of consciousness, how can the specimen on interview actually be verified that they are in pleasure? Say someone is attracted to fat-chicks, are we certain they are in pleasure due their increased heartrate and erect-penis? Some who are raped and molested have such traits but swear they did not enjoy it.

Second part is how can you be sure of your own pleasure? You might feel it but how can you be sure this is how you want to be for all of eternity? The feeling of happy would surely grow to be a bore. One might suggest a constant memory wipe to keep the feeling fresh but how can one gaurantee that a constant memory wipe wouldnt destroy sentience? Or, if the goal is to destroy sentience by engulfing the universe in a black hole, how can one gaurantee sentience still wouldnt pop up in some other universe elsewhere?

Trixie Celūcilūnaletumoon wrote:

hmm I agree with the list of lies (that they are lies), although I must say that immortality should not be the end goal, but immortality with unending Pleasure. And not the retard's form of "pleasure", but with the intellect that would develop through immortality one could eventually discover the secret to unending Pleasure. the intellect, knowledge and safety provided through immortality would be a great tool.

Nietzsche wrote:

"To this day you have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief . . . or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet." [JW, 12]

Do you agree with that?

Lyssa wrote:

Trixie Celūcilūnaletumoon wrote:

hmm I agree with the list of lies (that they are lies), although I must say that immortality should not be the end goal, but immortality with unending Pleasure. And not the retard's form of "pleasure", but with the intellect that would develop through immortality one could eventually discover the secret to unending Pleasure. the intellect, knowledge and safety provided through immortality would be a great tool.

Nietzsche wrote:

"To this day you have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief . . . or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet." [JW, 12]

Do you agree with that?

i don't believe the "you" has a choice any more than a robot has a choice. you make the robot and somewhere along the lines its going to be miserable, you're gonna hear it trying to fix itself and make it less miserable but neither you nor the robot can really be sure if they are going to be miserable.

if i interpret the essence of his statement its something along the lines of "take a day off and enjoy yourself or do another day of boring grinding for future pleasures." As for me personally both are the same level of misery. another interpretation could be "think and feel positive, its your choice.' but for me it would be the same either way. i see the world, i feel nothing, my emotions are just chemical fluctuations, love is like drowning, fear is like drowning. i am only filled when my consciousness ceases to be. simply being thoughtless is not enough, simply being emotionless is not enough, i must not even be emotionless.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY,  (almost a chapter from Alain de benoist's beyond human rights)
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Quote :

Theory of human rights is given as a theory valid for all time and for all places, that is to say, as a universal theory. This universality, reputedly inherent in each individual posited as a subject, represents in it the standard applicable to all empirical reality. In such a view, to say that the rights are 'universal' is only another way of saying that they are absolutely true. At the same time, everybody knows well that the ideology of human rights is a product of the thought of the Enlightement, and that the very idea of human rights belongs to the specific context of Western modernity. The question then arises of knowing if the narrowly circumscribed origins of this ideology does not implicitly contradict its pretensions to universality. Since every declaration of rights is historically dated, does not a tension, or a contradiction result from it, between the historical contingency that presided at its elaboration and the demand of universality which it intends to affirm?
It is clear that the theory of rights, with respect to all human cultures, represents the exception rather than the rule — and that it even constitutes exception within European culture, since it appeared only at a definite moment and relatively late in the history of this culture. If the rights have been 'there' always, present in the very nature itself of man, one may be surprised that only a a small portion of humanity has perceived it, and that it has taken it so long to be perceived. How does one understand that the universal character of rights appeared as something 'evident' only in a particular society? And how does one imagine that this society could proclaim its universal character without at the same time vindicating its historical monopoly? That is to say, without positing itself as superior to those who have not recognised it?
The notion of universality itself raises problems. When one speaks of universality of rights, of what type of universality does one wish to speak? Of a universality of a geographical, philosophical or moral order? The unviersality of rights, besides, comes up against this question, posed straightaway by Raimundo Panikkar: ' Is there any sense in asking onself if the conditions of universality are unified when the question of universality itself is far from being a universal question?
All universalism tends towards the neglect or effacement of differences. In its canonical formulation, the theory of rights itself seems little disposed to recognise cultural diversity, and this is the case for two reasons: on the one hand its fundamental individualism, and the highly abstract character of the subject whose rights it proclaims, and on the other hand its privileged historical links with Western culture, or at least with one of the contituent traditions of this culture. One had a perfect illustration of that when the French Revolution affirmed the necessity of 'refusing everyhing to the Jews as a nation and according everything to them as individuals'. which came to link the emancipation of the Jews to the disintegration of their communal links. Since then, the discourse of human rights has not ceased to be confronted by human diversity such as is expressed in the plurality of political systems, of religious systems and of cultural values. Is this discourse dedicated to dissolving them or can it subsume them at the risk of dissolving itself? Is it compatible with the differences or can it only try to make them disappear?
All these questions which have given rise to a considerable amount of literature, end, in the final analysis, in a simple alternative: that is, rights are, in spite of their Western origins, truly universal concepts. Then one has to demostrate this. Or one should give up their universality, which would ruin the entire system: in fact, if the notion of human rights is purely Western, then its universalisation at the planetary level patently represents an imposition from outside, a devious way of converting and dominating, that is to say a continuation of the colonial syndrome.
An initial difficulty appears already at the level of vocabulary.
Up until the Middle Ages, one does not find in any European language — not more than in Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese or Japanese — a term designating a right as the subjective attribute of the person, distinct in itself from the judicial matter (the law). Which is the same as saying that, until a relatively late period, there did not exist any word to designate these rights considered as belonging to men by virtue of their humanity alone. This fact alone, judges Alasdair MacIntyre leads one to doubt their reality.
The very notion of right is not in the least universal. The Indian language has to only approximate equivalents to express it, such as yukta and ucita (appropriate), nyayata (just) or again dharma (obligation). In Chinese 'right' is translated by the juxtaposition of two words, chuan li, indicating power and interest. In Arabic, the word haqq, 'right', means first of all, truth.
The theory of human rights postulates, besides, the existence of another universal human nature, independent of epochs and places, which would be recognisable by means of reason. Of this affirmation, which does not belong to it properly (and which in itself is in no way contestable), it gives a very particular interpretation implying a triple separation: between man and other living beings ( man is the sole possessor of natural rights), between man and society (the human being is fundamentally the individual, and the social fact is not pertinent for knowing his nature), and between man and the cosmic whole (human nature does not owe anything to the general order of things). Now, this triple separation does not exist in the vast majority of non-Western cultures, including of course those which recognise the existence of a human nature.
The problem comes up quite particularly in the case of individualism. In the majority of cultures— as besides, one must recall, in the original Western culture— the individual in himself is quite simply not representable. He is never conceived as a monad, cut off from what connects him not only to his immediate neighbours, but to the community of living beings and to the entire universe. The notion of order, justice and harmony are not elaborated from him, nor from the individual place which would be that of man in the world, but from the group, the tradition, and the social relations, or the totality of reality. To speak of the freedom of the individual in himself thus makes no sense in the cultures which have remained fundamentally holistic, and which refuse to conceive of the human beings as a self-sufficient atom.
In these cultures, the notion of subjective rights is absent, whereas those of mutual obligation and reciprocity are omnipresent. The individual does not have to justify his rights but to work to find in the world, and first of all in the society to which he belongs, the most propitious conditions for the realisation of his nature and the excellence of his being.
Asiatic thoughts, for example, is expressed above all in the language of duties. The basic moral notion of Chinese thought is that of the duties which one has towards others, not that of the rights that one could oppose to them for 'the world of duties is logically anterior to the world of rights. In the confucian tradition, which cultivates the harmony between beings and nature, the individual could not posses rights superior to the community to which he belongs. Men are related to each other by the reciprocity of duties and mutual obligation. The world of duties is, besides, more extended than that of rights. While it is not true that to each obligation there is corresponds a right: we can have obligations towards certain men from whom we have nothing to expect, and also towards nature and animals, which do not owe us anything.
In India, Hinduism represents the universe as a space where beings traverse cycles of many froms of existence. In Taiosm, the tao of the world is regarded as a universal fact that governs the course of beings and things. In Black Africa, the social relationship includes living beings as well as the dead. In the Middle East, the notions of respect and honour determine the obligations within the extended family and the clan. All these facts are hardly reconcilable with the theory of rights. 'Human rights are Western values'. writes Sophia Mappa, 'which other societies, despite lip service, do not at all share'.
To posit that what comes first is not the individual but the group does not at all signify that the individual is 'enclosed' in the group, but rather that he acquires his individuality only in connection with a social relationship which is also a constituent of his being. That does not signify either that the desire to escape despotism, coercion or ill group, tensions may surge. That fact is indeed universal. But what is not at all universal is the belief according to which the best means of preserving freedom is to posit, in an abstract manner, an individual deprived of all his concrete charasteristics, disconnected from all his natural and cultural affliations. There are conflicts in all cultures, but in the majority of them, the vision of the world which predominates is not a conflicting vision (the individual against the group), but a 'cosmic' vision organised according to the order and the natural harmony of things. Each individual has his role to play in the whole into which he is positioned, and the role of political power is to ensure as best it can this coexistence and this harmony, which is the guarantee of eternity. Just as power is universal but the froms of power are not, the desire for freedom is universal, whereas the ways of responding to it can vary considerably.
The problem becomes especially acute when the social or cultural practices denounced in the name of human rights are not imposed practices but customary practices, evidently enjoying widespeard popularty amidst given populations (which does not mean that they are never criticised by them). How can a doctrine founded on the free disposition of individuals by themselves oppose it? If the men should be not encroach upon that of the others, why could not peoples of whom certain customs appear to us shocking or condemnable be left free to practice them as long as they do not seek to impose them on others?
The classic example is that of female circumcision, still practiced today in numerous countries of Black Africa (as well as in the certain muslim countries). It is quite evidently a question of a harmful practice, but it is difficult to extract it from an entire cultural and social context in which it is, on the contrary, considered as morally good and socially necessary: an uncircumcised woman will not be able to get married and will not be able to have children, which is why the women who are corcumcised are the first to have their daughers circumcised.
The question arises of determining in the name of what one can prohibit a custom which is not imposed on anybody. The only reasonable its favourableness, that is to say, to encourage an internal critique of the considered practice. It is those men and women whom the problem essentially concerns who should grapple with it. To cite another example, when a woman is stoned in a Muslim country and that infuriates the defenders of human rights, one can ask oneself exactly what this condemnation relates to: to the mode of execution (stoning), to the fact that adultey should be punised by death (or that it is quite simply punishable), or to the death penalty itself? The first reason seems of a mostly emotional sort. The second can at least be discussed (whatever feeling one may have on the question, in the name of what can one prevent the members of a given culture from considering adultery to be an offense that merits sanction and from freely evaluating the gravity of this punishment?). As for the third, it makes of every country that maintains the death penalty, beginning with the United States, a violator of human rights.
'To pretend to attribute a universal validity to human rights formulated in this way', writes Raimundo Panikkar, 'is to postulate that the majority of the peoples of the world are engaged, practically in the same way as the Western nations, in the process of transition from a more or less mythical 'Gemeinshaft'... to a 'modernity' organised in a 'rational' and 'contractual' manner, such as the industrial Western world knows it. That is a contestable postulate. So much so that 'to proclaim the concept of human rights ... could well be shown to be a Trojan horse introduced secretly into the heart of other civilisations with the aim of forcing them to accept those modes of existence, thoughts and feeling for which human rights constitute and emergency solution.
To accept cultural diversity demands a full recognition of the Other. But how to recognise the Other if his values and practices are opposed to those that one wishes to inculcate? The adherents of the ideology of rights are generally partisans of 'pluralism'. But what compatibility is religious beliefs? If the respect for individual rights passes through a non-respect for cultures and peoples, should one conclude from this that all men are equal, but that the cultures that these equals have created are not equal?
The Imposition of human rights represents, quite evidently, an acculturation whose realisation risks bringing about the dislocation or eradication of collective identities which also play a role in the constitution of individual indentities. The Classical idea according to which human rights protect the individuals against the groups to which they belong and constitute a recourse with regard to the practices, laws and customs that characterise these groups thereby proves to be doubtful. Do those who denounce such or such a 'violation of human rights' always measure exactly at what point hte practice of human rights can be characteristic of the cultures in the midst of which it is observed? Are those who complain of the violation of their rights ready, for their part, to pay for the observation of these rights with the destruction of their culture? Would they not rather wish taht their rights be recognised on the basis of what specifies their cultre?
'Individuals', writes Paul Piccone, 'are protected only when the essence of human rights is already embedded in a community's particular legal system and the people really believe in them. This remark is correct. By definition, human rights can be invoked only where they are already recognised, in the cultures and countries which have already internalised their principles — that is to say, where, theoretically, one should no longer have any need of invoking them. But if human rights can only be efficacious where the principles on which they are founded have already been internalised, the dislocation of cultures provoked by their brutal importation goes directly against the objective being pursued. ' The paradox of human rights' adds Piccone, 'Is that their implementation implies the erosion and destruction of the conditions (traditions and customs) without which their implementation becomes precisely impossible.

Amongst moderns some acts being immoral is taken for granted.

It's so automatic that they cannot think outside its premises.
It's not about utility for such creatures, it is about some moral standard which is always Judeo-Christian, Secular Humanist.
Everything is clouded by this moralistic mist.

The pragmatic utilitarian effects of murder or abortion or giving women the vote are always approached through this mist of Christian morality.
And because Christianity is nihilistic they are caught in a dilemma, trying to harmonize utility, the motive, with the Christian moral dogma.
In most cases because Christianity is anti-life, this places them in a fix.

Oh well.

Morality begins as a social, instinct enabling organisms to cooperate and live in proximity to one another.
Species with no social structure, solitary species, have no morals, or no primitive emergence of what later becomes known as morality among humans.

This social instinct later evolves into a set of communal rules which discipline the many to a common ideal, a common goal.
The motive shapes the moral standard.

There is no universal morality, but there is an objective reality which morals may or may not agree with, depending if they are part of a life affirming or life denouncing culture.  
The culture determines the goal, and the goal shapes the morals, the ethical system governing the social structures.
What is ethical in one culture is unethical in another.

The relationship of the culture to the world shapes the direction these morals will take, yet all have a shared ground in their social past, and their utility as a social disciplining factor.

In nature morality is meaningless.
In social organisms with particular survival strategies morality has a survival meaning, usually having to do with belonging or not to that particular group.
There is nothing moral or immoral about killing another member of a group.
It is detrimental to survival because this sets a precedent which the other members cannot help but notice.
Morality and adhering to the shared morals is a way the individual expresses its acceptance of the shared rules.

An organism will always choose what heightens its survival potential.
It's morals will be determined by how it defines self, what aspects of self it is not willing to live without, and what ideals guide its every decision; what objective is focused upon as the desirable one.

An objective perception of world will undoubtedly contribute to this decision making.
A Christians morals will be different from a Pagans.
Each has a different relationship to the world, and evaluates different outcomes as more or less preferable, and probable.

The world remains indifferent to both.
Each choice affects the individual not the world.

You can always identify a Judeo-Christian and a Secular Humanist, and a Marxist...they are all different branches on the same Nihilist tree.

They will always propose a question where in the question something is taken as self-evident.

For instance in the question: "What is changing, if all is flux?" the question presupposes what it is then demanding an answer to.
In the question: "Why does God not exist?" God is taken as self-evident and then proof of the negative is demanded.
In the question: "Why is abortion immoral, or why is it moral" it is taken for granted that abortion, or the taking of life, is a moral issue, and that this moral issue is obviously a Judeo-Christian one.
In the question: "Is there absolutely no absolute?" the absolute has already been taken as a given, and then the question revolves around discrediting where the pro and con are now on equal footing.
Same for the question: "Is it true that there is no truth?"

Here the world are detached from reality, and offered as pure noumena.
None of these concepts God, Morality, Absolute, Truth has any reference to anything phenomenal, but are pure human constructs.
The word truth is slightly different because here if it is taken as a substitute for a hypothesis which is more likely, it would be different from it being used as a symbol for an absolute.

Let us consider the word "death" describing a real phenomenon: the cessation of conscious life, the end of self-ordering.
From an objective standpoint death is neither good nor bad.
It has no value outside of a subjective perspective, coming from a conscious life-form, describing its end.
Death has no objective moral value either.
It is not sacred to be alive, nor is it not sacred.

It is so only for a living organism and even here how sacred and what type of life is so, differs, depending on the motive.

The search for truth, if it is warped by what is desirable and what undesirable, arrives at an self-serving error.
Truth is what you seek in order to determine what is desirable and what is undesirable.

But in a world where everything is inverted, value precedes judgment, consciousness precedes life, pleasure precedes need/suffering, all bullshit is equally valid.

Online Etymology Dictionary wrote:

morality (n.)
late 14c., "moral qualities," from Old French moralité "moral (of a story); moral instruction; morals, moral character" (13c.) and directly from Late Latin moralitatem (nominative moralitas) "manner, character," from Latin moralis (see moral (adj.)). Meaning "goodness" is attested from 1590s.

moral (adj.)
mid-14c., "pertaining to character or temperament" (good or bad), from Old French moral (14c.) and directly from Latin moralis "proper behavior of a person in society," literally "pertaining to manners," coined by Cicero ("De Fato," II.i) to translate Greek ethikos (see ethics) from Latin mos (genitive moris) "one's disposition," in plural, "mores, customs, manners, morals," of uncertain origin. Perhaps sharing a PIE root with English mood (n.1).

Meaning "morally good, conforming to moral rules," is first recorded late 14c. of stories, 1630s of persons. Original value-neutral sense preserved in moral support, moral victory (with sense of "pertaining to character as opposed to physical action"). Related: Morally.

ethics (n.)
"the science of morals," c. 1600, plural of Middle English ethik "study of morals" (see ethic). The word also traces to Ta Ethika, title of Aristotle's work. Related: Ethicist.

ethic (n.)
late 14c., ethik "study of morals," from Old French etique "ethics, moral philosophy" (13c.), from Late Latin ethica, from Greek ethike philosophia "moral philosophy," fem. of ethikos "ethical," from ethos "moral character," related to ethos "custom" (see ethos). Meaning "moral principles of a person or group" is attested from 1650s.

ethos (n.)
"the 'genius' of a people, characteristic spirit of a time and place," 1851 (Palgrave) from Greek ethos "habitual character and disposition; moral character; habit, custom; an accustomed place," in plural, "manners," from suffixed form of PIE root *s(w)e- third person pronoun and reflexive (see idiom). An important concept in Aristotle (as in "Rhetoric" II xii-xiv).

morale (n.)
1752, "moral principles or practice," from French morale "morality, good conduct," from fem. of Old French moral "moral" (see moral (adj.)). Meaning "confidence" (especially in a military context) first recorded 1831, from confusion with French moral (French distinguishes le moral "temperament" and la morale "morality").

Manners, customs…
Appropriate behavior for social settings, for social activity.
If there is no written book on what constitutes appropriate behavior then there is no way of knowing what the good manners are. Prior to the invention of the letterpress there were no manners and customs, everybody was behaving arbitrarily.
No…of course not, prior to that was an oral tradition where children were taught the right manners and they passed it on themselves to their children and so forth.
There is this game called 'Whispering down the lane', yeah…, adding to that the observation that memories alter over time and the manners and customs of a society would have to become an arbitrary mess if that were the reality of how customs are maintained.

Manners and customs are what they are because of the nature of the social participants (their quality; ancestry; genetics;…)and their environment (climate; population density; and in sheltered environments, the technologies available). All of that is interacting with each other. The passing on of moral codes and customs is part of that activity.

If someone were to make the assumption that morality is this universal thing, this universal good which people only need to be informed about then how could they reconcile this with the reality of increasingly diversifying customs, due to the increasing heterogeneity in the mixed unified population - humanity? You rationalize it post-facto and make the customs, the morality, as all-inclusive as possible while at the same time finding ways to create social cohesion (based on cowardice, preferring the slow destruction over time to suppress the open conflict). Ideological unity is being preserved at the expense of biological wholesomeness, integrity.


There are people who know about the right kind of social behavior by following a set of instructions they received at some points in their education. If that is the primary source for morality and manners then those customs lose their meaningfulness and social interaction becomes unreflected and thoughtless, or cynical.