Rongnongno Loc: FL

"Le probleme avec la morale c'est que c'est toujours celle des autres."
"The problem with morality is that it is always someone else's"
(Leo Ferre)

Sounds wise but, is it?

We are raised within a society that gives us a set of parameters. This influences all our lives without question. The dilemma resides on how we accept it, modify it or reject it.

We always react to someone else's morale, but we do make our own. In that we are 'free' to the extent that we make our own decisions to accept or refuse that morality. Still, considering that we are influenced anyway, where is our true freedom?

I have no answer to questions like this. I just keep turning them in my head to understand better and possibly offer an answer.

I have none. (It was true in 2010, it is still true 11 years later)

ggttc Loc: TN

Any idea exists within parameters.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

We as humans have a hard time dealing with the absence of parameters. We can't really wrap our minds around space and how there is no limit or end to it. The same holds true of time. We place designations on pieces of time but it is not reality, it is just a means for helping us deal with it. We could have just as easily broken time down into 2 hour segments with only 12 hours in a cycle or made clocks on the metric scale where there are 100 segments of time in an hour, not 60 sec. We invent parameters because we can't grasp a concept where there isn't a definitive beginning and end.

ClarkJohnson Loc: Fort Myers, FL and Cohasset, MA

« To live outside the law, you must be honest » (Bob Dylan)

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

My buddies and I grew up together with an unusual life rule;


"You can anything you want, as long as it does not hurt or annoy anyone, including yourself."


Hurt and annoy here meaning any abuse or misconduct as we had bled for each other and actually bled one another, although never in anger.

With that one rule, we manage to get along well even though some have very opposing political and/or spiritual belief.

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

I am a bit confused. Are we talking about morale or morals as they are quite different ?

Canisdirus

Morals are like sandbars...constantly shifting.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Unfortunately, as you suggest, there is no such thing as morality. It varies from person to person and country to country. Whatever you're doing, it's probably bad, as seen with the eyes of another. Humans seemed designed to hate and to fight - over anything.

Stephan G

Morality, like History, is always in the past tense. It is a retrospective analysis of what we may consider to be morally right. It is our individual attempt to recognize some common boundaries that make us a homogenous society. Each one of us still has to decide on the parameters that can be acceptable for ourselves. Then we go and compare notes with others.

One thing, the ruler is always morphing. And there is no book that will be sufficient to be the one foundation for all.

However, Mortality is another story.

2Dragons Loc: The Back of Beyond

My Dad summed it up, from the time I could comprehend, with the Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It still works.

Reno

"We always react to someone else's morale, but we do make our own. In that we are 'free' to the extent that we make our own decisions to accept or refuse that morality. Still, considering that we are influenced anyway, where is our true freedom?"

Morality is a human construct intended to facilitate a functional culture or society. Some parts of our cultural morality may not produce comfort with the innate character of different people. For close to 2,000 years the morality of our culture was strongly predicated on Christianity. That of course has changed, and people consider much moral they would have seen as immoral 150 years ago. If you're looking for a way to act, i.e. express your own sense of what is moral, without some type of external influence, you will not find it. In other words, freedom in a vacuum does not exist. If you violate some part of your cultural morality because it does not resonate with you, it will not be a free choice, because whatever it is will still have been influenced by thinking that was affected by something you read, experienced, or heard. Free will is an illusion, as difficult as this is to accept. 

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Many words to say the same thing...

Rongnongno Loc: FL

*ahem* This makes no sense if you really think about it. Kill before one kills you. Pushing this to an extreme.

2Dragons Loc: The Back of Beyond

I think you deliberately missed the spirit of the quote. I think it's pretty simple in that in its broad interpretation it pretty much covers all 10 Commandments.

Reno

If you believe you said the same thing I wrote, just with fewer words, you did not understand my writing.