What Makes Us Moral?

[Athena]

What makes us moral?

[Osborn F Enready]

Morals are subjective to the individual, and come through teaching, raising as a child, and personal experiences, which all shape our beliefs and ideology, or self-philosophy.

[Nigh Eve]

I'll swing my bat at the pitch.



Genetics.

Survival tool as a social creature.

Empathy.

Reason.


Just watching the neighbour's dogs coming over to play with my dog. As social creatures, the four of them will not actually hurt eachother. They open their jaws but restrict themselves from doing what they know is painful and destructive to the social unit. Their forms of communication; wagging their tails and not having the hair on their back stand on end and perhaps different tones in their barks may be of significance as well, send social signals that notify the others of their intent. As with people. We tease and play and send social signals in much the same way.

As with primates. Males will hold a tool (rock, stick) in confrontations and yet we observe females removing those tools from their hands. This is morality at it's earlier stages of social recognition.

So, we can see the basis of morality at work. With humans, we take it one step further. Reason. Which is where we end up with Human Rights or amorality. Most other things are currently subjective and reasonably so (Not restricting our sexual activities is subjectively immoral because there is less reason for it to be immoral). Animal rights are a step further in our empathy and the more they resemble something we can empathize with, the more our "morality" kicks in and triggers our reason to focus. The reasoning is still under debate. If a dog could plead "please don't kill me" to someone preparing to cook 'em, their triggers may kick in and depending on the need for survival, our triggers would likely overload as they do with cannibalism and survival in dire situations.

Not a homerun but perhaps I covered some bases.

[Technosoul]

Morality is when a person feels comfortable in having a right relationship with their ideals for good behavior.

[glycerine]

Society. What you were taught as a child and whether it was forced on you or not seems to make a difference. If you don't want to be alone, you follow society and it's moral beliefs so that you don't become an outcast.

[Alive]

In the long run, evolution, the same thing that made us everything else. Morality is useful for alliance reasons and to help the genetically similar among us survive and reproduce.

[Arawn-ap-Hywel]

What makes us moral?

Fear.

[Hmm]

Fear.

Would you mind explaining more?

[vicious-vegan]

Fear.

That's deep and so true.

[Nigh Eve]

Fear.

What makes us fear?

Mmm...although it may be the case sometimes, I've never been a fan of fear drives us. Fear-mongering imo.

Boils down to our construction.

[vicious-vegan]

Some people are scared to do wrong thnigs because they could go to jail. They could be disowned by people they love.

btw, great quote.

[Athena]

Society. What you were taught as a child and whether it was forced on you or not seems to make a difference. If you don't want to be alone, you follow society and it's moral beliefs so that you don't become an outcast.

Interesting insite! It isn't just want the child is taught, but how the child is taught. The method of teaching can get rebellion, huh? Hum, I can relate to that. Just this evening I was overwhelmed by a rebellious urge, and I don't normally go out of way looking for trouble. I find the streak of rebelleousness, most irrational and curious.

I have concerns about my grandson who loves power too much, and seriously lacks the wisdom to use it well. It is pretty much agreed, none of the women in his life are going to change him, but only another male will be able to modify his thinking, and therefore, his behavior. I think when men disrespect the mother of their children, they teach their children to disrespect them, and then if the woman is left alone to raise the children, things do not go well. If a human being does not desire to please another, there will be a lack of morals?