On Morality

[Ostronomos]

We as humans seem to have a metaphysical identity that is responsible for our gracious behavior. It also allows us to exercise moral restraint as Philosopher Adam Smith once wrote. Morality is the language of human nature. It is the code by which we all act. Going against it would result in our downfall.

[C C]

We as humans seem to have a metaphysical identity that is responsible for our gracious behavior. It also allows us to exercise moral restraint as Philosopher Adam Smith once wrote. Morality is the language of human nature. It is the code by which we all act. Going against it would result in our downfall.

Evolution carved some general, loose social tendencies in us that are inherited. For instance, infanticide certainly wouldn't be conducive to species survival, and yet -- unlike absolute, no-exception universals -- nature allows it to occur as long as it is not on a mass scale or of detrimental quantity.

But beyond that, we're pretty much programmable by the culture and environment we grow up in. Given that the latter has regionally varied throughout history with all sorts of "norms" and practices that we today would consider unjust, harsh, barbaric, or cruel.

Such systems are invented, and maintained by group contracts. Like anything else fabricated by people, morality also develops or undergoes changes over time (ergo, why we consider _X_ immoral now). Yet another knock against it consisting of immutable universals dispensed by transcendent sources. 

Severe mental illness is a random card at play in the mix, too. Though kids raised by parents that are incoherently whacked-out can potentially desire to be just the opposite of them, as well as contingently elude a kind of trauma that might lead to pathological behaviors on their own part. 

And newer political ideologies and regimes like Nazism and Pol Pot communist ethnonationalism can collectively manipulate and sanction ordinary humans into mimicking on a mass scale some of the horrors that infamously deranged or malfunctioning individuals committed.

[Ostronomos]

Morality seems to have both objective and subjective qualities. For example "good" is not the same as good and "bad" is not the same as bad.