Kindest Regards, Alexa!
Thank you for your posts, I enjoyed the jokes!
alexa said:
I think we cannot speak about the morality of a 5 years child. Instead, we can speak about the morality of human being at his maturity age (more than 18 years or 21, depending of country). In other words, the age is an important factor.
I agree. But let us consider, a 5 year old child is closer to the spiritual base. The child's mind is less cluttered with the concerns of day to day living. A child is wrapped up in the moment, living life in the joy of the spirit. (I speak generally, of a child not consumed with want, hunger or disease, and even among those there is still a greater affinity with spirit) This is far closer to what I have been alluding to with the term universal morality, and I think it is to close what Abogado was alluding to with his comments about a lion becoming a camel becoming a child.
I agree with your initial comment in that as a person gains wisdom and maturity (the lion becoming the camel becoming the child), the moral guide that leads us becomes more distinct, more clearly defined and obvious to us as individuals. Some lessons are only made clear by experience. Some of us still find a certain thrill from being "naughty," or because of addiction cannot (seem to) break free of self-destructive habits.
The family, the friends, the school, the collective at work and the circle of life you have are included in another important factor : the influence on the individual by his closed relationships.
Yes, this is external reinforcement. Universal morality would be internal. That internality can be reinforced or influenced by external sources, but should still exist independently of them if such actually exists. Otherwise, how would we know how or when to say "no!"
I agree morality is subjective.
I do not agree to be an invention.
I am inclined to agree, but that agreement is based on personal experience, not rational persuasion. Morality as invention has not been shown to my satisfaction to include the elements of spirit and love.
In my opinion, all the factors I mentioned above influence our "instinctive" behaviour. Maybe there are others, but they do not pass trough my mind in this moment.
Yes, I think outside influence and reinforcement strengthen our moral inclinations. But as example, I think of when I was about 5 years old, before I understood the concept of "lie." At a time such as this, one sees all as truth, even if we think in pictures rather than words (or better stated, pictures more often than words. As our vocabulary grows, the pictures tend to wither and we think more in words.) I remember a time my Father was upset with me a said he would "knock my head off." I remember wondering what it would be like to walk around with no head, not realizing what that would actually mean.
In the innocent state of a child, unspoiled by cares, concerns and untruths, morality holds a greater or more different perspective than it does as an adult. A child is more apt to see things as they are, boldly and uncorrupted, where an adult is more apt to cover things and color them with prejudices and preconceptions in an attempt to make the unpleasant more pleasant.
At the beginning of the evolution, among the first human societies, people were more closed to the nature, so looking for moral guidence into the nature is not so odd, after all. Those who presently look back into nature for moral guidence, return at the base. Can we say this is a bad thing ? I rather say no. The diversity is so huge among people's beliefs, I cannot ask to a different person to behave exactly like me just to fit in my moral standard.
I agree in concept. Yet, the very nature of truth says there is only one truth. Anything less is not truth, but untruth. That others may see truth from their individual perspective I do not disagree. But I wonder, individual coloring of truth and distortion of truth is untruth, and so cannot be truely called "truth." So, we have what could be said to be many explanations of the unexplainable. And/or we have manipulations of the same explanations for the purpose of political control. This is the history of politics and religion. Neither of which fully accounts for spirit and love, let alone morality. Here, I think, may be the divergence of the term "morality" from conscience into law.
Maybe for a monk who lives far away from the others, morality is an illusion. For the rest of us, if you do not accept the "morality of the society" you live in, you became a paria.
Yes, indeed!
I have thought about this, as a matter of practicality. But practicality does not imply truth in the philosophical, absolute sense.
At various times it has been "practical" to go along with the madness of the crowd just to survive. If authority said so, you either agreed or were hung/burned at the stake/tortured to death. That is a blessing available to us in this day and age, we are allowed to think for ourselves, and (in greater and lesser degree) allowed to disagree and dissent. I suppose that at no time since the earliest beginning has humanity had that opportunity to see things independently. (OH MY, I may be making Vaj's point about mass delusion!...) The comments earlier about being influenced by others, even if those people are worthy of respect (parents, clergy, teachers, etc), is still an
outside influence. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it leads to an attempt to homogenize a society. Perhaps I should leave out the "but," it is not a bad thing, it leads to a homogenized society.
Yet, did not even Jesus teach that no man can achieve perfection of his own? Even under the influence of a society. Proof is all around us, for all of the lofty ideals we preach in the modern world, we still fall short. Way short. Which tells me that formalized morality is either incorrect, insufficient, and/or deliberately intended to set us up for failure.
While I have difficulty seeing morality strictly as an illusion, at least until I see something to better support that view, I do see where it could be a manipulated invention, at least in the more formalized version (law). But this (morality as invention) does not account for spirit and love, or the conscientious understanding of a 5 year old of "ought and ought not."
See my quandary?
