Sunday, November 29, 2009

Morals

Randomly, I got into a discussion about morals. Right, I was convincing people I'm not evil because I am amoral not immoral. So I tried to think of morals I have and realized I had an ill definition.

So what the hell are morals? Go wiki!


In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or a set of beliefs distinguishing between right and wrong behaviors. In its descriptive use, morals are arbitrarily and subjectively created by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience."

Arbitrary! That's a good way to make rules for people. We all know autistics, especially, are going to follow rules for the rules sake because that is what good people do. /end sarcasm. Okay. Seriously? Who follows rules without enough logic behind them to make sense?

"The subjectiveness of morality is shown by the observation that actions or beliefs which by themselves do not seem to cause overt harm may be considered immoral, e.g. marrying someone of the same or opposite gender, being an atheist or a theist, etc. Descriptive morality does not explain why any behavior should be considered right or wrong, only that it may be classified so. For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because they cause benefit or harm, respectively. However, this is not by any means an all encompassing criterion; it's possible that many moral beliefs are due to prejudice, ignorance or even hatred."

Back to right and wrong concepts. Good and evil. Concepts invented to scare people into bowing to whatever power decides to be bowed to. None of which I believe in. I believe in balance. Well, you can read my little list of things I believe in. Back to morals!

"In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of belief and conduct which would be preferred by the sane "moral" person, under specified conditions. In this "definitive" sense, claims are made such as "Killing is immoral." While descriptive morality would not necessarily disagree that killing is immoral, it would prefer to say, "Many believe that killing is immoral." A refined adherence to this latter position is known as moral skepticism, in which the unchanging existence of a rigid, universal, objective moral "truth" is rejected.[1]"

This means morality is more or less a guess of what might or might not be okay to do. That's MY morality! I apparently am a moral skeptic!

"In its third usage, morality is synonymous with ethics. Ethics is the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.[2] Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).[3]"

If I can quit laughing enough to type, I will comment on ethics. *hours pass* Seriously... Just reading the definition should convince ANYONE that it isn't real and that morals can only be a personal choice and even then they are only that. A choice.

My favorite thing about ethics is hearing people use the term as though it is a tangible thing. "but that's unethical!" bwahahahaha.

"In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, euthanasia, abortionand wars of invasion.

In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified.

In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms "moral" or "immoral". Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers' sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (universal prescriptivism); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory). Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims.[4] The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths are known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior."

I am still confused about morals, but that is mostly because people seem to enjoy foisting their morals upon others (even to the point of breaking their morals in their zeal to prove that their morals are the ones meant to be followed. Anyone else wanna bomb an abortion clinic?) and drop their morals as soon as any challenges arise.

Gosh! Being honest is hard! But my morals say lying is bad. Oh! I have a solution. This isn't a real lie. It is a social lie. A white lie. A lie to protect someone's feelings. It's an ethical lie!

So let's see if I have this correct... Morals are codes for conduct. Most people base theirs on religion because people don't naturally have morals. To make society function we force morals upon one another and hope this makes up for the utter lack of personal responsibility that most folk have. Or don't have?

In any case... I thought it through and realized I certainly do have a code of conduct. And after letting my auntie Zilla and another friend read them realized it's a rather sociopathic list. Mostly because it is logic based. No emotions or social bull involved. And that seems to be the definition of sociopath, connotatively. Those who base things on logic rather than let emotions screw them over.

  • don't do anything that gets abi locked up (this is my only social one... avoid arrest. I think jail would be awful boring and then it would be even HARDER to get a job).
  • be kindly towards those people who don't suck (ie those I claim as MINE)
  • accept the consequences of your actions (and conversely if you want a specific consequence do what is necessary to get there)
  • be aware of the damage you do so that you are consciously choosing to harm
  • do everything to the best of your abilities. If it isn't worth doing well, don't do it.
  • enjoy everything to the fullest, wallow in every emotion and then let it pass so you can get to the next one, be open to the awe and wonder of everything that exists... be a child.
  • be mindful. Is mindfulness a code of conduct? It must be. Actively choose everything that you do. Be aware of yourself.
Those are my rules. They apply entirely to me. While I think many people would be as joyous as I tend to be if they followed these rules, I see no reason for anyone else to bother. Most people don't WANT to be joyous! Oh. And it might not work for them, but pshaw on that concept. Anything that is good for me MUST be good for everyone else. This isn't just an autistic concept (although we do rather enjoy going overboard on it) because if it were... no one would foist their ideas on one another.

Perhaps morals are just a matter of trust. We have, as a species, all proven ourselves to be untrustworthy, lacking in personal responsibility, and lacking the ability to think. Based on that, it does make sense someone would try to force those things on us from the outside. Kind of like laws. They are only there because we are not generally responsible enough on our own to not just go around killing one another. So they make it illegal and immoral. Maybe if we are scared enough we will avoid such behavior!

Really? Do you really resist killing me only because you are afraid of hell or jail time? Do you walk down the street thinking "I'd steal that and that and that and that... but oh NOES.. hell and jailtime!" so you resist?

I freely admit there are many people I see each day that I resist physically harming because I don't want to go to jail. Honestly, if we were all allowed to smack them, their behavior would surely improve! So aren't morals harming us as a society, more than helping? Not spanking kids is creating a generation of selfish idiots who can barely read, because telling them they are failing and are stupid and lazy is "mean" and we can't do that!

The truth has become morally wrong. Or, perhaps it always has been. Truth has been anti-social, at the very least, since the first girl asked the first boy if her animal furs made her ass look big. My most anti-social behavior is telling the truth. I am told it makes people uncomfortable, scared, attacked, and many other things. By social mores, I'm a complete asshole. Why? Because I tell the truth. It's horrible of me. But my morals demand it. In fact, isn't it the ninth commandment? Thou shall not bear false witness. Of course, who knows what it originally said. Maybe God was only meaning in the legal sense, at court. He couldn't have meant something silly like never lie.

I think the original most likely said: Thou shalt not lie unless it would hurt someone's feelings, put you in an uncomfortable position, risk your mental and/or emotional and/or physical well being, or in any other way compromise your comforts. They really messed it up in the translation.

In any case, the more that I read about morals, the more I realize it is the biggest farce. It's right up there with religion and democracy. Almost everyone has a moral that says do not lie. And almost as many people take great care to lie often and then invent new morals to excuse this. And these people not only say that morals are important and innate and everyone should follow them, but immediately admit that there are moral dilemmas, times that morals should be ignored, and that morals are very difficult to maintain.

Does that not sound like the biggest pile of crap ever?

Oddly, I find my code of conduct very simple to follow. I suppose this is because the main theme is think things through and do whatever you want. Just be honest to yourself about your reasons. Does this mean I do not have morals, or that I have better morals than most people?

Is moral more connotative or concrete? I think it must be connotative; therefore, I have no morals. I am amoral and that suits me. I do have a rather strict Code of Conduct however, and that suits me, as well.

8 comments:

Jon A.S. said...

Hey Abi,

I just had a great idea about morals...that as long as you remain true to yourself, and follow the Golden Rule, then I believe I have led a moral life....and all the others are free to do as they wish, as long as I'm free to do as I wish also. But that's just me...:))

Jonas

Abifae said...

That's a good code of conduct :) I think the MOST important part is "others are free to do as they wish, as long as I'm free to do as I wish also". Thanks!!

Kristin said...

The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths are known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior." .. this gave me pause.. im still pondering on the meaning. yay abi!

Abifae said...

Always happy to give you something to think about while auxed at work, Kristin :D

Moral absolutism sounds very religious, to me.

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Andy said...

Morals are how us NTs try to balance out the unbalanced system, or justify the imbalances, so we don't feel as hurt over it all.

Abifae said...

"Morals are how us NTs try to balance out the unbalanced system, or justify the imbalances, so we don't feel as hurt over it all."

what are you trying to balance? not sure which system is imbalanced. but very curious as to what they're trying to fix!!

also, how do morals help you not feel hurt?

Theresa C said...

Great post thannks