On this planet whose morality do you follow, and what makes you believe they are correct and not mistaken?

Mine.

The Golden Rule with an emphasis on kindness.

I’m on a @Hypocrisy_Central tip today.

I prescribe pretty heavily to Science. Which means, I follow moral ideas that seem to be tried and tested over time and which tend to produce predictably positive results after numerous trials.

For example: Not driving while drunk. Not being rude to servers. Smiling at people who make eye contact with me. Spending money wisely. etc etc.

There are so many ideas out there that have a long history of general success. I pretty much do whatever seems to make sense. And when I do something that doesn’t produce good results I use the process of elimination to move forward.

Really it means I end up listening to just about anyone’s advice and ideas, then evaluate them (amateurishly) for Scientific merit. Then it’s all trial and error from there, keep doing whatever seems to work.

The one that says “Don’t Be a Jerk.”

I follow my own code.

I follow the Law of Kardamom.

My own.

My own. I’d like to think that all of us (well, most of us) can figure out what is moral and what is not on our own. If you turn over your life to following some ‘official’ code, you probably run a larger risk of committing an immoral act. For instance, things that are legal (or that are okay according to the bible) are not necessarily moral.

@augustlan Exactly. And a shocking number of biblical rules (for example) run afoul of the Law of Kardamom.

@Sunny2 The Golden Rule with an emphasis on kindness.
That Golden Rule is what in detail?

@ragingloli, @hearkat, @augustlan, @marinelife,
For the ”my own” group, you would have turned out exactly the same even if you were never corrected in any action by parents, grandparents, the law or school? You would have come to the conclusion you should not slap anyone who insulted you, beat up someone who stole from you, taken anything that was not yours, etc, had there not been a threat of punishment or anyone telling you that you should not do that?

@glacial And a shocking number of biblical rules.
Psst We are talking about morals completely apart from the Bible, religion, etc, just so you’d know.

@Hypocrisy_Central You must not know my story…I am who I am in spite of the way I was raised, not because of it.

@augustlan You must not know my story…I am who I am in spite of the way I was raised, not because of it.
I only know pieces that trickled out in past threads. However, you say you are who you are in spite of how you were raised. Let me ask you this way then, when you remember growing up, way back when, 6yr, 7yr, etc. Did you come up with the idea it was not right to steal from other kids, be stingy with your toys, not share sports equipment on the school yard, etc because you came to just not like it, or was any of it because if you hogged the balls or jump rope in school there was a negative reaction waiting for you by the school officials or when you got home? Even if there would have been did you keep doing those things knowing there was a punishment coming because you felt you had the right or deserved to do them?

It never even occurred to me to steal things from other kids or not share in the first place.

@Hypocrisy_Central I would like to point out that churches and religions exist in this physical realm. Their ideas and philosophies are spread through physical media as well. We cannot rule them out for the purposes of your question’s title or details.

I followed what my parents and culture inculcated in me, which was a pseudo-Calvinistic, Judeo-Christian mixture representing a dualism or belief in a real heaven and hell. Those beliefs have been tempered by 50 years of experience living in the West and the East and have changed radically. Still, the foundation is there.

I was sexually abused as a child, despite being raised in a very strict Christian household. I had to wipe clean all those mixed messages and develop my own moral code. Some of the things I was taught in words made sense, but I did not have living examples of good morals in my world. I had to strip it all down and choose what values and principles really matter to me, and to practice these behaviours in my daily life instead of ‘acting’ and ‘reacting’ out of habit and childhood conditioning.

@Hawaii_Jake We cannot rule them out for the purposes of your question’s title or details.
You can of you try, many here have done just that.

Those beliefs have been tempered by 50 years of experience living in the West and the East and have changed radically. Still, the foundation is there.
Even if we count religion, and the lengthy exposure to it, as a foundation to the morality certain people use or do. If you find that morality, or the foundation to which it is built, to be flawed, what would keep you using it and not discard it as a superstition you no longer believe?

@hearkat I had to wipe clean all those mixed messages and develop my own moral code.
When you rebuilt your morality you did not reference anything that was in existence before that. If you did graft any of the before stuff back in was it by coincidence, or by what criteria did you accept it? Before acceptance of it was there any thought of it being correct other than personal choice?

I was raised in the church, so obviously I was influenced there, and I follow the morality of Jesus. He doesn’t ask me to stone people, or blow myself up in a town square. He wants me to be nice to everyone, and treat them like I want to be treated. Pretty simple.

The problem is the notion that morality is somebody else’s to dictate.

Nature, bigger than you or me, dictates morality.

If we follow some human being’s notion of morality, it will change according to human whim or transfer of power. Thus dooming the the human race.

People who make up an arbitrary code of morality are, in my opinion, a potential danger to my well being.

@josie Nature, bigger than you or me, dictates morality.
Might makes right, which is the law of the jungle and the natural Golden Rule. However, we do not operate off that. In the natural sense, if you are big enough and strong enough you take what you want, and don’t have to share what you have. That is supposed to be immoral, but aside from the church, religion, etc, who said so? The problem lies back to what you said: The problem is the notion that morality is somebody else’s to dictate Who are the ”someone else”? Is that the government, a group of people, a king, etc? How or what gave those people or individuals the authority to dictate what is moral and what is not, control of those with guns to arrest those who don’t tow the line?

@Hypocrisy_Central
I would love to respond to that, but I am not real sure what you just said. Perhaps it’s my problem not yours, but still, I don’t follow. I guess I am just a slow study…

@Hypocrisy_Central “You can of you try, many here have done just that.” Are you referring to those posts that say “my own” which you have called into question?

I am a little wary of my own mind. Not that my mind in particular is frightening, but it’s a human mind. I know it’s capable of horrible thoughts because I went through an angry phase as a teenager and I had mean wishes for people who differed from me in ways that I no longer believe to be significant. I thought certain qualities made certain people somehow lesser. I thought a lot of bad things.

I was only a teenager and my brain wasn’t fully developed. But who’s to say that even a fully developed human brain is capable of making rational, ethical decisions? I thought I was right back then, and now I think I was completely off base. What if a few more years of wisdom end up leading me to believe that the way I think right now is completely wacko? How do I trust that I’ve reached a plane in which my brain is reliable? What gives me the power to judge myself worthy of writing a code of ethics worth following? Aren’t I just a teeny bit biased on that front?

That’s how I feel. I feel self-doubt, but I don’t view it as a negative insecurity type thing. I view it as a healthy sense of caution about myself as a human being, subject to human nature and human error. I take everything I believe with a grain of salt. :)

But it also feels wrong to borrow a belief system from somebody else. That somebody else is human too. Maybe a lot of other humans agree that that somebody is right, and that lends validation to it. But the crowd once thought slavery okay.

The only thing that feels right to me is to adhere to a small set of rules, ones that are simple enough to be self-evident. I truly believe that nothing can go wrong with these statements:

Hate in general makes life worse for everybody
It’s not immoral if it doesn’t harm anybody else (directly or indirectly)
If you have the opportunity to make somebody happy without causing harm elsewhere, take it

Beyond simple statements like that, I just take things one situation at a time and try to use my best judgement. And I make mistakes sometimes. And I learn.

In general, I try to stick to a moral code that I’d like to call my own. One that I have internalized over time.

The Golden Rule, comes to mind (treat others as you want to be treated.)

It is my conviction that good vs evil are attractors that don’t need religion to be defined.

My code often boils down to
* Keep the interests of others in mind, while pursuing my own.
* Neither hurt nor ignore the interests of others without a very valid reason.

A sense of fairness, Is the base for my morality, something I believe is innate in our and many other species. To survive as social animals, fairness invokes reciprocity and improves our odds.

@Hypocrisy_Central As @whitenoise (above) has stated: to treat others as you would like to be treated or as Muslims put it, Do NOT do to other people what you would NOT like to be done to you. My philosophy comes from a wish for people to get along peacefully, cooperatively, and be helpful to one another as needed.

@Kardamom.‘s

The Law of Kardamom is pretty damn good.

@augustlan Fuuuuck yeah. :)

One can not say they had only one influence in their development of their moral code. I had my parents, the teachings presented by my church and their interpretation is scriptures, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, The Electric Company, my school teachers and administrators, etc.

As I mentioned, I put thought and effort into re-parenting myself. I took the time to consider the meanings and intentions of various things I’d learned over the years – regardless of source- and I chose what values and principles matter to me. Some may be akin to lessons I was taught, while others may not… what makes them mine is that I do not follow them blindly because I was brainwashed as a child. I do my best to live mindfully, so I choose my priorities throughout each day.

@Mariah It’s not immoral if it doesn’t harm anybody else (directly or indirectly) The lynch pin to that is indirectly. Some people will be offended by something and claim injury when no one physically slapped them or punched them, or example. If for some reason a woman fell in love with her son and her son with her, and they wanted to have a romantic sexual relationship some will be offended when it does no physical harm to them. Even if the son was of legal age, since they will try to use his age as a platform to be indignant, they would still cry about it when no one is getting hurt, actually. You mentioned slavery, be it here in the states or other places, who is it to say it is wrong or immoral? If most people in nation X believe it is OK to sell your children into the sex trafficking life to clear a debt who is to say it is wrong unless they can enforce a different method or way of living on them?

@whitenoise A sense of fairness, Is the base for my morality, something I believe is innate in our and many other species. Fairness? What part of the lion pack lends to fairness when they stalk the watering hole and upon separating the 10 day old springbok or the sick aging wildebeest from the herd and eating them alive. They compensated the springbok’s mother, apologized to the wildebeest family? I don’t think so. Whoever is strongest and best is not food for those who cannot best him, if you are weak you are on the menu, which is as fair as it gets. The alpha silverback ape did not get to be the dominate make by election, he got their by pummeling all challengers silly to the point no one else did. How is the fairness you speak of the same as what is innate in animals?

@hearkat I had my parents, the teachings presented by my church and their interpretation is scriptures, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, The Electric Company, my school teachers and administrators, etc.
EXACTALLY, now we are getting closer, who is to say The Electric Company was more or less correct than Mr. Rogers? The morality they taught you, did they invent it or did they get it from someone? And if they got it from someone who is to say that group or person was correct? Who is to say either of them are or were more correct than your own parents?

I am to say what morals or values are right. I don’t give a rat’s ass where any of my childhood influences got their ideas from. I’ve collected a lot of information over nearly half a century of life – words I’ve read or heard, behaviours I’ve performed or observed, emotions I’ve felt or others have shared, my own experiences and those that have been recounted to me. I process it all in my mind and make my own decisions on what is “right”, and choose my actions based on my ability to sleep soundly at night. I answer to my own conscience, and if I’ve crossed it, I can not rest easy.

I think you answered your own objection. ”...some will be offended when it does no physical harm to them.” If it does no harm, it’s not immoral. I don’t care if you’re offended.

But you’re right that the “indirectly” detail is the loophole many will use. In the example you gave, people will claim such relationships will lead to degradation of society which in turn causes harm. I personally disagree with this line of logic but it’s one of those gray areas that my basic rules don’t cover.

My morality began with what my (atheist) parents taught me about being friendly, co-operative and compassionate. It has developed over 46 years of experience living in human society. It is a morality based on doing the least possible harm to others. I know it works because I’m not in jail, and no-one has ever told me I’m a horrible or evil person.

Stan lee and Spiderman is where I gleaned my morality, I practiced it in school and on bullies in recess.

@downtide My morality began with what my (atheist) parents taught me about being friendly, co-operative and compassionate. It has developed over 46 years of experience living in human society.
Which brings us back full circle to the original question; how do you know they were right? Did you take their instruction, rules, etc and test them? Did you do opposite what they told you to see if a better out come would come from in contrary to what your parents, teacher, etc told you? Or did you basically accept what they told you and followed it, because they said it was the best or better way to go?

@Hypocrisy_Central Yes of course i tested them. Its all about testing hypotheses. If you take what your parents say and act on it, and good things result, there’s a good chance they were right. If you take what they say and bad things happen, you learn and modify, and do it different next time.

As it happens my parents are sane and sensible, so their morality works pretty well for me too. Along the way I’ve added things that they perhaps wouldn’t be so comfortable with, but I’ve tested those too and they also work for me.

You “know” your moral decisions are right because they can be observed serving their purpose. You don’t have to get it right the first time. You have to crawl and fall a lot before you learn to walk.

@downtide If you take what your parents say and act on it, and good things result, there’s a good chance they were right.
There could have been an incident that came out better. Just because what you could consider negative didn’t happen is no slam dunk they are right. If your father said do not steal bikes and you never stole on, sure, you would not have the law looking for you, or some angry person looking to do you harm for stealing their bike. However, what if you did not take you father’s advice and stole some bikes anyhow to see what happened and nothing negative happened, the law did not come knocking and the owners never materialized, all you did was end up with extra nice bikes and other people wanting to buy them off of you. Tangibly that would have been a better outcome.

Regardless, you in actuality didn’t have your own morality, as well as many others who think they chose their own morality, you took the morality of your parents and maybe others and tweaked it to be more to your liking but you did not build it from scratch or pure trial and error, at least how you describe it.