Morality Ethics Wisdom

Morality includes and is an extension of any personal valuation. However, without the recognition that the self does not exist in a vacuum, personal valuations remain an expression of either immaturity or lack of intelligence. The essence of morality is compassion. Sympathy is spontaneous and natural to the human animal. Compassion is sympathy brought to maturity, through the presence of strength. Exploring the world with a moral outlook is a personal process, rooted in any individual’s vivid and particular life experience. Morals are not things - they are neither ‘real’ nor ‘given’ -therefore the expression of sympathy and compassion is not limited to rigid or even conventional conceptions regarding universal moral values.

Ethics are externally applied rules of behavior of a generally moral nature. The essence of ethics is efficiency, and as such can be valued for various reasons. Business ethics can help businesses make more money. Religious ethics can help practitioners assess their personal progress. When this efficiency is skillfully utilized for compassionate reasons, the world works more smoothly. Ethics can act as a mirror keeping us honest, when we voluntarily relate to them. Personal values and habits are questioned and challenged and the practitioner grows and matures as a result.

Wisdom makes the whole thing work. The essence of wisdom is a balance of accurate discrimination and simultaneous letting go of conceptual fixation. This balance implies accurate assessment without attachment.

Morality transcends ethics. Wisdom transcends morality. Morality transcends false wisdom. Ethics transcend false morality. There’s really nothing transcendent about the whole thing though - I think it’s very straightforward.

Consciously and willingly putting others first, especially with a sense of spaciousness and lack of duty (without poverty mentality), certainly leads to a more fulfilling life. We cannot lead a fulfilling life while propping up one’s own needs in a competitive way to the needs of others.

These are just some personal thoughts, and not especially well thought out perhaps. But I think it gives a general sense of my point of view.

So morality is a subjective judgement that overides ethical conduct?

What???

I disagree. The essence of (contemporary) morality is controlled behaviorisms.

How and why?

Subjective morals are arbitrary due to moral relativism and should not be taken seriously without a good reason…

I disagree. The essence of ethics is the explanation of behaviorisms through conceptual reasoning.

How?

It does more than keep us honest; ethics makes us learn something about ourselves and others.

I would replace ‘discrimination’ with ‘explanation’. I disagree with ‘attachment’ in your third statement.

It’s arguable about what transcends what, although I would say wisdom transcends both morality and ethics, but morality and ethics does not transcend compared to each other.

I disagree with this assumption.

Sure. You ultimately know better than any other person what the best course of action for yourself is. To be sure I’m being clear - I said “morality transcends ethics” and also “ethics transcends false morality”.

The self doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Do you believe that it does?

“Morality” can be used by individuals and societies for shady purposes.

How? I’m just defining it that way. Why is it so? Or why bother to cultivate compassion?

I don’t believe in moral relativism. I believe that qualities such as compassion are fundamental and define morality. The way those qualities are expressed in particular behavior is relative. Therefore relative behaviors are not arbitrary.

That too. Essences aren’t ‘real’ - they are defined after the fact as a subjective judgement - and yours is the more obvious statement.

For instance not killing each other makes the world work more smoothly.

I agree.

Say more?

Ok. It’s not exactly a strict analysis.

My last sentence was too bold. Fulfillment is definitely more or less - not either present or not.

No, I don’t believe the self exists in a vacuum, but failing to recognize that does not necessarily mean that personal valuations are expressions of immaturity or lack of intelligence. People just forget about dependence and sociality in our world due to terms like ‘independent’, ‘individuals’, etc. When I feel disconnected from people it is best described as a vacuous existence. It’s a common delusion for people to believe in total independence, but we do so because we are fixated our human compulsions.

You’re right, so why is the ‘essence of morality’ compassion? I believe the essence of morality is whatever the particular society uses it for–the most common element between different moralities is social control rather than compassion or empathy.

How is there a presence of strength in compassion? Why do you define compassion in this way?

Compassion is not fundamental or universal–only empathy is. A compassionate person is deemed ‘good’, ‘righteous’, ‘caring’, etc., but these terms are often based on the moral foundations for which they’re contextualized. Thus, they are arbitrary due to the nature of morality and the subjective ‘goods’ that compassion refers to.

That is a conjecture. A lot of killing goes on in the world right now, specifically from the motivations of American interests. Is the world running more smoothly?

‘Discrimination’ connotes a failed judgment based on judging human characteristics. I think the term is too loaded to be a good descriptor of wisdom. What does your expression of ‘attachment’ refer to? It seems to me that people are attached to the balances that go into wisdom, even when we are right or wrong about our explanations and concepts.

‘Putting others first’ can be viewed as selfish to me. I know people who “do not love themselves” because they are not selfish “in the right way”. For example, there are people who try to be nice and good to others to the point where they do not treat themselves with respect. Usually, this results in abuses against the ‘compassionate’, ‘selfless’ person. Skipping ahead to my conclusion, because this person is not utilizing a ‘healthy’ selfishness, they are actually being destructive and selfish in a seemingly pathetic way.

“People must love themselves before they can hope to love another person.” This is one of my personal beliefs. Until a person realizes this, they can be and are walked over. I used to feel sorry for such people in my own life, until I realized that it is not within my power to change a person who does this. It is up to them and them only. I know that I can guide a person to the choice, but the choice is ultimately up to them and there are no guarantees. Because I think it is such a pathetic thing, I am getting to the point where I don’t care about a person who is ‘selfless’ enough to be walked over. Either use them to get whatever you want out of them or try to help them if you can–either choice doesn’t really matter. Until they love themselves, I don’t see a point in respecting them.

Therefore, the ‘fulfilling life’ is a selfish one.

I agree with what you said here. But an ongoing inability or unwillingness to see oneself as not the center of the world strikes me as immature and/or unintelligent. In terms of most of the people I come across who fit the bill, it is usually immaturity. Most people are smart enough.

That’s understandable, but rejecting your own sense of morality because of that would just make you a victim of the society you live in - or else you’re just afraid to use the word.

I think it’s just how most people think of ‘compassion’ - it’s not a brief feeling that comes and goes, like sympathy is.

I’m not saying everyone is compassionate. I’m saying that compassion is fundamental to morality - also that compassion has no practical limits. There is no necessary reason to turn compassion off from time to time, since compassion doesn’t preclude radical behavior which might be judged immoral by others. Where compassion (which is natural, as it is developed sympathy/empathy) is, ‘moral behavior’ will follow, whether on purpose or not.

If the world were universally moral, ethics would be regressive. Do ethics contribute to immorality? Yes, when those ethics are immorally applied. It’s also important in this case to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary ethical systems.

Ok, how is ‘discernment’ instead of ‘discrimination’? I don’t think ‘explanation’ means what I intend. I mean that we can discriminate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ without fixating on them as categorical absolutes. By not fixating, we don’t get attached to those categories and therefore don’t become old grumpy fearful moralists (i.e. judgemental of the morals of others), and afraid of the world as it is. After all, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not real at all.

“Healthy selfishness” is great. I would have chosen different wording, but I know what you mean. I don’t think concern with one’s own wellbeing is “selfish”.

Nice - I agree.

Yes, life is our own to live. We can help others just so much. I don’t really go out of my way for others very much myself. There is some balance probably between the insight you are pointing out here and simple unquestioned acts of compassion. I feel I’m typically weak on the latter personally. But I guess that’s neither here nor there - I agree with what you said.

There is no reason to turn off the caring aspect of yourself, just because it is problematic. That makes us less human in a sense. It’s a normal and understandable response though.

Whoa, that’s a twist.

If you’re referring to the “healthy selfishness” you mentioned previously, your final conclusion seems to me a perversion of your original insight.

But maybe you’re just like me but with a different vocabulary.

I’m not so sure about that. The problem with extreme subjectivity is that it can be logically valid to say that ‘nothing exists outside of me, my thoughts, and my experiences’. In such a way, everything can be explained in terms of selfishness. A person based in subjectivism like this can state that there is no such thing as ‘selfless acts’. That’s quite a tangent to go into though.

It doesn’t mean that it is immature or unintelligent. The problem is more semantical and ideological. I’m not that subjective in my ideologies, because I believe in the existences of other people’s subjective beings just as well as my own subjective being.

I dislike using ‘morality’, because it is historically loaded with ideas of dogmatic religious beliefs (esp. Christian ones in America), as well as other concepts that I feel make the term hypocritical of itself.

I’d like a more in-depth explanation from you of what you think ‘compassion’ is exactly.

Mmm, I just don’t know about some of the points you’re making here:

“compassion is fundamental to morality”

“compassion has no practical limits”

“There is no necessary reason to turn compassion off from time to time”

“Where compassion is, ‘moral behavior’ will follow”

Ethics is another story that probably could be avoided for right now. It does seem that if morals were universal, then ethics would be regressive, but that’s clearly not the case.

‘Discernment’ seems much better semantically. I agree: “‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not real at all”.

I think the point I was making was just that everybody’s selfish, but there is a healthy way to be selfish insofar as it doesn’t even matter whether ‘selflessness’ exists. Selflessness cannot be philosophically proven anyway without a huge proof. Without the existence of selflessness, it wouldn’t even matter, because people can still exhibit seemingly ‘loving’ and ‘selfless’ behaviors. If you describe them as selfish or selfless, it wouldn’t even matter to me in a pragmatic sense.

So being in a kind of healthy selfishness just exhibits that there can exist supposed acts of ‘selflessness’ without needing a proof for them.

So I could say that in compassion for the week the killers must be imprisoned, and in compassion for the ignorant who are tricked into killing the tricksters must be seperated: makes sense.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. A “logical” validation of the kind of solipsism that leads to immature behavior reflects both immature feelings/behavior and immature knowledge.

I’m not sure.

Excellent. That strikes me as true.

What word do you prefer to use? Perhaps you prefer to use only the words that describe the particular qualities to which the more general term ‘morality’ broadly refers? (I can’t get that sentence quite right. ) Assuming this is the case, why limit yourself that way? Again, isn’t this a victim mentality of sorts?

I don’t generally make much more of it than I already have, to be honest. I’ll think about it.

I’m not sure what you mean here.

I agree. I’ve never personally thought of “selfishness” and “selflessness” as absolutes. In fact I think logical analysis proves that those extremes can’t in fact exist as real and polarized opposites. I’m using the word “selfish” here in a more everyday sense.

I don’t see how the points you’ve made necessarily lead to immature behavior in solipsism. Can you give me an example of a ‘logical validation’ that does so across-the-board as a true generalization? If there is a all-defining reason that makes solipism a reflection of immaturity, then I would like to know it.

Yes, I prefer to disect morality into concepts of ‘good vs. bad’ and ‘right vs. wrong’ when I talk to people about it. ‘Morality’ as a concept is thought of universally as a given assumption between different people, while at the same time people say that what is good or bad, right or wrong are especially subjective. I see this as a contradiction within the concept of ‘morality’.

I look at my disection as freeing myself from the limits and bounds of the term ‘morality’. I think it is a good thing to be amoral. (and I’m not using ‘good’ in the sense of ‘morally good’)

I am out of time replying for now though, so I may need to edit this later.

Just so you know I’m not ignoring your post - I’m just assuming you’re not done yet.

I’m not sure what you mean here.

Ethics and morality go hand-in-hand. If morals were universal, then there would be universal shoulds and should nots that could be used as proofs for everyday actions and ethical/moral considerations. However, since morals are subjective, ethical quandaries are not regressive. They can and are used in their own regard. Morality gets poured onto the concept of ethics, not the other way around.

Ok, I’m finished.

How about just an example from when I was 16 and driving for the first time. There is a weird intersection where I lived and I was driving through it with my parents. The speed limit was something like 35 mph and there were clear signs that other people had to stop and I had the right of way. My parents got nervous about my speed and raised their voices a bit in telling me to slow down because it was a “dangerous intersection”. I argued with them afterwards saying I did nothing wrong. I followed all the rules of the road and if someone went through a stop sign and hit me it would have been their fault. What do you think? I think my logic was correct on one level, but stupid on another. It was immature, because it was abstract - divorced from what really matters in life, and blind to the complexities of relationships. I think this example works well to illustrate the problems with a nihilistic tendency based on misappropriated logic, as well as the problems with simply following moral guidelines without a broader sense of how those guidelines come about in the first place.

Well that’s fine - you can have whatever relationship to the concept of morality you want - but you’ve generally been saying that “morals” are necessarily Christian in nature, and that following your rejection of Christianity, a sweeping rejection of all “morality” logically follows.

I don’t think ‘good manners’ are generally about the will to power either, although the rules can be and are used in that manner - i.e. to enforce class divisions. But in a more fundamental way good manners are about interacting with other people in an intelligent and sensitive manner. On one end of the spectrum it is obvious that eating ravenously with your mouth open and food dribbling out is disgusting to the people around you and offends them. Also, pointing a carving knife at the people you are talking to, especially as you make a pointed comment, is highly offensive. Why would you want to subject your companions to that kind of behavior? In the middle of the spectrum there are certain guidelines to ‘good manners’ that we don’t understand because the reasons for their existence aren’t obvious. Is it about something more subtle than we are capable of being aware of? Or does it have some outdated reason for its existence? That is the grey area. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the use of rules of ‘good manners’ that are subtly enforced in order to convey superiority and humiliate those who aren’t in the know about such fine ways.

It isn’t necessary to see good manners as presumably objective in order to see them as natural to situations and at best not at all arbitrary. It’s not necessary to point out that in some culture somewhere it’s actually considered good manners to have food dribbling out of your mouth as you eat. The essence of good manners is not in the exact behavior - it is in the basic attitude. Likewise with morality.

Why would I say that?

But I’ve never brought moral absolutism into the picture at all. Lack of moral absolutism doesn’t have to lead to lack of moral discernment.

In my experience, the less I see myself as an independent entity floating around in the world the more fulfilled my life is. Not only is it more correct (in many ways I’m not independent), but it feels better. It takes considerable energy to maintain the illusion of separateness. Compassion is the practical application of or natural behavior following from the acknowledgement of interdependence. Most people think of compassion in a certain limiting way - for instance something like Mother Theresa helping the poor in Calcutta. I’m saying the attitude I’m calling compassion is not at all limited to that kind of behavior. Even dropping the atomic bomb could theoretically be an action arising out of compassion. When we abandon that basic attitude though, we tend to feel more alienated and feel contentment dissipate. I’m just talking about this as a generality. I’m not saying you don’t feel happy when you get a birthday present. I’m just saying that happiness is volatile and not at all trustworthy if it is purely based on childish egoism.

I meant that what people generally deem ‘moral behavior’ will typically follow. Behavior people don’t generally approve of might also follow.

A moral sense (aside from particular morals), and thoughts, speech, and actions that are considered to be of a moral nature can be continually fresh and relevant and life-affirming. It need not have anything at all to do with the idea that morals are sets of restrictive rules given by a distant metaphysical judge. There is no judging necessarily involved.

Ok I’m done for today. Phew.

It was stupid, because you were ignorant of different perspectives. Solipsist views can allow diverse perspectives and still remain valid (stemming from diverse life experiences). Though, I’m not sure how reasonable such a view would be.

Also, “what really matters in life” is your opinion, until you make a proof of it. Thus, you can make a different assertion about solipsism in your example–you were right that other vehicles should give you the right away. If they hit you under these rules, then it is their ‘fault’ according to the rules. It is not immature to think otherwise even under the context of your example…

On a final note, I don’t see how ‘nihilistic tendencies’ relates to your example. What tendencies are you referring to?

No, I’ve generally been saying that “morals as we know them (here in the U.S.)” are Christian in nature–Secular Christianity to be precise. You have misunderstood my rejection of Christianity; I reject all religions/spiritualities equally, since all moral foundations are built on metaphysical assumptions. That is why I reject all of morality.

If I can create my own arbitrary set of morals, then why shouldn’t I do so? …In fact, that has been something I’ve been thinking about doing–creating my own moral system in any way I please. At least I have a concern for reasonability along my way.