Morality

What is it?

I’d like to explore as many meaningful definitions in this thread as possible, and decide which one I prefer.
May propose some myself, and I’m looking forward to hearing proposals from others.

Is morality just discipline?
Like a diet would be a persons morality, it’s a plan to eat a certain way, even if you don’t always feel like it, because you think it’s better for your health in the long run.
Just as we can be disciplined with how we eat, we can be disciplined with anything, how we treat others.
So is morality something contrary to our instincts, something one part of the brain, albeit the disciplined or methodical, rational part, imposes on other parts, or our behavior?

Morality, as well as Aristocracy, should be determined and modified only by geniuses such as myself. Individuals limited by binary thinking, such as law-makers, should not have this responsibility, this Excalibur.
Conditional thinking, logical thinking, is neccessary.
Laws are the anthesis of enlightened thought.

I may pass a law saying do not touch a girls ass.
But if her pants are on fire, and there is no water nearby, you touch her ass.
Silly society and their rules.

In just a few moments I shall compile the ultimate morality.

Once again, Trixie prevails.

The difference between:

How one acts.
vs.
How one ought to act.

The rules that determine who’s good and who’s evil.

Getting back to what I was saying, if morality is discipline, sacrificing what you feel like doing, for the sake of attaining/averting some future benefit/detriment, or sacrificing yourself for the sake of another, can we feel like sacrificing what you we like doing?
I guess you can, and maybe if you didn’t ultimately feel like doing something, you wouldn’t do anything.

So is that it, morality as discipline?
Or are some feelings moral/immoral?
Maybe it’s having a list of things we should do, irrespective of our feelings about doing them.
So sometimes our feelings might be conducive to being moral, and sometimes not.

Does morality have to be universal?
Or might one have a personal morality?
Can one openly, admittedly have double standards, and still be moral?

To be moral is to be principled within a social context. Morality is ultimate self/social law. That’s the general idea.

One could say that morality has to contend with conflicting human drives. At heart, morality is the governance of all such varied drives and champion of the whole, of life. What is good is as multitudinous as life. There is space for idiosyncrasy and exploration.

Instinct is a condition of possibility for more complex behavior, like moral behavior. We wouldn’t be here without our remarkable instincts, but we must also strive to be more.

Simply: Morality allows the species to remain social. It is based on instinct. All social creatures have instincts that have what we name morality.

An inter subjective system for determining the most appropriate thinking or behaviour on specific subjects at any one time
In a society morality cannot be exclusively objective or subjective since consensus has to be arrived at between individuals

Most laws these days are more complex than, don’t touch a girls ass, they make provisions, and even if they didn’t, people, police, judges and jurors can think for themselves and make exceptions.
We have an understanding of what kind of behavior don’t touch a girls ass was trying to prevent, that it was trying to prevent aggressive sexual behavior, not altruistic behavior, so either they won’t arrest you, charge you, convict you, or at least they won’t give you a harsh sentence, if any.
There’s also such a thing as lesser of two evils.
Laws and legal processes have already become pretty advanced, society too, we’ve come a long way from the code of Hammurabi or Leviticus, which is not to say there isn’t always room for improvement.
We make laws and legal procedures as sophisticated as we can, but we can’t plan for every particular, we must use our common sense and improvise, we must always balance two.

That’s a simple, but effective way of putting it.

Are these rules transcendent, or relative to a person, or society?
So morality then is ultimately about judging a persons character, not the words, deeds, or consequences themselves?
Are good and evil something transcendent?

Can one be principled/moral outside a social context?
So morality is principles and laws that go beyond government?

Here you’re saying morality is governing our drives, making sure each drive is expressed in a way that’s conducive to other drives?

So morality is our social instincts, our instincts that allow us to socialize, and promote the welfare of not just ourselves, but the group?

Right, so a system for governing societies behavior.

Is it necessary to have a formal system for governing a societies behavior?
How did these systems evolve?

So is government the embodiment of a societies morality?

Does it have to be a system, or can it be unsystematic?
Can each person have their own system?

Why do we judge others and especially ourselves, why would we have an instinct or a system for judgment, it seems kind of contradictory, doesn’t it?
Might morality be some sort of insanity?
Why would we feel like doing something, and then judge that feeling as good/bad?
It’s almost being like double minded about ourselves or what we want.
I guess being reasonable animals gives us the capacity for self consciousness, being conscious of our thoughts, feelings, behavior and so on, and then we have the capacity to alter these, if they’re not conducive to our drives a whole, or some legal or social or transcendent laws or principles.

See, it was simply put. You got it in one.

Moralität ist Sittlichkeit.
Translation:
Morality is morality.

The translation is difficult, because both “Moralität” and “Sittlichkeit” are always translated by “morality”.

“Sittlichkeit” means both the actions originating from a moral/ethical (“sittlich”) “attitude” (“Gesinnung”) and that attitude itself which corresponds to the “law of the customs” / “moral law” (“Sittengesetz”), the ethical principle / ethical norm / practical principle as a generally valid rule.

Instincts had to be coded into us. It boils down to analyzing person by person through the long term of extensive testing and packaging the results into so many strands of knowledge. Morality isnt just a matter of how we interact with others and the singular or group independent dependence or dependent independence doctrines which while sounding exactly the same with just a clever twist on words are highly complex differences, morality is also the ability to accept ones path and beyond what is societally prescribed emotional responses of morality, spare each other from the act of it to peer behind such faulty acts of good and evil to see that perhaps humanity and singular humans and even seeming random events are on paths that largely take control away from them because while they are largely making choices in the moments without the awareness of predestined and fated paths, they are largely only making the choices freely that they would otherwise feel enslaved by.

Morality is largely the degree to which we all act and it does boil down to a good vs evil or good vs bad behavior stereotype that defines in large scope the small scale of humanity and our acceptable vs unacceptable actions and our group effort to overcome backsliding to cement in place a standard that our people will someday be able to adhere to cohesively as one.

There is no way to adequately sum up the full depth of morality in simple statements. It is the defining conclusion of all forms of reason throughout eternity into the best way of doing things and all aches and pains leading up to it are just the aches and pains of failures too numerous to bear well and all aches and pains after become war wounds, battlescars of success and become easier to bear over time, not anywhere close to overnight and it is still hard work to remain true to the best path selected by eternity because as they’ve said it is a slippery path. Jesus never said it would be easy, just that it would be worth it. If it were a path that people always wanted to walk down, that would make a big difference for the better.

Hence why it pays to imagine as realistically as possible. To not get caught up in temptation or the traps of the multitude. This is not possible for every person and if anyone expects others yo feel guilt or shame as expected by ‘good’ people, then you miss tge morality that let’s them walk their paths knowing they can not be changed.

Morality is largely in question because people in general have not often been able to see enough of situations to give anything beyond the seeming bullshit sentiment of ‘everything happens for a reason’. Without being able to understand the exact reasoning behind others actions, it has been largely blind faith split by too much negativity and too much positivity in falseness to combat the negativity, to buy time for a better middle ground to be reconstructed to renew our understanding of our reasoning and why morality is important.

Humanity has been crashing and burning for being unable to see and work beyond the blinding hate spewed in every direction and the negativity and paranoia pumping constantly and being pressed by the necessity of being caught in the middle.

Right, I understand what you’re saying, morality is our pro-social instincts.
You might say, animals like snakes have little-no morality, because they’re largely asocial, where as humans and other sentient species have a morality, or moralities, because they’re social.
You might also say, we have the capacity for both pro-social and anti-social behavior, where as snakes have neither.
Pro-social behavior would be like sympathy, where as anti-social would be like antipathy.
But in a round about way, sympathy for the wrong people might be construed as antisocial, antipathy for the wrong people might be construed as antisocial, and sympathy and antipathy for the right people, prosocial.
We can systematize as well as discipline our sympathy and antipathy, to make them more beneficial for the group, and ourselves.
The various ethical, legal, philosophical and religious systems are the various ways we presently have of doing this.