Is all morality and all good versus bad only a judgment? Moral conflict question

[Reena]

I've pondered over this question in the last couple of days. Why do we think something is bad? Because it hurts our survival. Isn't all morality based on mere survival. Is anything fundamentally good or evil? Is our moral compass attuned to our primal instincts or is it more about conforming to social standards of civilized behavior? 

[Reena]

Could it be that what we hate or tend to moralize is our own shadow and all conflicts are generated from shadow intercepting with social conditioning? 

 

[Mandy]

It's psychological survival, survival of identification,  belief in thoughts, rather than survival of the body. 

[Reena]

6 minutes ago, Mandy said:

It's psychological survival, survival of identification,  belief in thoughts, rather than survival of the body. 

Yea this is a powerful thing. It impacts us on a daily basis. Without we ever questioning it. That's a great point you brought up. 

[Reena]

A couple of factors and aspects - 

 

I think there is a fundamental aspect to everything. Fundamental aspect of love. Fundamental aspect of virtue. 

 

First thing comes first. There is the context. Absolute and relative. Relative means relative to human system. In the absolute sense, nothing is wrong or right. Nothing is good or bad. Everything is okay. Everything is perfect. 

But we live as humans. So the absolute is nice on paper but it's not applicable to our reality. So we have to work within the confines of the Relative. 

 

Now the domain. 

The domain could be primal or non primal. Primal is primary instinct. And non primal is conditioned behavior. Conditioned behavior could be either due to cultural norms or religious rules or a social framework. Some form of human protocol. These systems can rapidly change over time. But the primal aspect doesn't change. 

Example of the primal - let's say I like to eat  sugary things. This is a primal instinct. Whatever I'm naturally drawn to is a primal thing. It could be influenced by genetics, by the quality of being human, ancestral blueprint. This doesn't change much despite cultural or social conditioning. This is a fundamental aspect. So across every culture or society, people like to eat sugary things. 

Another example - we as humans need a minimum of 8 hours sleep. This has nothing to do with culture. This is a human primal need. It's going to stay that way. 

Now when we interfere or play around these primal instincts and needs, we're playing with fire. You simply cannot sustain longer with the attitude of playing with these things. 

If a culture was designed to disrupt the primal needs, it will lead to really bad consequences. For example. If a culture normalized the consumption of alcohol or let's say if the culture made it mandatory for people to sleep only 3 hours, I think over a period of time you'll notice certain genetic disorders in the children. Certain malfunctions in the general population. Certain disorders in the children and generations. This will be unhealthy long term. It will eventually destroy the natural survival capacity of that society. You simply cannot afford to tickle too much with what is naturally and biologically consistent for human beings. 

 

[Reena]

This means one thing is clear. That the primal is too fundamental to play with. 

But we can mix and play around with cultural norms or religious rules. The way a society evolves, there are obvious changes that take place over time, like the governments change, new laws are made, the culture changes either for better or worse, these changes don't cause a huge shift in the basic way of living. This means that human social  conditioning is never constant. It is also adapting, changing. It is in a constant flow of change. Now here comes the real deal. Either you can sanitize the system or you can bastardize the system. The system is like a knife. You can use a knife to cut a vegetable or you can use a knife to injure someone. When you sanitize a thing, you make it better. You can make a bad joke less offensive by sanitizing it. Or you can take a good joke out of context and bastardize it. Make something look better or completely degrade it. I think this alone makes a huge difference. Because no amount of moral rules or moralizing can ensure perfect morality. Morality precedes religion. So morality is not something you can really impose. 

If a person has bad intent, moral systems can neither detect it nor change it. This is a person's will or choice or preference. This is what I'll call "of their own volition."  You can't do much about this. This is personal morality. If a person decided to follow their primal instinct, a natural person, an original, authentic, pure person. And if a person behaves in accordance with their given cultural norm or religious framework, I'll call such a person "true to form" or "true to value."  such a person is strictly following their system or whatever is dictated to them. Such behavior is obviously admirable. Once again such a person is original, authentic, sincere, and true to value. Once again such a person is a pure person. I think a person deviates from their given system (the condition being  that the given system is proper and legit and designed in a healthy way) is going to bastardize that system. If a person is deviating from an unhealthy system, then that person can be labeled as a rebel. But I was referring to a person who acts like a traitor. Let's say his religion dictates him to not consume alcohol. Yet he consumes alcohol. I think that he is bastardizing his religion (this is just an example to explain bastardization of a system).. Sanitization is the total opposite of this. It means making the system better, sort of calibrating it to perfection. 

 

So if you start a cult, religion, movement, system, structure, model you can expect it to evolve over time and get better or it can devolve into chaos and degrade over time and become awful, degenerate, both of these transformation are  dependent on the kind of people who constitute this system across time. If pure people exist, the system continues to remain unchanged, or it gets better. If inauthentic people, people who are not true to value exist, they will gradually bastardize it over time. They will corrupt it. 

So we cannot rely on a system per se. We cannot imagine a system being perfect across time. We have to understand that all systems can change for the better or worse depending on who is running this system. 

 

[Reena]

Component. 

Earlier I discussed about the  system. Now the focus is on component. I said before that there are both primal and non primal aspects. Primal being the primal human instinct. And non primal is the human social conditioning. I think in each aspect, there are fixed components. These are unchangeable. They are very structural. They are stable. They are static. I'll call them static components. These components will more or less have the same cause and effect logic to them. For example - if you raise children to do healthy things in life and teach them not to be violent or angry, they will turn out to be peaceful well adjusted adults. If you raise children in an environment where you teach them violence and normalize their hatred or bad behavior, they will turn into violent adults. If they were told that killing someone is normal, then they will not question their murderous intent. So here certain components are just fixed. You can't deviate from this. Certain things will come with their inbuilt outcomes or consequences. These are the fixed components. These are also core components. The non core components can be easily fiddled with. For example if I was being rude to my friend for 1 straight hour, this really won't have much of a significant impact on my friend. Because they can forget my behavior and let go. It's a temporary deviation from good behavior. I'll consider these as non core components. Even if you don't follow it to a T, it's kinda okay. It's not a big deal in the bigger scheme of things. But the core components, like how a child is raised for example is going to come with inbuilt consequences. And these are fixed. Their karma doesn't change. When you deviate from these components you can't expect healthy outcomes. Basically you'll be moving into the territory of unhealthy when you deviate from these. For example you need 8 hours of sleep, which is a primal need. This is a fixed component. Such fixed components also exist in the human conditioning system,in the culture, in the social set up. It's almost like intrinsic settings, like settings on a computer, they will more or less always remain the same. Fiddling with them is only going to bastardize or corrupt the system and lead to ruin. These are core structural components. These components were designed by the culture, system, society, tradition so as to secure a proper outcome. They were designed by highly intelligent ancestors. They were not designed for nothing. It's important to not lose them. This is how structure is created. And the structure remains the same through ages and ages. But to preserve this tradition or structure or fixed component, you need torchbearer kind of people. You need sincere people, you need natural people, you need original people, you need people who are true to form, true to value. 

 

 

[Phil]

1 hour ago, Reena said:

So the absolute is nice on paper but it's not applicable to our reality

Absolute means, absolute. If there is absolute and relative, there is not absolute. 

[Reena]

Just now, Phil said:

Absolute means, absolute. If there is absolute and relative, there is not absolute. 

I absolutely DO NOT Agree. 

 

[Phil]

@Reena

With who?

[Reena]

Just now, Phil said:

@Reena

With who?

With your statement. 

[Phil]

@Reena

When & how did you come up with ‘absolute & relative’?

[Reena]

Just now, Phil said:

@Reena

When & how did you come up with ‘absolute & relative’?

Leo talks about it. 

[Joseph Maynor]

One of the things I like to say is there's a wobble between Good and Bad.  There's a little bit of good in bad and a little bit of bad in good.  And there's a wobble between the Open and Closed duality as well.  Sometimes it's good to judge, sometimes it's not.  Well, this brings in the wobble between the Space and Time and Time-Independence duality.  Thinking is only going to go so far in being.  It's not like our thoughts govern being.  We can see that.  But I also think -- leverage your ideas to the extent you can too.  Just don't hang yourself or others with your own ideas.  That's when ideas start to become counter-productive.  Unless people or others do deserve it.  That's where judgment and wisdom factor in.  You don't need to be a Martyr saving people.  That mindset has some cons to it.  There are people out there that need to get their stuff together and stop blaming others so much.  That's the issue.  Sometimes these people just need to learn what they need to learn on their own timetable (including myself).  To help them is to enable them.  There's limitations to the helper archetype.  People need to help themselves too, first and foremost.  We gotta teach people how to help themselves.

[Phil]

5 minutes ago, Reena said:

Leo talks about it. 

So you didn’t even come up with it? You’re just believing what someone says…? 

[Reena]

8 minutes ago, Phil said:

So you didn’t even come up with it? You’re just believing what someone says…? 

No. That's when I thought about it and it made sense. I could see how everything was absolute outside human context but relative inside it. Anybody with two brain cells can see it apparently. 

 

[Phil]

@Reena

So there’s you, me, the humans, the relative, the absolute and everything? 

 

[Reena]

Just now, Phil said:

@Reena

So there’s you, me, the relative, the absolute and everything? 

 

You're part of the relative. 

 

 

[Phil]

@Reena

While absolute is contingent on context…?

[Reena]

@Phil because literally everything is context? Tell me anything that can exist without context?