At what point did it cease to be desirable to have high morals? I mean, society, more and more, seems to encourage a "do what you want" or "do what feels good" philosophy. Wiccans say "Harm none, do what ye will", but seem to re-intepret that first part however it suits them. Christianity seems more of an excuse to either judge others or pardon yourself from all sins than to live righteously as Jesus told people to do. Buddhism seems to be about toting your own enlightenment rather than treating everyone with respect, and atheists seem content to berail others at will for daring to believe differently from them, which is to say, at all. In all this, there doesn't seem to be a lack of morals so much as a lack of moral AMBITION. The idea of forcing yourself to be more faithful, kinder, more peaceful, braver, or more temperate than you naturally are seems completely foreign. No one seems to pursue active self-betterment except in terms of amassing wealth or knowledge, not in terms of making yourself a better person. Whatever you have is good enough. As ten thousand wannabe-inspiring little league coaches have said across the years, "it's enough to try your best". What you have is good enough. Etc. It depresses me. Humans simply don't have enough virtue to both advance culturally and as a civilization and to maintain peace and kindness, and what's more, we don't seem to want that much virtue. If someone is sorry for something, you should forgive them rather than pursue vindictive vengenace, but does that mean you don't even encourage them not to repeat the mistake? To fix whatever caused it in the first place? A lack of perfection, or even striving for perfection, increases mistakes. Mistakes lead to evil. Evil leads to suffering. In the barrage of ten thousand philosophies of God and evolution and Creation and Kharma and Dharma and Nirvana and Tao and the God and Goddess, everyone seems to have lost track of what religion really is, which is a way of living your life. That's all. The Old Testament, and even Jesus herself spent a thousand words talking about how to act and treat one another while alive for every one word describing the afterlife or the creation of the World. Hinduism and Buddhism aren't really about higher planes of existence and posing in the Lotus position for five hours, they're about the idea that what you do comes back to you, so you should do your best possible. Somewhere along the line, what was religion became confused with what was supernatural. I think it's about the time that common thought seperated the spirtual and the physical World from each other, which is after all a relatively recent development. This removed the spiritual, and thus religion, and thus morals, from what was really real, the physical World. And the end result is that the idea of self-betterment through increasing one's virtue has slowed and slowed to a grinding halt. It's more about proving the other person wrong than being right yourself. And this is a very bad thing. To finish, I'm going to quote Winston Churchill: "It's not enough to do your best. You must win."

End rant.

whoa... insert some paragraph breaks there bubba...

i totaly and completely agree with you. no one really does understand anymore... no one has any morals... could we be fair to say that no one cares?

some people care.

they're just out weighed by those who don't. and if and when they loudly show that they do have morals, they appear self righteous and holier than thou, so perhaps they shut up about it.

i'm one of those whom to some have no or little morals, although i know i do.

I normally don't like to post in DM's threads.. mainly because I hate DM, but I'd like to point out something.


When you think of morals you're thinking of what you've been taught are morals, and therefore you might actually not be following a morals which are truly moral.

Also, as it stands, if I could do anything I wanted there'd be a nice amount of dead bodies lying around.... so be happy our government, our society, shuns killing.

They dont take any morals on board, from one code or another.Its unimportant since it doesnt aid their own aims and desires.
Christainity can be too judgemental true nd as a response the new age religions suspend all judgement and call it enlightened thought.A better way would be to judge but not damn people for (most) of their actions.

You know, with all due respect, this was a serious thread that you didn't need to post in, and even JP had something more constructive to say than THAT.



JP: You're right, but whether or not the morals most people have ARE moral themselves, people simply don't care enough about them to improve them anymore.

All I can say is that I know a lot of people who have "morals" and like masochist said they aren't counted in your little speach because their contentment with being the only one who knows that they strive for the best of themself, their family and the happyness of their friends. I know that just like the Christians who annoy you with their judgements...there is still a great many who are completely opposite of that. Any Buddhists you know who hold their "enlightment" over you..has never really reached nirvana. Taoists are simply content to be close to nature and observe natural law in harmony with the laws of man as long as the latter doesn't impede on the former. I love my goddess and respect that she is the mother of all things.
All I can suggest is to open your eyes a little more. This is constructive critism by the way. I am not saying that you are wrong because at face value, the loudest and largest masses of people are the ones who give us the impression that all is lost. But if you look deeper, if you peel back the layers ...you will find that you were mistaken if not just a little bit pessimistic.

well, like JP said, which morals are actually the right morals to believe? i mean, killing in the name of God in the bible was moral, killing in the army can be considered normal, as could self-protection.....blah, blah, blah

the point is, perhaps the only moral one can truly have (since they obviousy range from person to person) is the moral to accept morals, even if it is just a few or even 1.......to totally deny all moral ideals is the only thing i can conceive of being truly immoral, and i do not think it is possible......

It is not simply a vocal minority, and I am not a pessimist. The obvious fact, from simply talking to people and looking around you, is that the idea of living up to a virtuous lifestyle, of self-sacrifice for one's ideals, has died. It is not encouraged. At all. I'm not saying instances aren't going to exist of it still happening, but those instances are held up as freak occurences if they're discussed at all. Such people used to be upheld and looked up to as examples of goodness, and regardless of what morals you subscribe to, that has died.

Unleashing my superior brain on the world once more (hahahahaha).... I have scoured the depths of my insanity and found something to your liking, you dirt little whores.

Ahh..... morals were first created because, as humans, we needed to seperate ourselves from the animals, and one means by which to do that was to grant unto is "morals", or, roughly, a rigerous code of living wherein we would or would not do this that and something else.

As the centuries ticked by this proved slightly worthwhile, since it aided with the justice system and everything else... yet again... as the centuries ticked by it also started to prove worthless and annoying. By generating these morals, the people were thereby enforced to follow them, lest they in turn be on the receiving end of a flaming torch.

Sooooooooo.... what can we say about morals? Well.. first off they aren't even really spiffy little things.. come on.. no killing? no fun dammit. Secondly, we are taught what morals are nowadays, usually by our parents. Schools do NOT teach morals, because they are too busy trying to teach other things, like basic math, to children.


But let me demonstrate another point:
Woman gets a kid, she sits him down in front of the TV all the time and ignores him while she goes about drinking beer, smoking, whatever. At the age of four or five the child goes to Kindergarden and thereby shows how lacking of morals he is, usually by being extremely hostile toward the teachers or the teacher aids (trust me, I know this for a fact).

The child keeps this attitude as he grows up, and so does this mean he has no morals? No, it doesn't, nor does it mean he's ignoring them, since, in fact, he's doing just what they tell him to do.

TV taught him hostility since he watched stuff he shouldn't have been watching.. he was taught about sex like he shouldn't have been taught, and so what he believes to be the correct style of living is to kick everyone in the balls and toy with girls sexually (again, trust me on this.. kindergardener's will do this).

um.. yeah... so fugggggginnnggggg hell I rule since I just proved that people actually do follow morals, just not the ones that you'd like!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHA!!!

um.. yeah.

seeeeee.... paragraph breaks make EVERYONE sound better...

Preston all you gave is a example of loose morals, ones with little or no substance to them.Its not so much that they are inccorectly taught things that are right and wrong other than they are not taught at all about them.The TV rarely says things are right or wrong, just entertainting or not.

Nothing is right or wrong, because we, as humans, have various ideas on what right and wrong are, that explains why we have such a variety of morals. That which we consider morals are supposed to be right, the correct thing to do, yet in the end we could do anything and it'd work just fine.

The fact that there's even a wondering about the degrade of "morals" in any way is idiocy, since morals will never degrade, since they will always be whatever a person believes is right. Therefore, I WIN AND YOU LOSE!

HAHAHHAHAHAHA

*shrugs*

Unless they dont believe in right and wrong. Which they often dont, which you`ve shown because you also dont.You made yourself lose on that one.

Actually, I follow a rigerous code of what I believe to be right and wrong.

The fact of the matter is that those who lack the knowledge of what right and wrong are tend to be labeled psychopaths, and therefore do not count, since, of course, there have always been psychopaths.

So... suck it?

You still havent really adressed the point that people are not taught right and wrong they are merely doing what is entertaining to them.

And for them entertainment might be right, or, more accurately, misconstrued as what is right.

So neeener?

Although I love your sig pic, I'm wondering if you'd actually like to contribute something.



Preston: It is true that people often have a subjective idea of what they consider to be moral, but logic can in many cases be used to determine what is or is not moral. Most people, for instance, would concede that hurting someone else for your own gain is not moral. Therefore, if you beat someone up and take their lunch money, you are being immoral, because you are hurting that person unnecessarily.