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Kafke  ·  4071 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What about morals?

Your question is kind of wishwashy, so I'll try to answer the best I can.

I'd best define myself as a moral nihilist. That means I don't "believe" in morals, if you want to put it that way. I see morals as subjective. General rules that people live by to create a peaceful society and a nice way of living.

Morals themselves, as far as humans know, are completely baseless. Some people like to follow a book that has some written down (like the bible). Others like to figure out what's "best for the community" and go about it that way. I personally just do whatever I like, as long as I don't hurt anyone. Everyone has their own set of morals they follow. They are all different. Culture to culture, person to person.

Now, I personally don't like the idea of survival of the fittest (at least in a physical sense). So I'm really glad we, as humans, have come up with a standard set of guidelines we call "laws". Laws basically say, that if you don't follow these mutually agreed upon morals/rules, we'll throw you into a cell and you'll basically be stuck. That, or we'll kill you (if this was in earlier times). Naturally, most people decided to follow these "laws", for the betterment of themselves and of others.

Sure, some freedoms were taken away, but overall it's created a nice society to live in.

Now, if we reduce it down, and take away all those laws. We essentially get "the wild". Where whoever is the strongest and can reproduce the most, wins.

We said it was wrong to kill each other, because neither of us want to be killed. We figured that it's best to keep each other alive, so we can discuss tactics, ideas, and share/trade resources if necessary. This obviously put us at an advantage compared to every other organism. So we thrived. And we eventually compounded on this and agreed to not kill each other and instead improve.

We said it's "wrong" to kill each other, because we prefer our fellow brethren to be alive and help us in our time of need. It's a kind of "I'll get your back if you get mine" except on a larger scale. It's the same reason money works. We mutually agree that it's worth something.

So how can we live in peace without morals? easy. We just get a mutually agreed upon set of rules which involve peace. We then punish anyone who doesn't follow those rules.