Post on morals/ethics

This is just what I wrote on the 'morals' and 'good and bad' threads:

Morals are a kind of in-built means to an end. They do not come from an ultimate law that floats around in the universe, but rather, from humans. Our morals are a combination of evolved instinct and learned knowledge of what would be best and worst for ourselves and those things important to us in a given situation. Our sense of what is good is not just based on what is good for us, but also on what is good for the people and things we depend on, as this affects us indirectly.

Because what is good for us now (stealing) might not be good for us in the long run (a society full of crime), we need moral sense for ultimate preservation. Having ethical sense stops us from beating each other to death out of greed- because then, we would wipe ourselves out- probably a bad idea. When we can live in harmony with other people, our environment, and really as many other things as possible, we live much safer lives and build more secure futures.

Of course, this is not always possible, and so what is 'good' in one situation may not be acceptable in another. For instance, if you were starving, it might be a fair idea to kill an animal to eat, whereas when there is plenty of food around, this is considered a 'bad' thing to do. In modern society, people do not need to compete for vital resources, and thus we have a moral code against killing each other. At other times in history, populations have had to compete for resources, and their moral priorities have been different. It's not that those people were unenlightened- they were just living in a different world.

In today's stable society, people always say that they have 'morals' in a permanent, unchanging sense. But I think morals are never absolute- it's just that in a situation like ours, you can hang onto the same ones for so long that they feel permanent.