Is morality just an applied muzzle to the real savage underneath!? Look at all that transpires in this world where so many different religious ideologies claim to hold in common at least one implicit commonality, morality.

Especially interesting are the religious practices that involve immoral acts, like mass murder, slavery, racism, sexism, misogyny, etc... In the name of a higher power, or religious ideology. So that then the question becomes: is what some call, "moral" really just a fraud?! A preternatural implication to separate us from our baser instincts?! Are there not enough examples in the world to prove , losing that fraud, we easily become savages!? If we are really just high thinking upright animals, are we that surprised?! And what exactly defines "sin"?! But those that benefit from defining themselves as saviors from it!? What if the world lived it's animalistic inclinations!? Would we be better off, as we now assume the demeanor of the civilized and yet are so vicious!? And how affective is implied morality if it is not inherent?!

In this day & age, moral behavior is very much a fraud...In positions of social & economic power, moral standard is more of a front that masks behavior that normally wouldn't be accepted in the public spotlight. Case in point, influential American politicians advocate their defense of Christian values & yet -at the same time- practice the Black Arts in secret...It's a double-cross - saying one thing in one moment while doing the exact opposite shortly after.

From observation, society is very opposive towards nature's balance, & although other animals seem natural interacting with nature & other animals - for good or ill - humans fight against this balance by supporting a masked behavior pattern, morality.

Sorry about the length of this post but I want to see what the folks here think of C.S Lewis' thoughts on this topic. This is taken from his book 'Mere Christianity' in which he delivers the best defence and explanation of Christian theology and thought that I have read. It was published in the 1940s which explains the language in places!

1. The Law of Human Nature


Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and
sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we
can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they
say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to
you?"-"That's my seat, I was there first"-"Leave him alone, he isn't doing
you any harm"- "Why should you shove in first?"-"Give me a bit of your
orange, I gave you a bit of mine"-"Come on, you promised." People say things
like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as
well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the
man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does
not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of
behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man
very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to
make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the
standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there
is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the
seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he
was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him
off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had
in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or
morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed.
And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals,
but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means
trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no
sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as
to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that
a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the
rules of football.
Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of
Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean
things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the
older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they
really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies
are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so
the creature called man also had his law-with this great difference, that a
body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a
man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.
We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected
to several different sets of law but there is only one of these which he is
free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot
disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice
about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various
biological laws which he cannot disobey any more than an animal can. That
is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the
law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with
animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he
chooses.
This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every
one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean,
of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did
not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no
ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human
idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were
right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were
nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless
Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and
ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right,
then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have
blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair.
I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent
behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and
different ages have had quite different moralities.
But this is not true. There have been differences between their
moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total
difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching
of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and
Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each
other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in
the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our
present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different
morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for
running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the
people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a
country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what
people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or
your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you
ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men
have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have
always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.
But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says
he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man
going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if
you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before
you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but
then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular
treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter,
and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong- in other words, if there
is no Law of Nature-what is the difference between a fair treaty and an
unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that,
whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?
It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong.
People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get
their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any
more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on
to my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of
Nature. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologise to them. They had
much better read some other work, for nothing I am going to say concerns
them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left:
I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not
preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else.
I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or
this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise
ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be
all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children
was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the
money-the one you have almost forgotten-came when you were very hard up. And
what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done-well, you
never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were
going to be. And as for your behaviour to your wife (or husband) or sister
(or brother) if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at
it-and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same. That is to say, I
do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone
tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses
as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good
excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we
like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in
decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having
behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much-we feel the
Rule or Law pressing on us so- that we cannot bear to face the fact that we
are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For
you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these
explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or
worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human
beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave
in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do
not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it.
These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and
the universe we live in.

Thank you for your insight Arthuria.
I admit the number of views tallied so far is disconcerting given the lack of replies that accompany that . Perhaps this topic isn't relevant here.

On the contrary, your inquiry is relevant when matched against recent subjects I could name in UM...Ask yourself this, how many individuals will take the moment to fully admit to themselves that the current system of living is nothing more than a charlatans' game?

I would speculate not many would.

The concepts of morality and ethics are more easily applied to groups rather than individuals so I think should be classed as a social phenomenon. For the individual I would think the concept of principles applies more easily than morals or ethics (although it is a fine distinction I'll agree).

Arthuria,

I concur. Morality is the thin veil placed over society to give the perception of civility. It is an outward act done by the individual to achieve one set of goals within the society.

The basis of this issue is that while humans are social animals, they are also very much individual animals. Social behaviour was brought forth from realities of the environment, and thus it has always been a case of the individual tolerating others within close proximity out of benefit. Should a more desired benefit be available to the individual that violates the group morals, a method to achieve it while retaining the group rank will be sought. In this way, morals not just bind a group but create the framework for subterfuge. This is not always a counter-social process. There are definitely examples of how said hidden individual behaviours benefit social groups, actually relieving social conflict.

Moral values are an idealistic framework for civilization laid out by politicians, priests, bards, gurus and numerous wise men. Some religions directly imply them to be God given.
They are idealistic in the fact that not all men are able to live up to such standards and resort to lesser standards that serve their own agenda of greed and power.
To abolish such standards entirely would result in utter chaos and anarchy. Even under régimes that tolerate slavery, racism and sexism a certain moral code had to be in place in order to support the civilizations.
In total anarchy only the strongest and most conniving survive, women, children and the elderly are a burden to such a structure and become its first victims. So without moral code and chivalry mankind would have destroyed himself century’s ago.

Irish

Tell that to the other animals that have existed in the wild for centuries...While other animals live in accordance with the balance of nature, humans are the only species destroying themselves with self-imposed moral values.

To deny nature's balance is to invite chaos - it's happening already.

There is a thread of this topic ongoing right now. You may want to move this to that on also. Regardless, I think Lewis makes great points in his material. I also enjoyed the "Screwtape letters".

Moral values ensure natures balance within civilization. A code of conduct whether written or not is mans nature. Where as animals will eat their young and infirm to survive if necessary. What would you prefer an engraved moral values or grandma soufflé.

I have always found it amusing that those who try to promote anarchy with symbolic T-shirts and tattoos are all about the right height and weight for the true anarchist "Big Bubba’s" breakfast.

Irish

Anarchy is not the issue...By definition, Anarchy is chaos without order &/or existence of any code of conduct. All animals have a unique set of code/order...Ants have a structured order, bees have a structured order - even fish have a structured order. However, this order is one with nature's balance. When we see documentaries about animal behavior, ever notice how different their behavior is from that of "modern" humans? The current system of human civilization does its best to stay outside of nature's balance, as if that is beneath what humans are...But in truth, humans are more-so in discord than other animals & in some ways, many humans are unaware of making that connection.

As I look out my window, what kind of society do I see? I see degradation - a society on the edge of ruin, of humans polluting the world with excess waste without care, a society where humans pretend to ignore each others' existence in the streets, a society where the double-cross mentality is obvious in many of its levels, even at the top - this from the mask of self imposed morality many humans place upon themselves, thus alienating themselves from nature's balance.

Topics Merged......

In the flaws the perfection is found.......What a wonderful understanding ..thankyou

I believe there is moral commonality between most humans. I'll even go out on a limb, as a non religious person, and say the 10 commandments are sound, and are derived from the fabric of our conscience. I don't necessarily see them as commandments, but rather as warnings. We have the ability to commit these things, but the consequences or inevitable conflicts associated with these acts is unfavorable and potentially destructive. For civilization to exist, you must have a code to live by.

Indeed, even when that code produces anything but civility..I read somewhere or heard somewhere once that these were not commandments but because who would 'god' need to command, after all its god... These were inner signposts of progress, as one grew in awareness it would no longer be doing these things....(10 commandments, or needing to be told ) .