Quoting Daiwa,

reply 51

And... it's not?!?!

Well excuse me!  For once I was trying to not only see the dark side of humanity........geez!  

EDIT:

There....I edited my other post. 

There's no excuse for you. 

I knew there would be disagreement with regard to my thoughts on morality.

It was expected because most fail to grasp the concept of morality.

Strangely enough, however, we each are inherently born with it.

Somewhere inside of us we know it is wrong to kill; wrong to steal; wrong to commit adultery; wrong to sexually abuse/harm children.

We know this not from religious indoctrination, or some cultural belief.  We just know it is wrong.

There need not be national borders/international differences in morality... there need NOT be a religious or cultural reason for morality.

All there need be is human decency, and to listen to our inner selves when we are tempted to do wrong.

I sure as hell need not go into a church, synagogue or temple to discover morality, I was born with it.

I was not indoctrinated by my parents through some religious ideology.... both are/were atheists.

As I stated, morality can and does exist in the absence of religion, so for me, tying religion to it is just an excuse to argue, raise conflict and find reason not to comply with the ideal of others.

Without our morality, the negative aspects of humankind have room to grow and flourish... crime and corruption become the norm and the innocent ALL become potential victims.

So yeah, extract the religious/cultural inferences and let morality/conscience be our compasses to bettering our lives.

I am going to have to side with Jafo on this one. Racism is taught, as is acceptance, violence is taught, just like gentleness, etc, etc.

Dr. Gabor Mate on Attachment and Conscious Parenting

On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin has an inspirational message along the lines of what Starkers is talking about.

I can watch this one repeatedly, and it still gives me goosebumps.

Well, it's not so simple as "are we born with these, or aren't we?" Things like acceptance, morality, decency, and yes, racism too, are indeed things we're born with, at least to some degree.

Human beings are social animals, and for a social animal to be successful as a species, it must have significantly different behavioural patterns than a non-social animal.  Compare a lion (social) versus a leopard (non-social), or a wolf (social) versus a bear (non-social).  The social animals have ingrained in them behaviour based on the idea that their own success is intimately tied to the success of those around them.  However, that's typically limited to their pride/pack/whatever, and they also have ingrained in them both a strong devotion to their own group and a fierce competition with other groups.  Such is the origin of intra-species "racism" - it's essentially tribalism, to ensure that the genes of those in your group prevail, since they're more closely tied to your own genes.  Modern human society is much more complex than the tribal environment where these behaviours originated, and these concepts of "us" and "them" get expressed in vastly different ways by different people as we try to adapt to this new reality.

Now, human beings have an incredible ability to learn, well beyond that of most other animals.  That allows an individual human, based on environment, upbringing, experience, etc. to build additional morals on top of those baseline ones, and it also allows them to sweep aside those morals.  More so than any other species, we have the ability to override our behavioural tendencies.  But they're still there, and still play a big role in modern society.

Yes, in the age old nature vs. nurture argument, it's all nurture!..."tabula rasa".

This is a case where bringing up Hitler and other Eugenics types would be meaningful.

Quoting Jafo,

reply 63

Careful with that axe, Eugene ...

Can I use Maxwell's silver hammer instead?

There's plenty of scientific evidence to the contrary.

Just to veer somewhat back 'on-topic'......

Makes one wonder about any real need for future 'privacy legislation' when at some point the 'drones' mentioned will be pre-programmed with default 'morals/ethics' code and with the ability to learn (build on that) will be able to make 'judgment calls' regarding privacy etc. on a case-by-case basis without human operator interference?

Or maybe I just wandered into the sci-fi realm of the internet and got lost, hard to tell sometimes.....

I guess it depends a lot on one's definition of morality, which is where these discussions often derail.  But as an example, monkeys will show empathy and compassion to each other, even if they weren't raised in part of the "monkey community" (couldn't resist using that phrase).  They're just naturally inclined that way, as are we.  They're also naturally inclined to band together and then beat the **** out of their monkey neighbours on occasion, as are we.

But again, if there's one thing we humans are excellent at, it's overcoming our natural inclinations and reprogramming ourselves on-the-fly.  It's what's made us so successful and adaptable as a species.

Empathy is the foundation of morality.  Unless you're born a sociopath, empathy is one of those animal instincts you're born with.  It takes years of neglect to create a sociopath from a normal baby.  There is more than enough empirical data to throw out the blank slate nonsense idiots came up with.

Studies with as young as three month olds have shown a clear systematic knowledge of right and wrong, including retaliation for bad behavior, and rewards for good behavior.  Aside from shitting all over the place, they're quite idealistic.

That was stated as an absolute. That is simply not the case, and there are various thoughts on the origins of morality - religion, social theory, etc. None is really proven and they are the subject of debate. There's also nothing "wrong" about believing one or another.

I wouldn't be so quick to rely on that as 'fact'. Elephants stay around sick/wounded elephants to protect them. So do dogs. Elephants even stop an appear to change behaviors when they arrive at a site where that elephant was located in the past.

When communication between species is mainly based on guess work, one can't really know if that is correct or not. What might appear to be 'empathetic' behavior might just be 'reflex' behavior in that species and not a result of cognitive thought/values as we know it. While it might be true, it might not as well.

I don't espouse any particular view but, I think it's rather difficult to prove this one way or another.