Morals and Values

Dictionary definitions

(From my Webster's dictionary) Note that none of these have anything to do with sex, or even with the Bible or with religion.

• Moral: concerned with the principles of right and wrong; ethical
• Morality: conformity, or degree of conformity, to conventional rules, without or apart form inspiration and guidance by religion and other spiritual influences.

Broader Definitions

This includes my own definition of some related terms.

• Morals: when you care about others and not just yourself
• Integrity: when you do what you say and you say what you do. Integrity means being able to do business on a handshake.
• Character: when you act upon your convictions, and don't cave in under pressure
• Decency: when you don't tolerate degrading situations (e.g. poverty, exploitation, violence, hypocrisy)
• Prostitution: (Strict) offering sex for money. (Broad) when you sacrifice your values for financial or political gain.

Practical Morals

Morals are actually easy to understand: if your actions are guided by trying to do good to others, you are moral. If you are pursuing your goals only, you are selfish. If you pursue your selfish goals at the expense of others, you are immoral. If your goals also make others happy, you live a balanced life. Dead simple!

Morals should always originate from some practical considerations. Good morals promote a better society, and happier people overall. "Intuitive" morals are the best. Don't kill, don't hurt, don't be selfish, help the less fortunate.

There is a lot of talk about moral decay nowadays. Maybe there is moral decay. After all, people are becoming increasingly greedy and selfish, increasingly incapable of taking on personal responsibility, and increasingly dependent upon the government to tell them what to do and what not to do.

What I also call moral decay, are parents who are too busy to care for their kids, credit card bills, government deficits, expensive new cars bought on credit, complaining, the inability to live without air-conditioning, and the total ignorance of suburbanites of anything to do with nature.

However, having sex before marriage, or watching an adult movie, has nothing to do with moral decay.

Here is what the confusion is all about: in the US, when people talk about morals, they usually mean sex.

But sex is not inherently immoral. It can be immoral, if personal pleasure is pursued at the expense of others. Or if there is coercion, or if emotional pain is knowingly inflicted. Or if intentions are misrepresented. Otherwise, there is no problem with sex. Even the Bible does not talk a whole lot about sex.

Sex outside of marriage is not inherently immoral. It is just the lying that is immoral (either Hugh Hefner or Bob Guccione once came up with that, in an interview).

Why traditional values? We don't live in a traditional society. Actually, we quit living in a traditional society at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when agriculture got mechanized. You can cry about it (personally, I also wish I could ride to work in a horse-drawn carriage). But the fact is: there is no going back.

There is no rational reason why "traditional" values are better. On the contrary, they almost have to be worse by definition, since the world changes and the values do not.

People confuse family values with plain old-fashioned intolerance.

Nothing divides America more than morals.

I am surprised at how many people claim that this great nation was founded on "Christian" principles. It was not. Like most modern democracies, it was founded upon the principle of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of opinion.

A multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, dynamic nation of 250 million people cannot possibly be united under one religion or one set of morals. A vast majority of people will agree that it is wrong to murder, steal or lie. That is because in each case, damage is inflicted upon another individual. Everybody can understand this, and it is "just" for government to punish such behavior.

But when a centralized government decides to get into issues like homosexuality, or sex before marriage, you have a real problem. There is no consensus about these issues. There cannot be a consensus and neither should there be one. The constitution does not call for a consensus.

What is wrong with "if it feels good, go for it"? Just make sure you don't hurt anybody, including yourself.

Self-indulgent people are generous people. The opposite are self-righteous people, those are a pain. (It is probably for this reason too, that fat people have been found to have more and better sex.)