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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhild who wrote (9889)	4/16/1998 5:20:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 71178

Got it, I think. I didn't try to say that your or my identity is composite. If I were a cosmic loner I'd still have an identity. The point for me is - I think morality is about behavior, and behavior is meaningless without other people around. There is imho an irreducible interactive component to behavior and thus (?) morality. Religions teach us that morality comes ultimately from without. That is probably the source of great comfort to your average believer who is not particularly introspective. It lets one off the hook, moraldecisionwise. To an extent. (At least it provides an extrahuman and thus practically absolute benchmark.) Now, if like me you believe that religions are human constructs, the buck does not stop there. Morality is likewise a human construct (or so I posit). So to me, the next beerworthy question is "Where did it come from?" My pat answer so far is that it is the end result of a long political process. People across time and across the land came up with rules, tested them, threw some out, added more, and built the moral codex layer by layer. Then taught it in its current form to sons, daughters and schoolchildren. Those who would not abide by the rules were censured into toeing the line, killed or thrown out. The exiles often went on to build new communities with different values. Gypsies and Yankees sorta jump to mind. That's what I mean by the evolution of morality by consensus. Identity - that's a whole nother bag of kitties! :-)