Good and Evil

[robvalue]

Almost everything that matters in life is a matter of perspective. Think about health and wealth. A poor person in the U.S. would be considered rich in some countries. Likewise, a healthy person may actually be sick depending on different criteria used to determine fitness. Or take "brilliance." A genius of 4,000 years ago probably didn't know things that a middle school student does today, and our best current knowledge might appear simple and naive to observers 4,000 years from now. The same goes for good and evil. Everyone measures these by their own conceptions of happiness, pleasure, virtue, etc. To be objective doesn't mean that everyone must be in full agreement about the particulars of each case, it just means that given a standard of well-being that everyone naturally cares for, as rational, sentient beings, there is a spectrum of various physical and mental states that can be weighed against it.

A very good point.

To me, the aim of morality is to try and go beyond those norms, to evaluate things objectively. I don't just want to be moral compared to society, I want to be as moral as I can be. As usual this is an ideal to strive for rather than one I always achieve.

As an example, if I was born earlier when slavery was prevalent, I hope I would be against it rather than go with the flow. I similarly try and challenge things today which are generally "accepted". I often wonder how many people who say how terrible slavery is would have spoken up when it was commonplace. This is in no way an evaluation or accusation of anyone on the forum Just a general wonderment. It's easy to say/see how terrible something is when everyone generally agrees with you.