Do You Have A Moral Compass

[Msterbeau]

I've read various accounts of how people have listened (or not) to some internal mechanism that guides them in decision making. When I was in therapy we talked about it and I realized that there was always "something" present that I just hadn't been consiously aware of. I do have a "voice" in my head... it may not always tell me what to do but it often makes me question things before acting.

So what is this little voice? Why does it seem like it's in the backround and not a more consious part of our brain function? Is it the voice of our parents/caretakers reminding us of the lessons they've tried to teach or is it something we all carry imbedded in our genes... our very being? Do you listen to yours if you have one?

[kellygrrrrrl]

AHHH the voices!!! When do they stop?!?!?!

It is your conscience silly!

I think it is our spirit as well!

You know the whole angel/devil sitting on your shoulder kind of thing.

The thing I have noticed about this voice, is I can remember it being there my whole life.

Sometimes it debates with me, sometimes it tells me what to do or not to do.....

If I do against what it tells me, then the guilt factor comes in.

Like see, I told you you idiot...now, FEEL BAD about it.

I think it is the very essense that makes man man. I think it is what differenciates us between animal and man.... animals don't have this ability, whereas they act on instinct.

If you ignore it, you get crazy.

I am proof.

If you listen to it, your will reap benefits and happiness.

I don't listen to mine often enough.....I usually debate with it...reason with it, go against it, but it is usually almost always right....

Like going with your gut feelings....or not. Usually your gut was right in the long run.

We know the diff between good and bad. If you don't know, you will know.

[Paper Hearts]

I've read various accounts of how people have listened (or not) to some internal mechanism that guides them in decision making. When I was in therapy we talked about it and I realized that there was always "something" present that I just hadn't been consiously aware of. I do have a "voice" in my head... it may not always tell me what to do but it often makes me question things before acting.

So what is this little voice? Why does it seem like it's in the backround and not a more consious part of our brain function? Is it the voice of our parents/caretakers reminding us of the lessons they've tried to teach or is it something we all carry imbedded in our genes... our very being? Do you listen to yours if you have one?

I've never had professional psychological therapy, but that probably only speaks against me. All of my friends seem to say to me, 'motherfucker, get some help!'. Of course, "misery loves company" is a wonderful cliché.

I don't believe in an absolute right or wrong, yet I still have opinions on what is basically good and basically evil. There are many situations or things which I would not inflict.

[Rayne]

Phee says I do.

[Msterbeau]

I don't believe in an absolute right or wrong, yet I still have opinions on what is basically good and basically evil. There are many situations or things which I would not inflict.

There's a good point: If this is something embedded in us as humans... do we all hear the same voice.. the same advice? Are our actions based on our life experiences and how those shape whether we listen to that little voice in our heads? Hmmmm..

[Msterbeau]

Phee says I do.

Fuck that guy... what do YOU say? :pirate

[pharoh]

She really doesn't lol

[Paper Hearts]

There's a good point: If this is something embedded in us as humans... do we all hear the same voice.. the same advice? Are our actions based on our life experiences and how those shape whether we listen to that little voice in our heads? Hmmmm..

Yes, it's been argued about and investigated for ages, possibly it represents humanity's first true thought. What comes to me in relation to this, is one of Nietzsche's writings, which said that we have problems specifically as a result of our having the ability to reason--this seems to describe the situation at hand well, as well as it offers a possible answer. But, I kind of hate Nietzche.

This topic is not one I'm comfortable projecting to others as a topic I've come to terms with.

[BrassFusion]

I don't have a little background voice, at all. I don't have a really complicated code of what is "right" and what is "wrong." I'll try to narrow it down, I guess...

What is wrong:

1. Needless death, pain, torture, subjugation. Not necessarily in that order.

2. Um. (thinks)

3. Avarice sucks, but that's just the way some people are. Same with sloth, envy, lust, pride, gluttony, and wrath. I think the "seven deadly sins" do more harm to their practitioners than to the people around them, most of the time.

So yeah. Not much is clearly "wrong" or "right" to me, and if I ever hear a little voice giving me advice, it's not in the form of a little voice so much as it is an equal voice. I reconsider stuff in the same capacity as I originally consider it. That doesn't make me schizophrenic, right?

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

To me... We all have a "moral compass". We think. Some of us are pretty damn good at it. I don't think of it as a little voice though... it's just us. We have a situation... we make a decision about that situation.. but we keep on thinking about it... even after it's done... Right and wrong are just constructs we create to label the situation and the things that make it up... the possible outcomes and the eventualtys the situation creates...

We all seem to have a pretty simular idea of what is "Right/Good" and what is "Wrong/Evil". Mostly because we all think in the same basic way. Sure, some people's idea of what is "Right/Good" are so far off the "norm" that everyone else thinks they are "Wrong/Evil"... but are they? Only God knows... and if there is no God... noone knows.

[Steven]

that "voice" has changed with me as I have changed over the years....as a child it was the voice of fear and repurcussion.

As a young man I stifled it, almost killed it off, tried very hard to do so at least, and to do the same with others in my immediate midst....

As I grew older and fatter and in touch with many other things that voice has returned to me, albeit in a new sense, with much more vibrancy that allows me to adjust as needed. Yes I know my baisc rights and wrongs, but I also feel a sense of liberty form the "norm", in that I am able to choose from a system of values as oppsoed to a system of fear.

I do beleive in absolute good. But that's a whole nuther Oprah that we've run to death.

Absolute Evil...yes I beleive in this too.

[Onyx]

As I get older I'm finding many more shades of gray. A few things are still absolutely wrong to me.

It all appears more complicated now.

Often doing what I felt was the right thing in my life has put me in some very bad situations and cost me dearly.

It seems no good deed goes unpunished. Somehow I still to want to keep trying.

[Vampyro]

I've read various accounts of how people have listened (or not) to some internal mechanism that guides them in decision making. When I was in therapy we talked about it and I realized that there was always "something" present that I just hadn't been consiously aware of. I do have a "voice" in my head... it may not always tell me what to do but it often makes me question things before acting.

So what is this little voice? Why does it seem like it's in the backround and not a more consious part of our brain function? Is it the voice of our parents/caretakers reminding us of the lessons they've tried to teach or is it something we all carry imbedded in our genes... our very being? Do you listen to yours if you have one?

Yes I must agree, there is always some sort of subconcious part of ourselves that seems to be concious all on it's own inside us...

However, don't think I'm crazy, I know there's not another person in my head, but the human brain is so much more complex than what people have learned about. I really do belive that there is a part of our brain that our concious self cannot acces, but looks as if it's slumbering in the subconsiouc. It aint taking any snooze, but i think it does remember every insignificant detail of life we've experienced since being born, wich would explain those silly meaningless memories you all of a sudden remember after it happend 10 years ago. From that, and the mechanics of logic, and self preservation, we form this so called voice, and it's not so much of a voice as it is gut feelings, much like instincts or a 6th sense... This is just a theory however, but also what might cause this is being creatures of habit, how we grew up has alot to do with how well this entity works for us. Compare 2 types of people we've all seen.. the highschool jock who gets college, a car, and mommy and daddy pay for everything. Their moral compass doesn't seem to work as well as some people who have gone through that thing I'd like to call REAL LIFE. That's just my theory though.

[BrassFusion]

Compare 2 types of people we've all seen.. the highschool jock who gets college, a car, and mommy and daddy pay for everything. Their moral compass doesn't seem to work as well as some people who have gone through that thing I'd like to call REAL LIFE. That's just my theory though.

No correlation. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you're moral. There are selfish evil assholes of every economic stripe.

[Vampyro]

No correlation. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you're moral. There are selfish evil assholes of every economic stripe.

True... but if you had some structured environment to build up a basic concept on how life works between right and wrong the moral compass works better...

.. also, just like a real compass, you can choose not to follow it's directions... but that's about as smart as being lost in the woods without a clue and not using a real compass...

[BrassFusion]

True... but if you had some structured environment to build up a basic concept on how life works between right and wrong the moral compass works better...

.. also, just like a real compass, you can choose not to follow it's directions... but that's about as smart as being lost in the woods without a clue and not using a real compass...

Disadvantaged kids don't understand how "life works" and better or worse than privileged kids, all other things being equal. Everyone is limited to his own perspective until he reaches beyond it.

[Msterbeau]

Disadvantaged kids don't understand how "life works" and better or worse than privileged kids, all other things being equal. Everyone is limited to his own perspective until he reaches beyond it.

And here's where I wonder if that compass... your conscience.. whatever you care to call it... is it built in or is formed from experiences during our childhood? My gut says we all carry it from birth. There seems to be too much anecdotal evidence from every walk of life that points to this. It's our experiences growing up and other genetic traits that determine how much we listen to it... or if we ever hear it and thus how we behave. I would also venture to say that if this is in any way true.. then an explaination for the existance of truly evil people is that they have somehow been born without this "compass".

??????????????????

When the headache I have goes away... I'll see what I can find to support or disprove what I'm thinking.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Marc, I agree with you. I think we are born with at least a basic understanding of what is "wrong" and what is "right".

[BrassFusion]

Marc, I agree with you. I think we are born with at least a basic understanding of what is "wrong" and what is "right".

I can bounce with that, but if you ask me, it's more instinctual stuff like, "I should not eat my own turds." Or, "I should not eat dead people."

Some of us are NOT born with those instincts, but I think most of us are, and that's why both activities are generally taboo through most of the world's cultures.

Other than stuff we should and shouldn't put in our mouths (nipples and broken glass, respectively), and the hormones that motivate us to raise our children well, I don't think people have too many instinctual "morals."

[phee]

Morality is an illusion I believe, I don't think we are born with an inert sense of right or wrong... I think we have an inert sence of survival, than then can be shaped to a cultures sense of right an wrong.

[n0Mad]

My moral compass always points north, but my penis points south. Hard to tell which one to follow.

[pharoh]

Whichever has more blood in it

[Vampyro]

Disadvantaged kids don't understand how "life works" and better or worse than privileged kids, all other things being equal. Everyone is limited to his own perspective until he reaches beyond it.

Now that is a real slap in the face, I grew up at a disadvantage, and I seen the real world and know it better than most people who have the life straight to college and a high paying job. I never have been or never will be another blind eye in society. I seen the way it was for the people like me, and I know just how deep the rabbit hole can go with just exactly how discustingly greedy, cold, and selfish brats who have it all can be. I learned in my own little moral compass, exactly how to really appreciate things I have in life. I take nothing for granted, as I know full well just how easily life can change and you can loose it all. To include your job, your health, your house, and practically everything else in only a matter of 2 short weeks. But at the same time, I know just how easily life can change for the better too. Simply put, what most people lack in their moral compass, is the ability to understand and help people who really do have hard luck in life. You see it everyday, the government sleeping with religeon and the fat cats up in the CEO world making laws to help them keep their money, and ruthlessly take money away that the rest of us don't even have. But then, if there's a theory that even white trash like me may be morally messed up, i do understand a reality that gaining power and money, can also taint valuable lessons we may have learned, and ultimately corrupting us to become the very evil we once were fighting against just trying to make it in life. In short, it goes back to having that moral compass, we all have lived and experienced things in life that do shape a decent concept of right and wrong, it boils back down to my last point.... It's up to the indvidual to choose to do whether is right or wrong. And being Ignorant of what might be right or wrong as an adult is no excuse.

[Paper Hearts]

I'll see what I can find to support or disprove what I'm thinking.

If ethics are in fact instincts, then it's curious that we each have such varying momentum, talents and capacities. When we cite globalization of morality, it should always be noted, as we have wars in that name time and again, that what we're really witnessing through those wars, is globalization of morality fighting itself. Each army is always fighting for it’s own dignity, reason, interest and values. If we are to list our own country's principals as truths, we should also take into account that our country's principals are in constant contention, both nationally and internationally, and that above all, the lines which define our very borders as a country are invented themselves, having been drawn by humanity, and they can be erased by a number of causes. Are the specters of latitude and longitude really worthwhile governors for our actions? -Sade asked and answered this question, hundreds of years ago, much nearer the era of Enlightenment. In reality, people use philosophies from many different sources, none of which are fully accepted or proved anywhere.

The question, more accurately, should be, in the absence of universal fundamentals of decorum, what responsibility does humanity hold unto itself?

Here, I would like to use a multipurpose graphic belonging to great friends of mine, which I’ll refer to as the Chapp/McKelvey, baby Hitler diagram:

As we imagine viewing the baby Hitler, there are several things the advantage of our present perspective would have us to consider about him-

Is the baby Hitler truly innocent?

Assuming an infant is always innocent, while knowing what history has shown us that the baby Hitler will one day become, is it moral to murder an innocent child in order to eventually save the lives of the seven million people he will definitely, in the future, genocide?

-Here is one instance of an act which can only be interpreted by the natural "humanitarian" as both good and evil, right and wrong. if instead, the humanitarian model is alterable by our reasoning, one can then answer that murdering the infant Hitler is one or the other, right and good, or wrong and evil. It is only through such opinions rather than absolutes that humanity has any ideas about a true right and wrong, good and evil. Natural humanitarianism is incompatible with itself. In fact, Humanism demands the right of the individual to realize through reason and denies naturalism.

In a meaning: if a same ethical model is indeed an unchangeable and constitutional feature of the human psyche, then that set of ingrained ethics are indeed inadequate due to the fault of real experience; it is unlikely that anything impractical exists by nature. If instead ethics result from mere ideas or opinions, then ethics are simply that--bare feelings. It should also be recorded that once one alters natural morality in order to make "morality" apply to an experience so that they may then form a conclusion, one has done just that, they've left natural morality and fabricated a new philosophy based on personal background, and in essence, only then joins ranks with Humanism and humanitarianism.

[Homicidalheathen]

I think it might actually be genetic....some sort of self preservation devise...utter chaos leads to destrucion.