Intergalactic Summit

I find the distinction between absolute and relative difficult to get, honestly. If you believe in an absolute morality, it's based on something, right? Which you either chose for arbitrary reasons or just accepted it as it were taught to you? How is that different from a relative morality?

Morality can be generally defined as that behaviour which brings the best outcome for the most people within a social group.

The smallest social grouping is Self or I.

Social groupings expand outwards in circles from that point, membership in a social circle entails an acceptance of that circles definition of morality. When a circle forms or expands or contracts it generally (but not always) requires a tailoring of the moral code of that circle to one that is acceptable to all members.

Moral conundra occur when the codes of different circles that we are members of have conflicts. For example if I come from a family with ties to organised crime and I join Peace & Order Unit (a law enforcement corporation) I know have conflicts between my Corporate social circle and my Family social circle. Until such time as I resolve these conflicts (usually accomplished by changing the circles one has membership in or by modifying the code of one or both of those circles to eliminate conflicting codes) I will have to attempt to walk a tightrope of competing loyalties - an exercise that is usually marked with disastrous failure.

All of us are members of multiple circles. All of us rank our circles in differing priorities. Some put family above State. Some put Self first. Some put Corporation above Family. Commander Kim puts State above everything. I personally rank Family first. When discussing someone's morality it is of key importance to understand which spheres they have membership in and how they prioritise those spheres. This is the essence of predicting a persons behaviour and loyalties.

If you understand this then you will never be shocked by betrayal.

Absolute morality means that if you find something moral, everyone else, disregarding their culture, location and way of thinking shall consider this thing moral. And what you consider amoral, they shall consider amoral too.

Belief in an absolute morality is based on self-righteousness and egoism with inability to accept differences between humans. It is common for depraved societies like gallente, known for egalitarianism and cultural invasive aggression.

Problem with gallente that they are invading us, both physically and with their culture. I don't care what they do inside their own planets and stations. But while they bring their filth like democracy and indecent behavior (like transparent clothes, unnatural and inhuman relations, perversion of their biological gender roles in reproduction) to our doorsteps, they shall be fought against. We must defend our way of life from them. Yes, of course in order for that we should judge them as depraved.

If they enjoy that crap, they should enjoy it themselves and not push it to our noses, since for us it is utterly amoral and disgusting!

And I don't care when minmatars are running around their worlds naked like animals and paint their own skins with weird pictograms. It is their homes and their rules. However, I do care when they appear like that in State territory.


Absolute morality assumes that if they believe they can behave like that in their homes, they have "right" to behave like that in ours, considering only their way of life righteous, disregarding other peoples. We, Caldari, respect traditions and morals of other nations when we are visiting them.

Morality is absolute, but none of us are qualified to determine the specifics of it. We can only make perceptive judgements that touch the surface, often instinctually. So when we discuss it amongst one another, we're essentially speculating. But in essence, there is a correct way of doing things, a correct way of interacting with others in a given scenario/context. We'll just never have any evidence of the particulars of that absolute. We tend to think we're doing the right thing, but so does the other party. We can't always make a clear conclusion who is in the right, but subjective morality is essentially a coward's way out. It's intellectual laziness: the conclusion that we can't determine the most moral course of action in all situations, so it must not exist. That way, we don't have to do the hard work of at least trying to get closer to morality than we are now. And consequentially, this justifies, creates and reinforces an attitude of indifference and a cop-out for those who routinely behave poorly.

Yet, again, morality, tautologically, doesn't produce evidence of its existence. So this is a conclusion I can only make by process of elimination: an assessment that morality is subjective is essentially an assessment that morality doesn't actually exist, metaphysically, and I'm not willing to say that. It just.. doesn't feel right, in practice.

In the words of an old mentor: “Though I may have a tough time proving it, nobody is going to convince me that the revulsion I feel when I witness the gratuitous infliction of pain is simply a function of the fact that I don’t happen to like it.”