No, because morals are the snapshot of our defended egos on the vast landscape of who we really are.
I’ll use the example of water
I like my tea hot and my tap water cold… but does cold exist? Isn’t water either hot, cold or anywhere in-between? Well that is how we describe it all the time. And we can even measure it scientifically by taking the temperature. In a roadside coffee stop in the states, the man in front of me ordered his coffee with “Can I get a regular latte, extra expresso, with soy… at 122 degrees?”
I don’t know if I was more astonished by the order or the fact that the waitress didn’t miss a beat, as if it was normal. I suddenly panicked thinking that she was going to expect that much information with my order, “I’ll have a white coffee … please.”
Are the polarities real?
When does hot get hot and start to move towards warm and then cold?
The truth is that these are all relative terms that are defined by individuals. So I position myself on the temperature scale and think, oh it’s going to be hot today.
Someone from the tropics would say, this isn’t hot, and another from the polar regions might call it boiling and unbearable.
The Continuum.
Even from a scientific point of view temperature is actually molecular activity. It is on a continuum from absolute zero to the unimaginable activity of stars – red giants are said to have a core temperature of a billion degrees.
Moral Relativity.
Could it be similar? Good and bad is all relative, depending on where you stand.
If you’re Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu or animist you might think there is a clear line. However, you soon realise that it is still all defined individually when some Christians start killing others and one Moslem sect slaughters another. For many cultures it is the worst crime to premeditatively kill someone. However, it is acceptable for the whole group to kill ‘their neighbours’ in war.
So what is the continuum on which morals stand?
Just as hot and cold are relative positions on the continuum of molecular activity called heat. Similarly, good and bad are relative positions on the continuum called love. If we realise this we can start putting our opinion into context. The most important context is my opinion about myself – am I a good or bad person? The way I answer this question will greatly affect my opinion of others.
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.”
Thomas Merton
The great revelation we need to come to, if we dare, is that we are not ON the continuum (an ego view); we ARE the continuum (the nature of our essence).