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In the absence of any empirical rules that apply to everyone, each person is free to form her or his own code of morality and ethics. So it stands to reason that there is no room for preaching. Rather, one might try to influence another to share his or her values. On the other hand, it is understandable that if you feel strongly about something, you might have a hard time tolerating alternate perspectives. Comments?

inthecloset 6 Nov 26
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I think there universal rules that apply to everyone that were developed as humans evolved.

"to some extent, it [morality] is a humanmade system of favouring those evolved tendencies that facilitate group cohesion, while disfavouring those that are socially divisive." ~[psychologytoday.com]

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read about the nordic Jantelogen.

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I have put this in comments before. I have 5 gatekeepers to my ethics and morality:
Strive to treat others as YOU would want to be treated.
Strive to treat others as THEY would want to be treated.
Strive to never do anything, to anyone, that you would not want done to you.
Strive to do or cause no harm.
Embrace love and reject hate.
Now, you do you and I do me.

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One person's human rights stop where they encroach on the rights of another. Preaching might be the act of telling someone to back off. That's as old as the Ten Commandments.
If you ask someone to share your values, what is your goal?
There was another post about the Dalai Lama's notion of global ethics which seems the right idea.

@inthecloset Anything is wrong if it causes harm to another. IMHO

@inthecloset I think you're probably right about there no right or wrong, in essence. It must be derived from the survival of the tribe. Survival is a good thing, in the sense that people fight very hard to do it. I think good laws help to do that. I suppose values are along the same line of thinking.

@jlynn37 But not the harm done to people found guilty of a crime, I hope?

@brentan In my opinion, capital punishment is doing harm to another. Incarceration is not harming anyone only preventing them from doing as they please.

@inthecloset And each is totally entitled to their opinion.

@jlynn37 I think capital punishment is wrong because there is no opportunity to learn from your crime or to redeem yourself. I think incarceration does harm to the prisoners but they deserve it and it discourages others to commit crime.

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Your premise is slightly off base. You're assuming that people co-exist in a group, and then assuming an absence of any empirical rules that exist for that group. If you have a group of people then the empirical rules that exist, are whatever is good for the majority of the group. Therefore each individual does not get to decide on their own, but as part of a collective.

That is exactly what we live as today. Laws are the format that we have chosen to represent the empirical rules of the majority. Everything that can be ruled or regulated is based against the good of the majority.

@inthecloset I'd debate that they cannot remove themselves from the group. Where can I go where laws do not apply to me? There are very few places on the planet and even fewer where the quality of life is high but the necessity to conform does not exist.

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I find you moral relativism abhorrent. There can be no civil and democratic society with a base of treating all others with full dignity and respect.

@TheMiddleWay There are no "god given rules." Nevertheless, there must be real limits on the range of definition of "dignity and respect" if a society is to be civil , just, and democratic.

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