[Towaway69]

Morals are there so that folks go to church with their families on Sunday, have an affair with their sectaries during the week and drink too much with their mates on Friday night because they feel bad about their moral choices.

[kelseyfrog]

You're saying the purpose of morals is not to inform choice making, but to make people feel bad?

Why have them then? The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

[Towaway69]

Morals were invented to hold a larger group of humans together. Smaller groups can be held together by everyone knowing each other, larger groups required a more complex system of trust.

Morals are the glue for nation states. Morals prevent us from driving over others, morals prevent us from being mean to others. Moral makes us trust the politicians we vote for because we are told they have the same morals as we.

My somewhat cynical picture of morals is only to make a point of how deep morals go in our societies. Folks have conscience and morals are the basis of that conscience - be it good or evil.

Police and armies enforce these morals in the form of laws and legal constructs. Important to note though that morals are not filly encoded as laws, these are two concepts are separate societal adhesives.

[kelseyfrog]

You're saying that if we believe we share the same morals, then we're more likely to let things slide for the sake of harmony and less likely to hold violators accountable?

[Towaway69]

No I'm not saying that, that's your interpretation of what I am saying. What I'm saying is what I have written, no deeper meaning.

What I said is that we vote for politicians whom we are told share our morals or we assume that they do. I don't make any judgement nor prediction what happens if that happens not to be the case - either before or after the event of voting.

[kelseyfrog]

Ok, so just taking it literally, you're saying that morals have just these three functions:

1. Morals prevent us from driving over others.

2. Morals prevent us from being mean to others.

3. Moral makes us trust the politicians.

And nothing more?

[Towaway69]

Morals are an invented cohesive for societal-sized groups of humans. As such, they can mean many things to many people or nothing to nobody.

Morals only exist as long as there are people who believe them. Once you wipe out an entire country, their morals disappear.