Individual or Social
— I recall once having this discussion with Polemarchus about whether morality is essentially a social or individual phenomena. Although it is true that morality and ethics only come to the fore in groups, it is also true that groups are comprised of individuals. Let me know exactly what you think and your specific reasons. I look forward to your ideas. 
I’m sure exactly what you mean. Hobbes’s idea of morality being a solution to a practical problem of society suggests in that morality is always a societal phenominon simply because it can’t exist with the idividual.
I’ll leave it at that since I’m sure no one wants to hear my ramblings on morality as a universal absolute truth.
In the words of Magius, “What’s your take?”
no, the shaping of the sub-conscience mind is a large part of an individual. the only option the individual has is to accept this, and taken active steps to alter this ( a very hard process).
the point that you are missing is that humans by nature are social creatures. for a reason. we thrive off each other. while some may be more dependent than others, and at different stages, we feed off each’s benifits, ideas and actions. a man sitting alone on a desert island will have nothing to think about because there is nothing outside of himself to think about.
— and yet if we were all the same with no individual differences it would be hard
. maybe the solution is to be your own person, “follow your bliss”, as the late Joseph campbell used to say without ‘selling out’ to the social drones. from the social perspective, to actively engage in the World’s affairs, while still not losing the individual creativity that makes that possible.
Along the particular evolutionary path that we’ve followed, natural selection has given the modern day human the capacity to be moral. But it is only taught by the individual through copying society in the normal animal learning process.
Its like we could grow up with a pack of wolves and be just as good a wolf as them mentally and emotionally, because we have the capacity, even though we only use a bit of it. But a wolf doesn’t have the mental and emotional capacity because its evolved in a different way.
If we grew up with wolves we wouldn’t be moral. So it depends on the social surroundings that the individual learns from as well as the individual’s evolutionary capacity. But I voted for society.
— in my case i eventually rejected a lot of my societal values, while retaining some that i like, like honesty, industriousness, inquisitiveness. An individual has to be of one piece, the mind is constructed such that it is hard for an individual to continually lie to himself and get away with it. In a lot of respects society may turn the individual against himself in order to make him more social.
— And yet, the individual must ultimately derive all of his values from society, but he has a lot to choose from.
Well, social values are just part of what is used in the process of decision making, ie. getting what you want. Its just an extra step, making it more complicated in an attempt to get ahead in life. You have your basic instinctive id to tell you what u would do, your cunning ego to tell you what you could do and your moral super-ego to tell you what you should do. And its up to a person’s upbringing and experiences to determine what ratio of the combination of these components of decision making is best for making the best decisions. And thus the personality is formed.
— Even the Greeks recognized that an individual could pass the bounds of moderation (hubris or hybris), even though they all agreed that a man should act for his own interests within the bounds of the state and society.