Selfishness.
Because one cannot “help, care, love, do good” to or for another, before helping, caring, loving, doing good to oneself first.
This is easily proved by health. Ill people generally cannot help other people. They are too weak. Instead, it is the diseased, sick, ill, and unhealthy who require care from others. People generally consider it a simple moral kindness and courtesy, to help those who are weak and sick. So it is good to save lives. Doctors prove this. A doctor is a good person, more objectively than say, a thief or policeman. Sometimes policemen are good, but not always. Most of the time, we expect doctors to be morally good. Although there is on rare occasion a bad doctor, who is charged with malpractice and negligence. We expect a higher moral standard for doctors than we do for police officers.
And we expect babysitters, mostly young girls, to also be morally good. Because they look after children, who are weaker than adults.
I can go on for many hours with examples, tediously. But instead of providing more context to this picture, let’s jump right into the philosophy. No good, whatsoever, can be accomplished from a state of weakness. An infant, for example, cannot save anybody’s life. For starters, it has no volition or choice. So even if an infant died of some rare disease, and we take its organs, and give them to another baby who needs an emergency surgery transplant, then this does not necessarily constitute a moral good. Because the deceased baby, and no baby ever, at all, in history, has volition or choice to sacrifice itself.
This brings us to the first two advanced concepts, volition and sacrifice. Volition is choice and freedom. Sometimes adults acquire volition, choice, and freedom. But many times adults do not, like in America today. Sometimes adults never acquire choice, and independence. Sometimes children stay children forever, and never break into adulthood. This is becoming more the norm in postmodernity. Infants stay infants. They never mature. They never become moral, autonomous, independent entities. They never realize freedom. They are slaves, and never acquire the capacity to choose.
Because to choose, anything, implies that you become responsible for your choices. This is another advanced concept: self responsibility.
I don’t expect many on here, to understand what I mean by self responsibility. Because guys, let’s face it, there aren’t many responsible adults around anymore.
Let’s forget about choice and responsibility, and move onto sacrifice. Assuming, and this is a big assumption I know, that one theoretical postmodern adult became responsible for him or herself, then this person would have a capacity to commit moral rights and wrongs, and become morally good or evil. Because he chooses choices in life, and becomes responsible for these choices. That being said, only a self responsible adult can “choose” self sacrifice. Remember, that deceased infant could not choose self sacrifice. So it doesn’t count as a moral action. Therefore it has no moral status. This is also how liberals slip into the abortion debate. They presume, and conclude, that preborn infants have no moral autonomy. Because it’s too easy of an argument to make.
We almost never assume that children, especially infants, have a capacity to choose, and therefore, have a moral agency.
This begs the question, what separates a child from an adult?
Forget the question, we’re moving on again. This time we’re assuming that there is a self responsible adult, capable of making choices, and therefore is a moral agent. He or she can choose right and wrong, good and evil. This person has the capacity, and power, to commit goods and evils. But how do we go from childhood, to adulthood, to choice, to responsibility, to morality, to objective morality? Where does the objectivity come in?
It comes in through the concept of independence, freedom, and choice. If an individual is sick and weak, then this severely limits his ability to “help care love do good” for somebody else. To do good, you must be healthy. Think about mental health. If a person is insane or crazy, then is he or she responsible for actions? No, this is why we prosecute people guilty on grounds of insanity. An insane person no longer has the capacity to choose moral goodness or evil. Therefore, he or she is stripped from self responsibility. You see this in many spree shooting cases in the u.s. If a spree shooter is ruled guilty by reason of insanity, then he technically has not committed an “evil” deed. Because to be evil, and commit evil, and have moral autonomy, you have to be “sane”.
This comes back around to health. Not only must you be physically healthy to be a moral agent, but you also must be mentally healthy as well.
Morality is a function of health. But health is not necessarily a function of morality. Because there are exceptions. Health fluctuates. And moral autonomy also fluctuates. Sometimes you are a moral agent. Sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you’re insane, or an infant, or sleep walking. Sometimes you’re on drugs. Sometimes sometimes sometimes.
But for the times that people are awake, and healthy, there is also a truism. You must care for yourself, you must concern yourself with your own health, before caring for other people’s health. You must build yourself up, before you can build others up. This is proved by the case of the deceased infant. If an infant dies, before it ever had the chance to acquire moral agency, then the truism is reified. Moral agency cannot exist until it is given a foundation. This foundation has an objective basis in biology, health, and sacrifice. One must build power, before donating power to others. An infant has no power. So it has no power to give others. It has no agency, and therefore, cannot claim any moral goodness even if there were some to exist.
I would write more, but I want to keep this short and on topic. We could get into the will to power, twtp, and how that builds moral agency, but I don’t feel like spending that much time writing and typing tonight. So I’ll cut this short.
The point is, objective morality begins with objective biological principles of health. You must build yourself, twtp, before building anybody else. Because even if you theoretically could “help” or “do good” or even “commit evil” of any kind, you’d first need to have a moral agency. And the building of moral agency is a separate topic. Even if moral agency were a subjective principle, and confined to moral relativism, then this still wouldn’t absolve the situation of objective morality on terms of general health. Because health is something much larger, perhaps, than morality.
This is also why humans take human morality for granted, and don’t think to apply an objective morality to say…plants or animals. There are ecologists and animal rights activists, environmentalist groups and the like, but again, their morality isn’t necessarily objective.
So that’s it. Let’s see if you wise philosophers of ilp can deal with any of these points. And if you can’t, then at least this will give you something interesting to think about for awhile.