Growth based morality

Some things can be either good or bad based on how you apply them.
Example : a knife. Nifty tool, but can stab.
Its use determines its value.

But what kind of good and bad are we talking about here?

In my own experience, goodness is growth and health.
Badness is a meaningless death or destruction.

Why is a knife good ? It can help a person as a tool. Cut meat for example.
What would the bad use of a knife be ? If it were used to harm the innocent.
The meta morality though, is about things like life and death.
Without favoring the innocent, or favoring utility, the knife would not have a moral meaning.

Why is growth and health good?
Life wants to live.
It is something most life forms all share.
A universal will to living.
We simply accept it as it is already there.

Mother nature played a trick on us, though.
If you want to live, you must kill.
But the ones you kill, also want to live.

The root of natural morality contradicts itself.
It contradicts itself like a mean bitch.

If mother nature were a philosopher,
nature would make more sense.
Mother nature is a measurable, long drawn out chaos.
It’s all about potential energy.
Probability.
On the other hand, life on earth seems improbable.

But all of that crap about contradicting principles is just obstructive bunk.

I can still hold true to my values.
And im not alone.

Growth of what?

We must eat things that once were alive–plant and animal. Is that immoral?

No, I, personally, do not think that it is immoral but it can be sad without our awareness, respect and our gratitude for what that animal and/or plant (especially a tree which has been chopped down) once was when it was alive and thriving.

Waste, to me, is one of the most immoral things.

Based on a debatable premises that supposes the meaning of life and death grounded on different states.

Before that convention is set aside, the meaning of growth and decay can not be moralized.sorry Dan.

Why ground your morality in nature?
Why ground your values on anything external?

We exist in a world of qualitative experience… good and bad are in the most literal sense made self-evident to us in every moment of our experience.
Much more of it is us discovering those values, than it is choosing them.

Watching someone I don’t know suffer, hurts me… that was a discovery, not a choice.
As was discovering that a strangers elation and excitement is contagious to me…

Where reason and intellect come in, is charting a course through life such that my experience be less horrific and painful and more satisfying and pleasant.
Morality is the recognition that I am not alone nor an island unto myself and that others are not exactly like me.
I require their help and cooperation to live a pleasant and fulfilling life and we need rules to live by to maintain that cooperation and peace, while permitting us sufficient freedom to pursue our individual values without getting into too much conflict with each other.

The terms of such a contract need not be written in stone, as time and circumstance changes, we can renegotiate the details to better serve its purpose…
But we do need such an agreement and that agreement needs to be fair to provide the vast majority of us with sufficient incentive to adhere to it and respect it.

So your morals are based in happiness and suffering?

Growth of life and existence.

I don’t know what that means.

How does one grow life? How does one grow existence?

Yes.

.
Perhaps Dan meant “human evolution” when he used the word “growth”.

In the positive context of genetic progress i did mean evolution but did not use that word.
Thank you for your insight.

Evolution is not progress. Evolution is adaptation to the environment.

No, evolution is progress. Adaptation to the environment is a theory that was developed in an attempt to explain evolution.

Human, individual evolution is certainly progress…even though it does flow and ebb. Speaking of “adaptation” – that certainly has a lot to do with human evolution and one’s inner and outer environment.

How can you possibly say that evolution is not progress – that is, unless you would prefer to send us back in time five, six million years ago?

What is progress to you?