I think that there is a universal morality, but I don’t believe we will find it genetically hard coded into our DNA. Nor do l think we will find it in any kind of empirical capacity.
I think the universal morality is a metaphysics that manifests psychologically and sociologically as a biological imperative for self preservation.
I think the only way to preserve and transmit moral “truths” (truth is an archetype, an ideal, an aim, an intangible), is through stories, myths, symbols. This is the role and function that institutions play, specifically religions.
I think problems arise with “self domestication”.
I think when humans artificially fabricate their environment (ie civilization) it relaxes their necessity for survival, and therefore relaxes the role of struggle, which I believe is where the bedrock of morality is formed.
Struggle is, what I believe, the necessary catalyst of change. It singly invokes a higher level of consciousness. But it’s not just “mindless” struggle; it’s the ability to struggle, and dissociate from that struggle as a personalized event.
Ideas possess us. Or we can possess ideas.
“I am not the pain.”
Pain is an idea that I can possess. It mustn’t need to possess me.
I can transcend this “possession” of struggle, pain, circumstances, anxiety, fear, etc through the process of “self” reflection, mediation, etc, i.e disassociation.
The reason I bring up struggle and morality is that actions are good or bad. We evaluate good or bad on the basis of “wellness” and “flourishing”.
Struggle is what all organisms do to survive.
All life struggles against entropy and chaos to create order and complexity.
It is through that struggle that we learn certain moral truths about what is “good” or “bad”, and we evaluate those words in terms of our ability to act in ways allow us and others to flourish or suffer.
William Dare 