Not really, it mostly speaks to the fact that I've been indoctrinated through my upbringing, education and environment that this is the "true" enlightenment. Even for people on the "other" side, they ask the same questions and they see the hipocrisy (it's not hard to see how capital corrupts) and get stuck. This is why morality moves in cycles even in the Western world: morality is a human construct created through reason to best enable civilization and progress.

I did not add that statement accidentally to "off myself": I did that to acknowledge that this is hard to overcome, and that none of us has a moral upper hand, really (me included).

I think people often conflate morality with mores. Morality is timeless (it’s always been unfashionable to kill someone, to lie, to display envy, and so on), while social mores can fluctuate with changing political, cultural or philosophical view points.

On top of that, sociopolitical self-preserving interests can muddle the discourse on what is moral or not, which is what you’re saying, more or less. The point being that ultimately the truth of an immoral act is unchanged by whatever abstractions we layer upon it. So, we make exceptions to ethics for selfish reasons, not moral ones.

What matters then are the outcomes for all the reasons we make exceptions, just as you think there’s some justified reason for moral relativism. It’s okay, people can do what they want, they just have to be honest about the trades they make when they do this.

From a geopolitical perspective, moral relativism is a nice diplomatic tool, it just has the troubling effect of producing unnecessary contrarianism in populations that would benefit from understanding the implications of that moral relativism.

> it’s always been unfashionable to kill someone, to lie, to display envy, and so on

Even if we restrict ourselves to recorded human history, there are plenty of examples where killing in particular and imposing one's will by force more generally was glorified.

This is really a very modern development (last hundred years?). Just look at how women have been treated 50 years ago as the "weaker sex" (and to an extent, still are today).

But going back to morality of the Western world, how does that compute in terms of recent excursions in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria... All exceptions needed in the last 20 years?

My point is that I subscribe to the notion that "morality" has been developed as a human, reasoned construct to help with self-preservation when cohabiting in large social groups (aka civilization) — I am outright disagreeing with you. Compare with the "morality" of humans brought up outside society (kids lost in woods and similar). Too many counter-examples throughout history to consider it innate, IMO.

The simplest living beings have some idea of self and other, and life and death, and so understand, even implicitly, what it means to be killed and dying. So a primal impulse to fight back kicks in whenever something feels mortally threatened.

Bacteria might not be able to communicate that they don’t like being killed, but I don’t think their view of it changes despite that lack of ability to communicate. More complex and conscious organisms, like monkeys, take offense to lies and deception. Or dominant animals with higher-level cognition might punish members of their groups who display jealous traits. Who taught these animals human social mores? No one, they’re going purely off instinct.

There are primal instincts which drive some of these behaviors which have absolutely nothing to do with human culture or society. To paraphrase what I’ve already said, morality doesn’t change, but only how you think of it does. Humans are the only animals who elegantly communicate their selfishness about moral behaviors, and get away with it.

And I don’t get the point of the rest of your post about the Middle East, but I am going to leave it at that.

Only one paragraph was about the Middle East, where "Western" morality is on full display, mostly to show that there is no one true goodness anywhere.

You seem to be using a definition of morality that's a lot narrower than what we generally call moral and morality: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

I don't think your examples show morality at work, but I already realised we disagree on this topic, and I am sure you'll interpret the dictionary definitions differently too.

Thanks for the discourse and enjoy the day.

Whatever is moral stays that despite disagreements, it’s more clear cut than people would care to admit.