To see the world with a Dualistic eye seems to be a disservice to our intelligence as a species. Especially when we impose such dualistic opinions on a mass of people in order to try categorise their intentions, thoughts, emotions, actions and everything that a Sapien is capable of doing. The black and white boxes we try to dump all human phenomena in really doesn’t show the intricacy of why we do things, this ultimately misses the point of any science. The exploration, questioning and testing of all phenomena. If it was so simple as black and white then natural philosophers of the 1500‘s would’ve ‘understood everything’ already. So whilst we so in contrast respect the sciences for what they help us discover we describe the work and information in words that really go against the nature of what they’re talking about. ‘That’s good.’ ‘That’s bad.’ Whilst it may seem like this is a petty attempt to get people to use a larger range of vocabulary it really runs much deeper than that, our language is the medium for Sapiens to express, everything we know is expressed through our language, yet we restrict ourselves to six key words which we apply to – Our identity, our Justice system, our judgement, our actions, our intentions and even peoples unexpressed thoughts. Now to me this doesn’t seem like a healthy outcome, six words to filter the doings of an animal that has the capacities of intelligence that can build rockets that can propel other animals into space, land on the moon, collect samples in vacuum suit which enables you to breathe in an environment with no oxygen, return back onto that same ship and land back on our humble abode, unharmed… Yes that’s an extreme example but ill now press the importance of how Morality and the words it pertains to hold itself truly affects all humans.
A logical argument of a human with morals if i proposed we leave it behind would be that the dualistic nature provides ends to a spectrum that is defined by those two dualistic ends. And that is realistic, one end of the scale you have Good – the ultimate contribution to society and the opposing end, Bad – all that seeks to destroy life as we know it and shall not be tolerated. Then you have the ambivalent middle terms – the Okay territory, a war zone, a conflict of opinions because of some thing, the shift should be a little more right or left of the spectrum. But how do you judge the Okay territory? The answer is that you can not (not with any consistency anyway). What western scenarios can we provide that can be in the limbo of human morality? A man robs a store…at gun point! To get money for health care that his aunt so dearly needs or she will suffer greatly if/when she gets out of hospital due to life threatening health conditions. But the clerk is resistant, red button already pressed and police blazing blue noise. So out of desperation, understanding time being now of more importance to him, shoots the man in the leg, breaks the cash machine with another bullet, takes all the content of the till and runs away. He has never been caught and his aunt is paid for. Extra context – the clerk didn’t die, just a lot of pain, mild psychological trauma, a cool scar and story to tell at parties. Now it doesn’t get much more ‘okay’ than that. Where do place your card of Morality on its ever conflicting spectrum. The answers will vary greatly, some will empathise because they relate to the clerk and some with the desperate man also. Some will discard all context besides the act of harming another and place it bad, some will think its good because this man is willing to do anything to provide help to his family. The evaluations go on and on, and with even more information on the history of both of those humans maybe yet again the spectrum becomes even more conflicting. And it is exactly this problem, that i find why morality isn’t intrinsic enough to be able to create a consistent and progressive evaluation of all the happenings in the world. Yet we use the Vocabulary in court houses, sentencing people to prison based upon what a select few humans call ‘Bad’. Failing to see the problems with the inconsistencies of Morality is exactly what leads me to my next point and then further to show what the alternative to Morality can be.
Pride. Drummed into us in Primary education, be proud about yourself, your mother and those who ‘strive to succeed’ in your life, don’t let people tell you not to be proud (which is the exact process of pride itself, i.e don’t listen). This is where Morality has lead us, to a society filled with proud people, at the cost of a valuable skill – Listening. Pride psychologically you could say is a defense mechanism of the ego, it seeks identity and it finds it even within information that provides a ‘How to’ on to stop letting the workings of the ego take a grip of your life, being a ‘Spiritualist’ or somebody who now identifies with being spiritual which goes against the whole point of release of ego in the first place. This is how pride is sneaky, most people aren’t aware of it within themselves and if they are they will be happy to boast about it. And its lead to Group identity the forefather to Morality – One of the reasons that holds a lot of weight when there is conflict on opinions of the masses. Black community, Communists, LGBTQ+, Feminists, Parents… the list is almost infinite now that we are creating more groups for our creativity to even be consumed by pride too. Any group or collection of people sharing similar opinions or are passionate about a guided direction can and almost always leads to Group identity. Now the groups themselves i do not usually find to be the problem, they’re amongst the conversation of conflict – inevitable. New waves, new generations and new or recycled ideas need to be expressed in order for people to either be reminded of current affairs or historical ones in order for us to transcend into a future which is more ideal, in their minds typically for everyone. The problem lays when they become proud to be part of a collective, it is more comfortable to share the same opinions as many others as you have a well equipped army ready to disarm any information that is shot in their direction, or even not in their direction is often the case also. A member of the black community is proud to be black, a feminist is proud to be a feminist and a woman, a LGBTQ+ member is proud to be liberated expressive product of creativity. And this attractive idea of having a sure opinion, comfort, millions of ‘friends’ seems like a care package designed by a prophet. But what it lacks is pragmatism and the very important notion of Responsibility. These groups as we should know are product of privilege, we spare time if we choose, to even think about survival consciously so we start to focus on other areas that effect our habitats, politics, emotional sensitivity and identity. Which i see as a very natural progression from wealth and having conquered and exploited a lot of the world, we get to think about things more. A key lost in the direction exploring our minds and societal conducts is that we never pushed the idea of responsibility into the spotlight. You’re responsible with these choices – freedoms. You have the responsibility to educate yourself on the topics of which you are so greatly proud of. But that relationship often ends up being as toxic as a teenagers first relationship. Drop the pride and you still have the same freedoms to educate yourself on the same topics that you think are truly beneficial to yourself as well as many others, but now you can just listen with more care – providing you with possibilities of more compassion, understanding and rounded views. Which is all valuable information to someone who wishes to help many people, you would’ve thought. However, as i said with the comfort blanket of proud group identifiers you have mass of your army lacking responsibility. They are not educated on the directions, history, politics, understandings and opinions of others because they have been focusing on the texture of how nice their own comfort blanket feels. Especially where these groups structures may be refined down to is Morality, the ever confusing twister of six words. ‘There is a wage gap between men and women, its unfair and wrong.’ Unfair may be correct but wrong… no. To me saying anything is wrong or bad is a denial of the causality and nature of life, life only knows how to present what its gives to you, it cannot present something to you that is against its own nature, so its important not to deny or to turn a blind eye to the intelligence that brought you here in the first place as well as all of the other ideologies and everything you’re capable of perceiving, that exist. You are a product of nature, you have a history and before you came many others with their own histories and than runs all the way down to the origins of the universe we have now. So to say that something or someone is bad or even good for that matter, misses the point of the direction where life is really sending us, we are responsible and we have the ability to use our capacities to further manipulate the world and societies into ones that can give grounds for others to continue walking on afterwards, but more presently yourself. Drop the pride and maybe you can start to see where you’re really walking and understanding the ground you walk on is knowing how you got there in the first place.
Now, the replacement for Morality is still a somewhat simple structure and we haven’t experienced a time where masses of sapiens have all had this information at the same time, so i’m unsure to the outcome but its definitely to a level calculated. Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Education would seem to be solution. It consists of; Self awareness, Self regulation, Social skills and empathy. Lets waste no time and promote the advantages of these areas of intelligence. Self awareness seems to be the least understood, it is the ability to be aware of your thoughts, emotions, spacial awareness and in accordance to your environment how your speech and actions affect that such place. To me this intelligence doesn’t seem to be so malleable, through observation you can get a brief understanding of what someones levels of self awareness are, watching how they walk in the street, seeing if they understand the conveniences of the others around them. If their speech antagonises taboos in the environment, testing if they have at least an emotional understanding of the potential damage they could disturb in other people. Studying if they are capable of genuine introspection – this word is often thrown around too much and people may mistake ones they think are introspective but in reality are ’empty philosophers’. Throwing keys words of morality out there and relating it back to themselves with no real weight. It may seem difficult to highlight the difference but if someone was to say “I know that this orange juice is really good for me, i just know that its helping me progress as a healthy person.” Ultimately there is truths to these empty philosophies but introspection is a stretch. As any skill takes practice and refining to tune it to its maximum potential it will take sometime to filter out the empty philosophers from the class of introspective people. One of the greatest tools awareness has even given us the space to use is the skill of mindfulness, which taking us back, is the act of being aware. The state of being mindful provides us some of the most peaceful, grounded and accepting realms the mind is capable of perceiving, it is a gentle breeze of wind that takes away the haze of the ‘unconscious’ human mind. Baring your being open to all its sensory abilities, connecting you to reality, beyond the realm of thought. As delightful as Being is, it doesn’t allow for the most productive times. It may inspire profound and introspective thoughts when you are no longer amongst the alluring grips of Being, but its not state we should look to Be in all the time, ultimately we don’t need a world full of Buddhas if we want to change societies ambivalence and increase the long term chances of our species surviving. That is not what Buddha suggested, he highlighted what peace it can bring to you as well as the compassion you can develop for others. A simple breathe can be a trigger for a very emotionally intelligent response to your environment rather than a morally pride driven reaction.
Moving onto Self Regulation or Self Organisation is the forming of habits and exercising your discipline for all of the information that you currently have access to. Organisation is a very normal human habit, Morality was a product of that, putting information into neat boxes so we know where to access them. Interpreting someones actions is much easier when you have only six boxes to put them into as it seems. But we can explore our capacities by giving ourselves not boxes but rather, linking strings. Linking the information we perceive with strings of connection to other ‘values’ or ideas that we think truly uses our brains in a more intrinsic, long term ‘benefiting’ way. For example linking a string to your feeling of Compassion when faced with judgement, knowing that all people who are trying to hurt others are probably suffering themselves too and have a history as does everyone. Is a sure way to dimmer that fire of harsh judgement, where you fail to listen to them because of your own pride typically based on whats ‘Good and Bad’ . So it aligns your Self Regulation more truly with a direction that will not only provide a more peaceful state but it goes on to increasing your chances of survival, its very simple. You use understanding, compassion, you regulate your emotions, you don’t react, you make more rational and calculated decisions. Which ultimately means you’re less prone to outbreaks which as we all see is not a effective way to communicate with other humans, outbreaks result in verbal character attacks and physical violence, exposing yourself to situations where you may be harmed yourself. Thus decreasing your chances of survival, and whilst no actions can predict your inevitable safety, the probability of surviving certainly fluctuates. Increasing those chances gives the possibility of more ‘time’ to be in your life and time is a very expensive currency to us, its one of the only things we can offer, the energy within time. And we need time to develop all of the things we hold as beloved, relationships, leisure, learning, exercise, and so forth. Organisation of ones self can also be formed through habits, organising your thoughts even through notes. We aren’t always able to remember everything we read from a book yet some people don’t think to write notes, you’re loosing a lot of information from those books you chose not to organise your thoughts with. So learning to connect strings within your mind to points that hold compassion, understanding, self perpetuation and discipline you are organising yourself as a human, providing you with a more educated, neutral, and collected approach to all situations you will encounter.
Social skills is now one i think may be the easiest for most to understand as i believe it is simply the intelligence to recognise cues and understand the conveniences of others in your environment. As mentioned before the simple act of mindfulness can really highlight these cues of other people. If you can see someones body is slightly facing towards the door and their answers are short and blunt, after you have been talking to them for ten minutes about your new dog that they didn’t ask about then these are cues you can pick up on to relieve them of the anxiety of wanting to leave. Many people will not abruptly tell you to stop talking, they will usually endure your speech for as long as seems polite but they would’ve rather left the conversation much earlier. These small but very common examples of what we may identify as awareness of others comfort levels are indicators towards someones emotional intelligence. They not only provide a more stable ambiance to social interactions and environments but they also can stem into others recognising this and then making those feel more comfortable in your presence. Consequently, they’re more willing to spend some of the precious time with you, listen to you, question you, which all pertains to a more productive micro environment. Which, in volume create communities of people stable enough to question, listen and share time with one another for the sake of many things from self affirmation to altruistic intentions.
So in conclusion, the dismissal of Morality would pack the boxes of confined judgmental distinctions and replace them with the efficient strings of emotional intelligence – directing all information to an understanding of your own objective ignorance, compassion and pragmatic solutions to how people should act most productively in a society. Productively meaning, perpetuation of your survival as well as your offspring’s and so forth, the continuation of the homo-sapiens for as long as we wish. Whilst still utilising the space for our creative freedom to let us give meaning to the relationship we develop with all matter that we can perceive, without letting the veil of Meaning cover the absolute reality of a meaningless world, because that is where all peace lays, beyond the realm of thought.
A tree understands its intelligence, don’t let our own delude us into thinking we are not so close to the Tree. Roots and trunk are our base and history, the branches are our pathway and the leaves are our ourselves. The water and sun is the information we are capable of perceiving. Use it to grow.
Green Dharma 
I’m going to attempt something here that my experiences have shown only a few will understand (or hear). But also, my experiences have shown there is always at least one. As I “see”, that’s what matters. What are people looking for? In a sea of ideas, more so today, I think it’s more important that clarity and understanding makes herself known, that those searching, hearing, eventually find that clarity and calm.
In my youth, I had difficulty with “why am I here?” I knew I existed, but no one was sharing the answers. And with time, having not been in the church, save one year in the second grade, I had experiences and information in the world so to speak. Eventually, I had read and heard so much that for me, believing in the bible became very difficult, doubt always entering. So the travel was long.
What happened to me others might share, perhaps having similar stories. Interestingly, the more I’ve spoken to people in the church, the more I see others have had similar experiences, and those with different tales, understand from different lessons, readings, and experiences. In other words, people had the same or similar understandings, though before, we had not shared with each other, arriving at the same understandings on our own
I’ll begin this way: Since we had moved far away from what I had considered home, I more so sought to attend college (Which I might not have had we remained.) as a way to have choice to anywhere else, but also taking on some jobs to find my interests. I did quite well, but in my third year, wasn’t as motivated, so went back to working in various jobs (moving about), some more intellectual, some mostly hands one, some more challenging. The physical stuff I liked better. I wanted to get away from the academics. I didn’t like swimming in the intellectual all the time, enjoying the real world having everyday conversations. As I saw it, intellectual without practical is to various degrees is void of understanding, though I have found some very intellectual people who truly “see.”
When I returned to complete my education, I realized something while taking classes. I realized the difference between the intellectual and those with understanding. Having worked with my hands, figuring more while at jobs and not studying, upon returning, I understood what the professors were saying. More so, I could “see” the ones spoke from understanding and those from pure intellect. I could also see the differences between those coming from a place of real and those of rhetoric (Though, they would disagree with me on this.).
You see, in order not to have to study hours at home, I learned to really listen. When I did this, I saw what they were saying, and then my in class notes covered everything while I was reading the material during their lectures (Yes, I found I could read the assignment right in class while listening to the lectures, somehow able to split my attention.). When I saw what they were saying, with practical experiences, I could differentiate. The reason I could understand pure rhetoric and intellectual from knowledge born of understanding is the understanding that had grown in me [Actually, I had always had it, but doubt and intellectuals could talk you out of it, which may be happening here.]. And I used the professors to better understand what I was growing into.
This all served well when I became a teacher (Also, working at a couple summer camps, seeing how quickly kids and teens could learn horseback riding and crafts, that they learned through understanding better, the conversations real.). With time, I learned better how to talk to the students’ understanding. And learned to differentiate between purely intellectual reasoning and those of honest searching. For as we know, children and teens always try their parents and teachers by arguing or reasoning this way and that to get their way. So, in order to reduce problems in the class, I realized the students need a teacher who has good reasoning and can see right through lies and come to honesty. Right through confusion and to clarity. Which means I had to understand, and I can tell you the students would look for ways to challenge.
People can use the intellect any way they want, to whatever purposes they have. In one class, I had a student who questioned whether we could ever know the world around us is real, or whether we’re in a matrix of sorts, that there was no way to tell. He was freaking out some of the others. So, I settled this. I said, Look, we can reason this way and that. But we all have an understanding residing within us, something that we’re all born with, and no amount of intellectual thinking can change that. If we give into doubt, yes, purely intellectual people can make us believe anything.
So, where does this understanding come from? I realized that understanding is coming from above. My Father in heaven gives me understanding. Somehow, without experiences or knowledge, I understood things as a child, later doing the research to find out I was right. And sometimes, I understand things with little or no experiences, wondering how I know. Even about people. Sometimes about mechanics.
For instance, I knew as a kid that gravity could not be the Earth pulling, nor a pail of water swinging like our teacher explained. I can also “see” honesty, as many others can. And I can see pure intellectualism and the motivation behind. This last is a curious thing, for why people choose that.
I remember a friend once saying: What’s truth? What’s right? So, I explained that if there is no right or wrong, or it’s whatever we decide, then I could punch him out and there’s no wrong. He had trouble with this. But in order to have society, we have to have a system of laws. But why do we agree on those laws? It’s because of an understanding we all share, though the intellectuals (for their own reasons) often seem to attempt rewriting reasoning, and those laws support good living and freedoms.
There’s no way around understanding. Those of us with it know. And we don’t need to convince. To honest people, to those not confused, and to those who have not been educated out of their common sense, they see clearly. Perhaps this is why the apostles were fisherman because they lived the experiences, not educated out of their common sense.
One can never say there is no morality. Every person has rights they would like supported. Every person has a sense of right and wrong if only for themselves. For I have to ask the question, to what end does a person deny morality if only to support their own ideas of right and wrong for them?
You see, every person has a sense of right and wrong, even if it’s just for themselves.
Now, I could take every single one of the suggested items and demonstrate a relationship to morality, even if intellectually morality is denied. It’s like saying there’s no truth, though that statement would have to be true to be stated, which would demonstrate that the statement couldn’t be true. To say there is no morality would equally deny to the speaker any rights. We see compassion. Why compassion if there is no morality? Why would a speaker support compassion? For themselves? So, there is a right and wrong they want for themselves.
Look, every time someone attempts to deny morality, the discussion is self-defeating, self-contradictory. It depends upon the motivation.