I’m just saying if I was an atheist, morality and truth talk would seem pointless. — Fire Ologist

But if you are not an atheist how can you fairly come to that view? You would appear to lack the grounding to make that claim.

if I was atheist I would be an anarchistic, hedonistic sociopath — Fire Ologist

There are plenty of such people within the world's religious traditions. I don't think a little thing like god changes people's wiring.

Democracy and capitalism were once the greatest hopes we crafted as collaborations for the community, and today, many think they are evil and doomed to corruption. — Fire Ologist

People seem to be addicted to stories of doom and end of times. Media has fed us a steady diet of apocalypse stories for many years.

To me, it’s because we collaborate at all about anything that we experience the possibility of God. God is in the collaboration. So you take God out of it, the collaboration falls with it. — Fire Ologist

Well clearly this isn't the case because secular humanists have long plugged away at building ethical frameworks quite consistently and effectively, without need for gods. But I get that for you personally (and many other theists) this may seem incomprehensible.

She too thinks her drinking is fine despite downing near a bottle of wine every night. — Philosophim

A bottle of wine a night is pretty standard. While it isn't good for health, it isn't a huge drinking problem. Many people I know drink 3 or 4 bottles a night.

People who drink often know that what they are doing has risks but are often content to assume/hope that they may get way with it physically because many people do. My grandfather drank almost a full bottle of gin every night and lived a happy life to 98.

I keep it at four drinks a day. My body seems to have handled that pretty well over the decades. Vital signs were good at last checkup. — RogueAI

You will likely be fine even if this is more than is widely considered healthy by the literature. I used to drink too much and I often had more than 20 drinks a night. A biweekly binge. I decided that although this never ceased being fun, I should stop for health reasons. So I haven't had a drink for 10 years. Life is way more boring and I rarely go out anymore, but it's probably for the better.

Thanks for elaborating.

You're a highly entertaining and eccentric poster.

I'm curious about your various arguments and pronouncements.

National socialism is actually the most fundamental doctrine of European so-called democracy. — Tarskian

What made you think this?

The only saving grace of the erstwhile marxism was its internationalism. — Tarskian

How did you arrive at this?

Regardless of how they do it, failure is the inevitable attraction point of European civilization. — Tarskian

Why?

If only pure reason is allowed to provide the meaning of life, then there simply is no such meaning. — Tarskian

You're saying that if we rely solely on pure reason to determine the meaning of life, we will conclude that life has no inherent meaning? I wonder if that's the case. I'm not big on pure reason and I came to the conclusion that life has no inherent meaning simply by how it feels and looks to me.

Voting for far-right politicians, i.e. the modern national-socialists, is the national European rebellion against the absurd, of a society that will ultimately commit suicide. — Tarskian

Seems to me you could make this same argument and simply replace 'national-socialists' with 'socialism' or 'identity politics' etc.

I was wondering what the take away should be with more younger people being boss to older people? — TiredThinker

I imagine a massive range of diverse situations (cultural, economic and historical) probably accounts for this age gap. Also sectors. How this looks in retail will be different to how it looks in a health setting.

I think if a boss is 45 and you are 55, who cares? Where I think it can get tricky is where your boss is 28 and you are 58.

I hold the view (based on management experience) that managers and senior leaders often don't know what they are doing, regardless of age. They rely on the team around them to get things done and follow, blandly, the organisation's strategic plan. No innovation necessary.

Personally, I don't buy the idea that older people always bring wisdom and experience. In some cases experience is a teacher of poor, outmoded habits and perspectives. Wisdom can be found amongst the young.

The basic experience is of reading an 18th picaresque novel, not remotely like reading other books labelled as postmodern. If it's self-reflexively clever it's in the same way that, say, Don Quixote or Tristram Shandy are. — Jamal

Interesting and probably true. I don't have a recent enough memory to be certain. But I did think of Barth a lot when I read Cervantes. I found Barth extraordinary but hard going, in as much as it just never lets up: layer upon layer of prodigious syntactical brilliance. I guess for many people the book is so dense and lengthy that unless you really love the playfulness of this absurd tale, you will probably become exhausted. For my taste, it might have been better (easier on my brain) cut by a third. In some ways, TC Boyle's Water Music is that book for me. That said, there's little quesion that Barth is a genius.

:up:

here are my two contributions to this thread:
Fairness is not found in the world, it is found in what we do about it.
The way things are does not determine what we ought do about them. — Banno

Sounds reasonable.

Quick clarification - based upon this if fairness is not found in the world, then unfairness is not found either?

Fairness and unfairness are the perspectives of conscious creatures (well, humans specifically) who hold views subject to evaluative ideas?

The problem with pragmatism is that it does matter what you pick - awful things 'work'. At an extreme end, murdering people to get to the top can work. Abortion works as birth control. And what do we mean by work? A lot of people say things ‘work’ but on close examination you can see that they don't.

But, perhaps, ironically, I can say skepticism 'works' for me - in most cases I can't believe in things for which I have no good evidence.

Do you believe that one metaphysical position is true and all the others - materialism, realism, anti-realism, idealism, physicalism, existentialism, and so on and so on - are false? You have always struck me as a pragmatist and that idea, to me, is very unpragmatic. — T Clark

I haven't said anything is false - gods, idealism. Just that they haven't been adequately demonstrated. Hence I have no good reason to beleive them. I'm not saying they are not true - that's a positive claim I can't justify. Skepticism rather than pragmatism.

As you know, non-dualism goes back much further than the New Age movement. The Vedanta, Buddhism, and Taoism go back as far or further than the earliest Greek philosophers. — T Clark

Indeed the source of the new Age movement and some fairly soft core version of the perennial philosophy. I just meant the recent morphing of this.

What kind of mental processing is taking place when we have an intuition, a gut feeling? How often do experts in a field, such as surgeons, pilots, tightrope walkers, rely on the felt sense of a situation to guide them? — Joshs

Sure, but I figure intuition of that kind is based on experince and lots of exposure to good and bad decision making which was more formally structured.

Are they ignoring the facts that they have learned over the course of their careers or, on the contrary, holistically drawing from that reservoir of knowledge to arrive at a decision? — Joshs

Probably drawing from a theorized basis.

I think what makes that decision ‘felt’ rather than laid out as a logical structure is that it is too fresh an insight to articulate is such developed terms, not because it is lacking conceptual substance. — Joshs

Could be. I guess what we'd like to avoid is capricious thinking being used to label people 'guilty' or 'undeserving' based on physical appearances or some other emotive association which does not take into consideration the matter itself.

Isn't that what philosophers have always done — Gnomon

Not just philosophers - everyone.

I'm a non-philosopher and a minimalist, so I'm not particularly reflective, nor am I a searcher.

I superimpose interpretative values on everything like anyone else. I just haven't reached for a prepackaged system or someone else's complex thinking. And yes, of course, we all inherit values from language and culture. Everything is contingent upon these.

Fair and just are human terms, subject to some criteria of value. Just which criteria would one use in order to determine if the world we appear to inhabit is fair and just?

A brief look around showcases a reality which does not offer the same predictable experince to every creature. It seems to be chaos on which we try to project a sense of order. It's daily painful death to countless children, heroes get cancer, a world based on predation and the immense suffering on a constant basis of billions of creatures who are eaten alive slowly by other creatures, etc.

I have encountered no good reason to superimpose a philosphy or religion upon this in order to make it seem less appalling.

No.

Would you be amenable to the idea that it is just as a convenience that we separate affective and rational aspects — Joshs

I can see this.

I love this wording:

The gist of it is that emotion is the cradle within which rationality rests. It is what gives the rational its coherence, intelligibility and relevance. — Joshs

Emotion here goes hand in hand with intellectual development. Why should we want to be reasonable unless knowledge were intrinsically rewarding? Why would knowledge change our mind about anything, causing us to ‘go against ourselves’, unless reason were its own reward? — Joshs

Makes sense.

The emotions are said to disrupt our thinking and lead us astray in our purposes. This what I call the Myth of the Passions: the emotions as irrational forces beyond our control, disruptive and stupid, unthinking and counterproductive, against our “better interests,” and often ridiculous. Against this platitude, “emotions are irrational,” I want to argue that, on the contrary, emotions are rational This is not only to say that they fit into one’s overall behavior in a significant way and follow regular patterns (one’s personality”), and that they can be explained in terms of a coherent set of causes according to some psychological theory or another. All of this is true enough. But emotions are rational in another, more important sense. Emotions, I have argued elsewhere,1 are judgments, intentional and intelligent. Emotions, therefore may be said to be rational in precisely the same sense in which all judgments may said to be rational; they require an advanced degree of conceptual sophistication, including a conception of self and at least some ability in abstraction.

I find this ( Solomon)) very interesting.

Possibly a digression but since you raised it - I'd be interested in trying to unpack this via some examples. For instance - when determining the guilt of someone in a court of law, someone might say of the accused - 'It feels like he's guilty to me.' - and determine guilt based on this emotion rather than any facts provided about the crime. I suspect we wouldn't want important decisions made based on how it 'feels' to any given person at the time. Would we not want to use differnt tools? How do we determine which approach to privilege in the light of what you write about emotion?

You seem to take a lack of definitive answers to things as evidence that they have been exhaustively examined and deemed pointless. — Constance

That's not really what I am saying. That was me reframing your point about the epistemic hopelessness before us. Which I take to be the similar Rorty's view that everything we believe is essentially a product of contingency - of culture and shared linguistic practice. The point is to move on and get things done.

Remember, I often say, ALL one has ever witnessed in the world is phenomena. Impossible to witness anything else, for a phenomenon is "to be wittnessed." — Constance

Sure. That's pretty much what I say too. It's a post-Kantian world. But the point remains; what is next?

Heidegger sounds just like someone you could relate to. Two, three months study and you would start to see what it is really like to be free of "glib answers." — Constance

Heidegger's unpacking of our mistakes and assumptions since Plato and all the advanced theorising about being that this entailed, didn't prevent him from getting involved with the ultimate in glib answers, Nazism. So even Heidegger had to step away from theory and his remarkable, nascent post-moderism - what hope for the rest of us?

Anyway, of course, I understand this immediate rejection of "transcendental" talk. But transcendence is always already there in the world, and all of those practical matters rest with this openness of our existence. The only issue is whether one takes an interest. You know, starry night, one looks up at the night sky (aka, the inside of one's cranium), and wonders. Wondering deeply enough, one discovers religion. One wonders thoughtfully enough, one moves to Kierkegaard. Then Kierkegaard opens the door to one's self. — Constance

This sounds more like an aesthetic response.

You're right that I don't take much of an interest in transcendence. As a reluctant post-modernist (by culture) I don't think it is possible to arrive at any conclusions about reality - just tentative theories and speculations. Most of which are cheap.

You know, starry night, one looks up at the night sky (aka, the inside of one's cranium), and wonders. Wondering deeply enough, one discovers religion. One wonders thoughtfully enough, one moves to Kierkegaard. Then Kierkegaard opens the door to one's self. — Constance

Hmmm. You sound like a romantic. The point of philosophy is how much I as an individual need to engage with it, not whether it is good for the world or whether Heidegger or Kant were revolutionary thinkers. These are very different matters. I am primarily interested in what I need from philosophy.

I doubt most people who read Heidegger understand him or gain a useful reading of him. Even academics seem to struggle. I think this is material for formal study, not for someone like me who doesn't read philosophy or have time.

If there is no answer then what's next?
— Tom Storm

See the above. — Constance

I don't think you have really answered this question.

Enjoyed the chat. :up:

Oh yeah. The golden rule, like the 10 commandments, pre-supposes what it should be putting into question, that we harm , disrespect and oppress each other because we desire such outcomes, that is, that we find satisfaction in instigating or allowing them to happen. So we have to be reminded ‘ don’t do that, it’s not nice, even if it feels nice’. My critique is connected with what I wrote you in a previous post about the psyche being a community of selves, such that the idea of being self vs other-directed doesn’t make much sense. We don’t have to be told to be other-directed or empathetic. Our skin doesn't define the boundary of our intrinsic self. The boundary of the self that we care about , and whose enrichment motivates our actions, isn’t physical or spatial , but functional. That is, we naturally embrace into the self all of the world that can be assimilated on enough dimensions of similarity. If we didn’t have this filter, our world would be an indecipherable chaos, as would our ‘self’.

The golden rule, rather than appreciating our need to make our world recognizable before we can assimilate it ( and this applies especially to the values and thoughts of others unlike us), blames ‘bad intent’, as though we already understand others and still desire to disrespect them (because we’re ‘evil’ or ‘pathological’ or ‘selfish’.) So it perpetuates violence by generating its own violence through anger and blame. Those miscreants who ignore the golden rule deserve to be punished, or at least ostracized and condemned. Can you imagine a world where most people believed that? It would look exactly the same as the world we live in now, where everyone believes in the golden rule and everyone points fingers at each other, throws stones at each other, shuns each other. — Joshs

I don't think I fully understand this. Maybe the language is a bit academic for me.

E.g., - what does this mean? Can you do it in a sentence?

The boundary of the self that we care about , and whose enrichment motivates our actions, isn’t physical or spatial , but functional. That is, we naturally embrace into the self all of the world that can be assimilated on enough dimensions of similarity. If we didn’t have this filter, our world would be an indecipherable chaos, as would our ‘self’. — Joshs

You're suggesting that the golden rule promotes misunderstanding and then blame. What would be preferable is to is seek to understand the world and other people's values/experiences within it rather than project ethical values (and expectations) upon them? Built into the golden rule is a foundational assumption that any perceived breach of it will be malicious. Therefore blame/punishment.

Maybe you should start a thread (if there isn't one) on how we pursue moral quesions using the kind of approach you prefer. I can't see how it would work except as theory, given how society currently functions. What would need to change for such ideas to gain traction in a substantive way?

:up:

I’m not pessimistic. I just mean we will never end war, end murder, end lying, end hurting each other and ourselves. We will never build a utopia, never end poverty. There will always be self-absorbed people, there will always arise a tyrant, there will always be infidelity and betrayal. — Fire Ologist

I wouldn't call this optimism. :wink: I don't think we can say 'never'. It's too definitive. But certainly it is unlikely. Who knows? The broader question is will we wipe ourselves out before we can get to some more beneficial way of being with each other? That's my trope.

My view is that unless one is going to sit in prayer, meditation and contemplation for a very long time these issues cannot be untangled without a careful study of metaphysics. . . — FrancisRay

And if we do 'untangle' these issues, what's next?

Academics, religious apologists, and don't forget philosophers. Isn't this a philosophy forum?? — Constance

Isn't the point of philosophy to examine the hell out of basic assumptions and our glib answers? Isn't it the case that some of the most obvious questions may well be pointless? Is it not also the case that sometimes the pragmatic response to philosophical questions is better than theoretical dead ends or infinities?

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.”

― Richard Rorty

How do you know that the transcendent significance you identify is not merely something we/you put there?

What use is it to ask basic questions of our existence? — Constance

Not just basic questions. Specific questions which you have already stated are impossible to answer.

One is either engaged or one isn't. Hard to argue against indifference. Questions like Why are we born to suffer and die? have to be meaningful at the outset for understanding religion. — Constance

Whoa there, partner, you are rushing ahead. Did I ask about why we are born and suffer? No. Did I say I wasn't engaged? No. I'm simply expressing a different view to yours. Does it follow from this that I am therefore against all of philosophy? :wink:

Rorty again:

The purpose of philosophy is not to discover timeless truths, but rather to provide better ways of living and understanding.

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" (1989)

I'm just trying to cut to the chase. Is there any merit in lingering in the mist and miasma of transcendence when we have practical responces we can actually use? You don't have to agree with me, but that's my take on this philosophical conundrum.

So back to my question -

But I am curious - what use do you derive from this:

there is no answer to epistemic crisis.
— Constance — Tom Storm

If there is no answer then what's next?

I guess I'm not as pessimistic as you seem to be. I don't think we are doomed, but who would know? I tend to think of 'last hopes' as wish fulfillment fantasies. In such situations, God becomes a kind of Marvel superhero who rescues us in the last 15 minutes of the story. These tropes - doom and saving - don't entirely resonate with me, but I understand their attractions, and of course, they've been a part of human storytelling for millennia.

None of what you say is new to me. My point is it need not worry us. Just act and reflect. We have more than enough to work with in order to talk meaningfully about morality. Leave transcendence to the academics and the religious apologists. :smile:

But I am curious - what use do you derive from this:

there is no answer to epistemic crisis. — Constance

If the situation is hopeless (as Casals said) we must take the next step.

You are invited at this point to consider G E Moore's way of addressing this: What does it mean for something to be "good"? Not a good couch or a good deal on a car, but good AS SUCH. And bad: what is the bad of a sprained ankle? Yes, we get sprains and have to deal with them, but what does it mean for something to hurt? — Constance

We can make even the simplest things complicated and impossible. It's one of the great human gifts.

I need not have a full account of 'good' or 'bad'. We can understand them in quotidian contexts without needing to contrive a thesis on the subjects. We already do and it works reasonably well. Abstractions like 'good' or even 'truth' vary with the context. In most usage, I don't need to have a full account of such terms to make robust use of them. That's all I am saying. And if the epistemic crisis is as thick a fog as you suggest, then better to say home.

* deleted pointless response

Nothing has changed among humans in 10,000 years. Even with religion. But if you look in the rubble of human history, it’s we who destroy each other, again and again. So the only hope for us has to come from outside. Nothing has changed with regard to that either. — Fire Ologist

Seems to me gods don't offer any more help than 'utopian' political systems. Whether we opt for the magic space wizard or the leader of the glorious revolution, we're probably fucked.

What makes you think gods comes from the outside? Are they not human creations, as fraught and manufactured as any ideology?

If morality is corrupt, it has the capacity to destroy society. If it has been around for long enough, it won't. Otherwise, it would have done that already. That is one reason why something that may look like a new morality tends to be the repackaging of an existing morality. For example, the morality that you can find in the books of Moses, at the beginning of the Bible, is the repackaging of something that was around long before Moses. That is the only safe way to do it. — Tarskian

I suspect our world-views are too far apart. There are lots of undemonstrated claims here.

What is corrupt morality? Can you provide an example?

The Bible borrows lots of stories, not just morality. If would help if you could demonstrate this process working over the past 1000 years, say, in order to illustrate this corruptive process in action?

For instance, I would maintain that the UN Declaration of Human Rights outlines a superior and more sophisticated set of moral principles than the Ten Commandments - of which only 6 pertain to morality and 2 or 3 of those are dubious at best.

The world is a "meta" problem, just sitting there staring back at you. — Constance

Only if you insist.

I'm not pretending that I have answers to old epistemological questions. I'm not even sure that they matter. But it's not hard to see how morality is pragmatic consequence of experience. Why confuse this with questions about how my knowledge of a lamp works? If we don't know the answer to this (and I suspect there are many healthy explanations already: scientific and philosophical) it would be a shame for an appeal to ignorance to lead us into accepting transcendence as the only explanation.

You seem to be hard wired to root out corruptions and inadequacies. I don't share this way of looking at things.

A wind turbine is not morality, the analogy would seem problematic. But I get the point.

Morality is a social conversation. What is or isn't corrupt will be part of that conversation. Not that 'corrupt' is a word which resonates with me in that context. I don't believe there is such a thing as perfect morality.

But your broader question is how do we know if morality is sound or helpful? Perhaps we don't. But I would say a moral system that executes gay people is worse than one which grants them equal rights. If this point requires debate, then I suggest a forum for haters to explore this further.

I don't believe we have access to absolute truth or perfection and that these are abstract human notions. The best we can do is minimise harm and suffering and promote the well-being of all conscious creatures. Which has been the trajectory of moral development over time. But obviously not everywhere.

I just wanted to point out why the results of that societal conversation will tend to be poor and increasingly corrupt. — Tarskian

Ok. I was just waiting to point out that morality probably has mundane origins.

I don't think the societal conversation has been increasingly poor or corrupt. But this might be down to the values one holds or how unhappy one is.

You seem to be jumping ahead of the story for reasons unclear to me. :wink:

All I am saying is people will have views and talk about 'oughts' and 'ought nots' as a by-product of human community life. The kind of processes or dynamic which might follow are not in scope - I'm simply describing the original impulse.

I don't follow. Sorry.

The OP introduces the idea that ethics is, in its foundational analytic, impossible. It is a transcendental term, and Wittgenstein knew this. How? Ask: What IS ethics? Not anything beyond the simplicity of the apriori "observation". This is to ask, What is the good and the bad in ethics? It is a metaethical question. — Constance

Is it really that difficult and elusive? We live together as community and this means holding values. It's impossible not to. Ethics emerges from the resulting conversation just as surely as poo comes from eating. We couldn't avoid the subject of morality even if we wanted to and the only magic or transcendence inherent in such moral conversations (that I can see) is there if we confuse morality with mysticism. :wink:

t would be hard to defend idealism in the face of science and quantum physics demonstrates duality, such as in particle as a particle and wave. It presents a less certain nature of causality. — Jack Cummins

Kastrup does a good job using science and quantum physics to argue for idealism. The most compelling arguments seem to be the case against what we used to think of as physicalism.

My issue with this is not really seeing why it matters. Even if idealism is true, it makes no difference to our experience or the choices we make. Which is how I feel about much spirituality and philosophy. We sometimes imagine that the arguments are revelatory, but really all they contribute is an evanescent sense of novelty.

The 'new age' movement did usher the ideas of interconnectedness. The romanticism of new age has died and may have been replaced by brokenness and isolation. — Jack Cummins

I was around for the New Age movement. I think much of it was a reaction to the brokenness and isolation of the 'me generation' and 'greed is good'. I think a part of culture has always been railing against perceived brokenness and isolation - right through the ages. Most people at the time, as they do now, considered pursuits like the New Age mainly for lost souls, crackpots, the drug addled and virtue signalers. I was one of them. :wink:

I am very sympathetic to the enormous difficulty of making sense of the often mysterious behavior of others. All I can tell you is that I’ve never met an immoral, evil, blameworthy or unjust person. It is not that I’ve never felt anger and the initial impulse to blame, but when I undergo the process of trying to make intelligible their motives I am always able to arrive at an explanation that allows me to avoid blame and the need for forgiveness. Furthermore, there is a fundamental philosophical basis for what I assert is the case that it is always possible to arrive at such a non-blameful explanation that can withstand the most robust tests in the real world. Having said that, I’m aware that my view is a fringe one. I only know of one other theorist who has come up with a similar perspective. I’m also aware that my view will be seen as dangerously naive. — Joshs

As a non-philosopher, I think it is important to explore this line of thinking - given the rather dreadful consequences of a blame culture we have observed over the centuries.

You say you have never met an immoral, evil or blameworthy person.

I largely agree with this. But my temptation to pass judgement remains strong within me. I have met many people who are extremely dangerous and who don't share my understanding of the world, and this difference in their axioms or their experience is often taken as a form of culpability. Most people follow strong codes and reasoning. I remember the critic Clive James talking about Rupert Murdoch some years ago. Everyone was hoeing into Murdoch as an 'unprincipled scoundrel' - James responded with a quip - 'I think Murdoch is a man of principles, I just think they are the wrong principles.' The question always seems to come back to what do we do with this word 'wrong'?

I wonder to what extent such a non-dualistic viewpoint offers a solution to the split between materialism and idealism, as well as between atheism and theism. — Jack Cummins

The problem with this idea is that there is no demonstration that idealism is true. Sure, there are various inferences one can follow (a la Bernardo Kastrup), but the arguments aren't overwhelmingly convincing.

Idealism doesn't imply theism. It might get one to a kind of Schopenhauerian Great Mind - some instinctive form of will, without metacognition or a plan. But this is a fair distance from a god as is generally understood. And I don't think god is a helpful word.

His general perspective is one of the idea of 'God' as consciousness itself and of interconnectedness. — Jack Cummins

We are all one and everything is oneness has been a New Age monistic mantra - coming out of the theosophy movement and 1970's counterculture. God as a precondition of reality (consciousness itself) of which we are all fragments is a good story. But how do we test it? I'm not a fan of personal experince anecdotes. I wonder if 'theism' (an impersonal mental construct or unifier of experience) might be an inadequate and misleading word to use to describe this model of reality.

There are also theistic variations of idealism, but I am assuming for the purpose of this discussion you were not heading there yet.

1. I'd say there are no moral facts as such, because the idea is a kind of category error. On the other hand I'd say there are human facts, facts about humans and human flourishing, which justify the most socially important moral injunctions. I mean, they are justified just because they are socially important.

2. I believe we all have some sense of the good, but that what various individuals believe is actually good is often distorted by inappropriate social conditioning which can only be remedied by determined self-examination.

3. Goodness or the Good doesn't exist as an object which is open to observation in the way phenomena are, obviously, so in that sense there is no objective good. But I believe there are objective facts about what leads to human flourishing and what works against it. — Janus

Hard to disagree with this. Well put.

Yes, because there is ultimately no rational reason for morality. In absence of an underlying non-rational spiritual reason, morality is simply nonsensical.

You can easily learn to extensively torture and mercilessly kill captives for the mafia. It is certainly a pragmatic choice because they pay you good money for doing that. If you can become an executioner for the official ruling mafia, and learn to enjoy your job, why not become one for an unofficial mafia? It even pays better. It has more perks and more fringe benefits. I don't see any "reason" not to do it. — Tarskian

Well, in fairness, people can also be part of the Catholic church and rape and abuse children with few consequences (unless you're caught by the secular legal system and sent to jail). Or in the case of Islam, follow a religion which was established by a pederast with a 9 year-old wife.

Behaving like a a mafia boss is pretty much a suitable account of how gods behave in Abrahamic religions. They bully, kill and torment anyone who doesn't follow orders. Sometimes they even commit genocide.

The problem with religions is that they provide no objective foundation for morality. All we have is people's interpretations and personal preferences about what they have determined any given account of a god considers to be good. Hence, even within the one religion, there is no agreement on morality, about abortion, the role of women, trans rights, capital punishment, stem cell research, homosexuality, euthanasia, killing in war, etc etc.

For me, personal morality includes the principle that guides me in my personal behavior and it’s very simple - to the extent possible, my actions will be in accordance with the guidance of my intrinsic nature, my heart if you will. — T Clark

I think it's probably the case that most of us just act and rarely think about morality. (But we might think about the law.) Morality is for academics and for conversations and for post-hoc justifications.

I think the intrinsic nature of many people leads them to harm others. They don't necessarily do this out of deliberate evil, it's the by-product of how they see the world.

Can you think of any moral discussion you've heard or participated in that was useful and if it was why was this?

They can never take for granted that they will avoid the need to morally blame and punish others if those values don’t include a means of understanding why other deviate from the normative expectations. — Joshs

But isn't there a great deal of pleasure and exhilaration derived from such judging and punishing? You might as well try to stop people from having sex.

The point of the O'Hagan piece is showcasing Assange's narcissism and incipient sociopathy. If accurate, this may have more significant implications than the payback of the vested interests we've witnessed so far. But as I say I haven't made a study of Assange and his place in media.