I appreciate that and feel the same way. Although the big risk with me is that I'm not nearly as charming in person. — T Clark

Who is?

It's not a solo ballet, it's a waltz. Nature leads, culture follows (or you can have it culture leads and nature follows. Either way somebody is stepping on sensitive toes). Our common biological makeup is what makes it possible (and necessary) for culture to fill in the many niches and long stretches which biology couldn't anticipate.

I'd put it that the piano is nature that culture can play with, but the piano only has so many keys to strike, won't sound like a violin no matter how you play it, and is capable of autonomous actions and reactions. "Pianos" have been known to strike back with considerable force. To twist the metaphor a little more, the piano always bats last (meaning, nature has the last word in the game).

Still, essentialists, or nature firsters, can't ignore that "Heidegger's focus on the way that a person is [reasonably] free to play their own unique song on this communal instrument" is also correct. Most animals are individuals; even ants and bees, who don't have a lot of leeway, but display minor performance differences.

I didn't quite follow: what is so embedded in American culture that it makes you chuckle and is totally missing from your own culture?

my daily activities of mucking horse shit — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Blessed are they who shovel real horse shit. Their horses will be happy and their children will inherit clean stables.

How sad.
It's just an internet forum (i.e., an anonymous group of people playing all sorts of different games for all sorts of different reasons). Occassionally, someone writes something worth reading. — Galuchat

There are all sorts of people playing various games in the world, and on the Internet. You might be playing a game here as well. I wonder what your game is.

Fact is: nobody is truly (or genuinely) here. Hello! It's an internet forum; where usually the only thing you learn from other members is:
1) Who they want you to think they are, and
2) What kind of games they like to play under a cloak of anonymity. — Galuchat

"I" am here. Some people may project a prettified image of themselves, but most people "here" don't, as far as I can tell. Pretty much I operate on a "what you see is what you get" basis, whether here or face-to-face.

Yes, the format provides a cloak of anonymity. Two things: the "cloaking feature" fades over time, over many interactions. "Real people" emerge from anonymity after a time. Some people here have been interacting for 10 years. The anonymity feature protects forum users from the ill-intentioned visitor, or the snoop. True, we don't list our actual names, addresses, telephone numbers, places of employment, and so forth. But if Tiff or T. Clark wanted to visit me, I'd hand over the information to them.

I mean, Tiff and T. Clark in person would have to be less of a risk than the hundred guys I brought home from the bar (one at a time) after the briefest of introductions.

If some people here are bottoms, you're a top! Which you should take as high praise. Posty: If you don't stop to think about it, it won't seem lewd.

If you are overweight and sitting at home all day doing nothing but eating soft cheese and I said that I went hiking yesterday and spent most of last night stargazing and now terribly sleepy, if you turn around and start attacking me for being a show off — TimeLine

You do show off in that way.

When people fling insults and ignore fallacies, it is because they feel threatened on a personal level. The philosophy they have internalized and used to orient themselves in the world is under fire and must be protected. Insults are conjured up... — darthbarracuda

That, and then there is the fact that we are primates, after all. We have progressed far enough that we don't fling feces at each other, but the urge to fling something unpleasant is still there, and insults are less contaminating that a wad of moist fecal matter in hand.

Philosophers should be more able than most to bear in mind that we are closely related to pan troglodytes whether we like it or not, and the same urges that roil a band of chimpanzees roil us as well--except that OUR list of potential roil-making incidents is far, far longer than the chimps' list.

I'd like to use this thread a little bit of a touchstone to explore how one might come to the conclusion that human nature is thing that's severely limited and it's human potential that's wide open. — frank

Human potential can't be wide open if human nature is limited.

Human nature is limited--maybe not limited enough (he said, sarcastically). For instance, we are capable of rearranging some physical features of the planet -- like the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. At first we didn't realize what we were doing. People didn't like the vast amount of smoke from all the coal being burnt in the Industrial Revolution, but they didn't realize the particulate matter dirtying Manchester and Pittsburgh was the least of it. Once we discovered that there were negative long-term consequences to all the coal and petroleum burning, and all the plastic we were throwing away, we ran into a human limitation: It is very difficult for humans to think in global, long-term ranges. In order to solve the problem of global warming which will be come critical in 30 to 80 years, (the end of the century at the outside) we have to change behaviors now.

We have to change behavior now for a future (2101) that is a bit further out than we can effectively "grock". We can't respond to what we can not "grock". (Grock = something we understand and can respond to.) 2101 is just too far away.

Trillions of plastic bits are in the oceans, some tiny, some as big as a car, are beyond coping. I have no feel for how many a trillion is, and there are many trillions. That plastics will never disappear is just not thinkable. The descendants of cockroaches that have degrees in science will discover the Antropocene formations of hardened sediment that are larded with plastic bits, still in the same molecular form that they were when we tossed them out the window.

We can wield more technology today than yesterday, this century than the 12th century, this millennium than in the second millennium BC, this age than in the stone age, but we aren't much more forethoughtful now than we were 300,000 years ago.

Wide open human potential? Pffft.

Example: if I see a person as genetically determined, then I see that person's potential as very limited. — frank

A great deal of "humanness" is determined by our genetic inheritance, just as a great deal of "whaleness", "dogness", and "fruit flyness" is genetically determined.

Our physical features are gene expressions. Our brain structure is a result of gene expression. In turn our brain structures, through the language specialization, allow for cultural transmission. Memory, perception, proprioception, physical boundedness, spatial/temporal management, bi-pedalness, opposable thumbs, etc. are all bound up in gene-directed brain structure and capacity.

Personality traits are more susceptible to environmental influence than say vision or hearing, but as parents of several children know, babies are different at birth -- they have different personalities before we have had a chance to shape them.

You think biological determinism limits people; sure enough. But biological determinism can set the bar of performance very high: geniuses, olympic athletes, people who do hard work their whole lives and live to be 95, and so forth -- as well as people who are biologically limited by a bar set very low. And IF one's genetic limitations include strong determination, people can overcome some limitations, just as fecklessness can spoil potentially high achievers.

In a moneyless society, what could motivate people to make goods for others? — GreenPhilosophy

Humans are pushed by desires toward cooperation. An individual can accomplish only so much alone. Only through working together can surpluses be created which allow for greater satisfactions.

Questions: Is a lack of currency the critical factor here, or is it a lack of social organization?

I also don't like the sexual jokes in the Shoutbox for some reason. — Posty McPostface

The main problem with dirty sexual jokes in the Shoutbox is that they are quite often not as funny or as dirty as we would have hoped for. Discriminating connoisseurs of dirty jokes should be in charge of censoring jokes which do not make it over the low bar established here.

Similarly, the thoroughness with which oxen are gored is unsatisfactory. Since posters are reluctant to perform seppuku, somebody else has to do it for them.

I hope these reforms will improve your user experience.

We do have strong instinctual drives to eat, to be warm, to have sex, to live in groups, to exercise our intellectual capacities, and so forth. Our psychology is driven by instinct, and by experience and our environment (human and physical).

The way that "The only problem to be solved is that of the human psychology" is the main problem is that it is very difficult to get people to do what we want them to do, especially if the individual people are not prepared to do it, or don't want to do it.

Take global warming, or climate change. We'd better do something about it--something pretty drastic and something pretty soon, or it might be curtains for us all. There are good reasons (human psychology) why this isn't happening. Those who control economic and environmental policy are, for the most part, rather deeply invested in the status quo. Those who read about climate change in the newspaper can't do more than sort their recycling, drive less, and maybe dial down their home energy use -- which, individually, seems feckless.

Petroleum is still the basis of the economy, and making a change to a much, much smaller energy footprint still faces the mountain-sizes obstacle of "The only problem to be solved is that of the human psychology". It isn't an impossible barrier, but it is difficult.

Several weeks ago we had a thread about relationships between women and men where I said that our society treats men with fear and contempt. This is a very good example. Lonely, socially awkward men are suddenly narcissists and psychopaths. — T Clark

One, your post did not get a fair response.

Two, right you are. I don't know any "incels", but I have known disappointed unsuccessful men all my life--indeed, I've been one at times. I don't think it's about sex. Even down and out men seem to be able to find sexual partners when they want to. It's more about not having a reasonable opportunity to gain self-respect. It's about lack of work, or bad work. It's about being devalued and not being treated as a worthwhile person. It's being discarded.

"Failure" smells bad and a lot of people shy away from the unsuccessful, and justify their distance by projecting negative characteristics onto them.

I was reading a bio of Joseph Goebbels yesterday; Goebbels became the Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He wasn't an 'incel'; he was never long without a woman and he didn't lack for power and glory, either. He was, however, in search of a savior BEFORE he became a nazi. He even thought he might be one himself--talk about narcissistic delusions of grandeur. When he finally met Hitler, he knew he found the real savior he was looking for. It was apparently a transfiguration for Goebbels, a bromance at first sight, for real.

My point is this: hateful, retrograde movements have formed before without the assistance of electronic media or the internet. The National Socialist Party had a disgusting ideology, certainly, but it also a lot of strong ordinary person-to-person glue to bond it together.

This internet-based "incel movement" is a virtual community which likely aggravates isolation, alienation, and anomie more than reduces it. There isn't much of that person-to-person chemistry which holds a PTA, Rotary, Republicans, or the Socialist Workers Party together.

That all sounds good. Keep it up.

Have I disclosed too much? — allan wallace

I'm not embarrassed yet, so apparently not.

As James Thurber concluded at the end of the very short story, The Very Persistent Blood Hound, "The paths of glory at least lead to the grave; the paths of duty don't lead anywhere at all."

Welcome to THE Philosophy Forum. 51! I vaguely remember being 51. Decades ago.

penance in countless gulags being exploited in many different ways — allan wallace

I too was apparently destined or required to serve time in various air-conditioned brightly lit satanic mills of bureaucracy, wherein I was as unproductive as possible.

I have never been ambitious. — allan wallace

I have been transitorily ambitious on several occasions. Ambition is a drag. Or a drug? It must have been blind ambition because so few of my efforts payed off.

I went on a blitzkrieg through the nightclubs for a few years — allan wallace

I was more the occupying army. 1001 nights in a gay bar and what I saw there. (Some were standing, some were walking around. A minority were sitting down. Everyone was drinking; most people were smoking; some people weren't. Much longing and many unsatisfied desires. The odds? Good results 2.6 nights out of 7.

The reason that abortion, family planning, and birth control are linked together is that there are two underlying issues: One is the 'fetus fetish' which deems a fertilized egg a person from the moment of conception forward. The other issue is 'women's control over their own fertility'. Banning abortion, and making it difficult to obtain birth control or Plan B pills reduces the autonomy women have to make their own decisions about bearing children.

One could argue that the father should have some say in an abortion or the use of birth control or 'day after pill'. I think they probably should, in the case of a strong relationship between the two people producing the pregnancy. That said, the opinions of other males -- like a bishop, pope, mullah, potentate, enlightened passport, or what have you -- should not have any bearing on women terminating pregnancy. The same goes for other women: IF woman X wants to terminate a pregnancy, it's no business of other women.

Don't get "environment" confused with "society" as it's used philosophically. Think social forces inclusive of cultural forces, i.e. the sociocultural as used also in social science, because you can't really separate out the two. Society is the bricks, culture is the mortar. — Baden

I'm not sure you can even separate "society" and "culture" like bricks and mortar or warp and weft. Society is a culture. Culture shapes society -- the two are too intermingled to separate them out.

So biology<--->culture<--->society. Biology comes first and lays down the basic floor plan of individual persons and furnishes the appliances. culture<--->society brings in the carpets, the couches, the tables, the chairs, and the drapes, but can't do too much about the floorpan or the appliances. Biology makes the culture in society it's own. Once it's committed to it, change becomes difficult--but not impossible.

There you go! Shakespeare's shade has been muttering, "What the hell are these knaves nattering on about?" Meanwhile Marlowe's shade has been muttering , "Why the hell don't these knaves ask me--I wrote that section, and NEVER got credit for it. I'm still bitter and resentful about it. Where is a ouija board when we need one?"

And who even says that it would be good if medicine that prevents death is bringing more pleasure. Wouldn't this lead to more and more people exploiting the planet and leading to more hardship to those that are already on the planet? — LittleLisa

If the doctors are short sighted, they will happily make everybody live longer, even though the earth can't support 7 billion people living 20 years longer.

One of the problems of consequentialist ethics is "which consequences are we going to favor?" This is a big issue, because consequences which favor many in the short run may also doom many more in the long run. You have to test consequences against moral priorities.

In terms of global warming, we should definitely reverse many policies, like building and maintaining roads to make car usage easier. For the sake of the planet's ecosystems, we should stop fixing roads, stop building new ones, build no more cars or car factories, and start recovering the metal and rubber from cars and make people use mass transit.

What are the consequences of this policy? 1, mass unemployment; 2, massive over-crowding of mass transit systems that are not large enough, deterioration of infrastructure which will probably never be rebuilt once it all falls apart.

On the other hand, the consequences of worsening global warming (due to car use, road building, etc.) are dire too. Not only does global warming mean more extinction of species, it means a lot more people dying from heat stroke. Animals and plants too suffer from too much heat.

Who is going to make the necessary long-term consequential decisions about global warming? What way will 'they' decide? I'm in favor of more suffering now by rolling back industrialization and energy use and having a feasible future, over a more vigorous economy now, and billions dying in global warming later. But... I'm not making the big calls on policy.

Bentham says that pleasure and pain are the only two drivers of human nature. — LittleLisa

There are "lumpers" and "splitters". Bentham is 'lumping' everything together in two categories: pleasure/pain. Splitters are not going to be happy with that. They will want lists of positive and negative factors to consider.

"What is the greatest possible good for the largest number of people" is a question much more appropriately considered by 'collective' agents such as governments, planning councils, or public health agencies than individuals.

Individuals are usually not in a position to affect the outcomes for many people through a decision we make. Most of our decisions affect only a few people, at any given time. If you are the pilot of a passenger liner at sea with 3500 people aboard, you as an individual might have to make a decision which will benefit the greatest number of people. The 3500 individuals on board will do well to focus their attention on what they, individually, should do.

Similarly, public health officials are concerned with getting as many people vaccinated as possible to prevent an epidemic: the greatest possible good for the largest number of people. It makes moral sense for you to decide whether you (and your children) should be vaccinated.

Should you buy a handbag or not? You can certainly apply consequentialist ethics here: Handbag A is made out of plastic, handbag B is made out of leather. The plastic in handbag A will be a nuisance for the next billion years. The leather in handbag B can be composted and can be returned to the soil. Or you could decide to keep your old handbag and give the money for the new handbag to the poor, or me, or cancer research, or... whatever.

If society is a god (which is very odd concept), then there are some other contenders for godhood like heredity/natural selection, environmental factors apart from society, and so on. We don't have to accept social constructionism to acknowledge that society--other people--influence us in myriad ways.

Culture, which has to be continuously maintained, is so central to human life that it is difficult to imagine what we would be like without it. Take culture away, and we are taken back a million years to a presumed time when we were scavenging for food and grunting at each other. But culture has biological roots (it's how we meet both basic and complex needs as large-brained organisms).

It is usually a mistake to think that whatever the current wrinkle is, it's the hottest thing that ever happened.

Well, it could be the case that Shakespeare utilized this scene to explicate a philosophical problem, granted. In a paper, one would take up the larger question of whether this was a line of thought being bounced around in Shakespeare's day, and whether Shakespeare was interested in the topic. Does he show such interest elsewhere, for instance, and what sources might he have used.

Granted, that Gloucester perceives the glaring inconsistency in Simpcox's performance (identifying colors and pieces of clothing from sight, rather than touch, as would be the case if he had really been blind). One could further note that this scene would have perhaps fit better in Chaucer, at whose time this sort of chicanery was more common. So, the scene itself is a bit anachronistic. Not that there weren't fake miracles in Shakespeare time (fake news and fake miracles are still with us).

Are you, perhaps, looking for a paper topic? (fresh topics in Shakespeare are very hard to come by, after all these years). One would need to dispose of the question as to whether this scene might have served any other function in the play. (It could serve more than one function).

I haven't read this play, or anything else by Shakespeare in a long time (50 years, at least) and I probably won't circle back to read much more--time is getting short at my age, and libraries are full of interesting books.

Press on with diligence.

(the episode is meant to show how, unlike all around him, the courtier is supersmart) — Pronsias del Mar

What is your point? That Shakespeare proved that a character was "supersmart"? So what? What is this scene's significance in the play?

Not so fast, Sherlock:

What are a Parent’s Legal Responsibilities to a Child?

Parents must meet their children's basic needs for food, clothing, housing, medical care, and education.

A parent must meet a child’s basic needs and parent in a way that serves the child’s best interests. Parents also have a financial duty to support their children, which typically continues until each child reaches the age of 18 or graduates from high school. In most cases, a parent doesn’t have a financial responsibility to a child over 18, unless the child has special needs.

Granted, the law does not require the parents to actually love their child(ren), or even find them sort of likable and/or amusing. Society generally considers parents who do not at least LIKE their child(ren) to be BAD PARENTS.

But in general the law requires parents to care for their children and prepare them to be productive citizens.

The future will look back on Boomers with a great deal of contempt, as a generation of clowns: the generation that threw away centuries of accumulated culture and tradition that had been passed on down the generations, that took so long to build up. All thrown away in what amounted to a fit of adolescent rebellion by the first most spoiled generation in history. — gurugeorge

You have said this before, so I guess you're not joking. Do you really think that 75,000,000 baby boomers are all clowns? Come now! After all, a lot of these boomers are conservative culture keepers rather than leftist culture flushers. I'm a boomer, and I don't think I am clown like and haven't thrown away centuries of accumulated culture. (Besides, many of the types you are complaining about aren't even baby boomers.

Well, let's tell the whole story here, King Henry VI, Part II, Act II, scene i, starting at line #795.

Simpcox, the alleged formerly blind man, comes on stage borne on a chair and is met by the nobles. He (Simpcox) claims St. Alban cured his blindness. He now sees but still can't walk. (He fell out of a plum tree.) He does too well on the vision test which the Duke of Gloucester administers, and is next tested on his lameness by the Duke. A beadle is summoned to whip Simpcox until he jumps over a stool. It takes no more than a stroke of the whip to bring Simpcox to his feet, and he runs away. Simpcox and his wife are ordered to be whipped for fraud. His wife pleads that they did it out of need.

In a more complete telling, does this scene still seem like a philosophical party trick? How does this scene between the King, Earl, Duke, Queen Margaret, and these two peasants fit into the play? (I haven't read the play, so can't say myself. But I would guess a philosopher's party trick wasn't just tossed in at that point.)

Agreed. To make a short story very long...

It's very difficult "to think straight" about race, class, and culture in the United States because of an unusually turbulent history. As is the custom around the world, the facts of history get paved over by stories with better PR value.

"Meaning what?" you ask.

Well, there's the actual history vs. the myth, to start with. The first chapter of American history was about colonialization by the English ruling class of the "wasteland" (meaning 'not developed') of North America. The business about pilgrims and puritans happened, but it wasn't the main event. Most of the white English folk that were shipped over here were riff-raff that the English RC wanted to see less of in Merry Olde England. Today they'd be called 'white trash'; they were indentured servants, low paid workers, etc. Then there were the English overseers, who were here to make sure production got and stayed underway.

We're still a long way from 1776; the English have already imported African slaves, already displaced and started killing off the natives. A lot of the indentured servants wandered off on their own to do whatever disreputable activities they could find. Meanwhile, the cavalier class of English overseers started turning into the southern planters, midatlantic merchants, German farmers, etc.

Once we wrested independence from England, and were soon sitting on this huge swath of land, we started receiving a lot of immigrants from Europe, and that lasted for about 150 years, into the first Qr. of the 20th Century. By this time the African Slaves had been freed, sort of, and were put under a reign of Jim Crow Fear Control. By 1918 we were a mixing bowl of Asians, Jews, Russians, Scandinavians, Italians, Greeks, Croats, Poles, Irish, Blacks, some South Americans, Native Americans (not too many left), and more besides.

Here we are, a century later, 2018. The myth has been stretched thin, and we have a not too large but very vocal batch of white people who feel guilty about not being a member of an oppressed colored group -- African, Asian, South American, Inuit, Tibetan--something--who self-flagellate over racism, sexism, classism, militarism, consumerism, capitalism, Marxism, and more. They could call themselves "white trash" -- in the minds of the plutocracy they are -- but they don't want to be oppressed that badly.

Are they to be believed? Are these social constructionist, SJW, leftists, college educated privileged SOBs to be taken seriously?

Well... they aren't entirely wrong. The US, like most nations, is run by a power elite that puts its interests first. Most power elites, red, yellow, black, or white, all follow that principle. There's that 90%/10% or 99%/1% income divide. The golden rule: them with the gold make the rules. Some people are oppressed. Actually, most people are oppressed, but the plaintiffs focus on certain oppressed groups -- everybody except straight white men, pretty much, because SWM couldn't possibly be oppressed.

They get some things wrong...

because "nation" is still largely about where you were born, and about living with people who are somewhat like you (because born from the same soil) - either in terms of genetics, ideas and culture, or both. — gurugeorge

The leftist-SJW-PC-types don't get right is the rootedness you are talking about. They are not, for some reason, rooted in the soil in which they were planted. What they share, but perhaps do not want to acknowledge, is:

They themselves are guilty of being a privileged group who have not surrendered their privileges.
Rational people do not surrender whatever few advantages they have.
People do not come to the US, legally or otherwise, to be leftist-SJW-PC types. They come to make money, mostly, by whatever means. That's pretty much the history of immigration.
Most white people, male and female, are as fucked over about as much as the various colored folk are.
If they want to talk about privileged people who really have something to give up, it's the 1% who have control of most of the wealth, or even the 1/100 of 1% in the world who have most of the wealth, many of whom are not white. There's no risk of that happening.

The United States is very much like other countries. Our mishmash of problems, virtues, and values is like--like, not the same as--other nations' mishmash.

A Somali couple recently from Finland visited the church and asked about teaching Finnish in the Finn's school. That's America: A Moslem couple from Somalia, living in Finland long enough to become fluent offering to help the American Finns recover and maintain their culture in America.

I do think he’s right that we are, at the deepest level, alone — Vinson

Yes, "alone" but not necessarily "lonely". We are "alone" in that we can not merge with our fellow beings, because we are not a hive creature. But then, even ants have some individuality -- not much, but a little. That we are "alone" is a universal idea.

Gibran is one among many who have described persons, people, as "lonely". Maybe "longing" would be another term for our very common low-level dissatisfactions. We long for more connection, more community--usually with others of our kind, sometimes with deities.

Life is an island in an ocean of loneliness, an island whose rocks are hopes, whose trees are dreams, whose flowers are solitude, and whose brooks are thirst. Your life is an island separate from all the other islands and regions. No matter how many are the ships that leave your shores for other climes, no matter how many are the fleets that touch your coast, you remain a solitary island, suffering pangs of loneliness and yearning for happiness. You are unknown to others and far removed from their sympathy and understanding. — Vinson

Gibran's language is kind of romantic. By 'romantic' I mean he is elevating loneliness and solitude in the manner of Romantic period poets (Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth). Personally, I can't stand too much romantic poetry or prose, but it's a matter of taste. Some people lap it up. Gibran doesn't belong to the Romantic Movement, but that sort of style does. (And I don't mean to imply that Romantic poets were all about squishy, mushy emotional language.)

Here's an earlier poet's take: John Donne, 1572-1631:

'No Man is an Island'

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The Greeks thought there were several kinds of love:

philia - deep friendship love
Philautia - love of the self (good self-love is essential; bad self love or narcissism is harmful)
eros - love as sexual passion
philia - deep friendship love
agape - love for everyone (unconditional love)
ludus - playful love -- young love
Storge - love of parents and children
pragma - the deep love between longstanding relationship partners

Point is, love isn't one thing.

I believe love is an expression of the mind. I do not see it as an emotion but rather a will to act and by act i am referring to the act of giving. When you exercize your mind creatively and intuitively in the presence of a lover, you will be rewarded without fail. — Gord

Sure, love is expressed by the mind; but if there is no emotion, no passion involved, it's just not worth thinking about.

The passions, the emotions, are not a lesser or junior part of the mind. They are the mainspring of the mind, will, and body. You just can't have "love" as a mental process without emotion. To get biological here, the mind isn't some stand-alone pristine program; it's a product of a body with physical needs, pains and pleasures, emotions, drives, appetite, etc.

I'd like to make sure we include biology in the mix. Human beings evolved as social animals. — T Clark

Philosophers, janitors, city planners, auto mechanics -- everybody--ought always and everywhere to include humanity's animal nature in their thinking, doing, planning and being. We are never disembodied beings. We are all body all the time from which comes mind. No body, never mind.

Welcome to the philosophy forum.

I have not studied comparative moral systems, so I'm speaking without any authority of knowledge here, but I am guessing that if you did a survey of the moral systems of which we have a record, you would find that there is a normal distribution of moral prohibitions, moral requirements, and the like. For instance, I think you would find that most moral systems disapprove of arbitrary killing. Most moral systems are going to disapprove of theft, and so on.

Is there some universal source? Yes -- human beings. People living in groups face common problems, which is why moral systems will require similar things.

Since morality isn't a matter of physics, we can't say that any moral system is "objective" the way we can say that a principle of physics is objectively true, whether you like it or not. But morality isn't individually relative. (Well, morality could be individually relative for somebody who lives on a planet by themselves.) People live in societies, and societies devise rules which they expect people to follow. The society's morality really isn't optional. The morality of a south sea island people may be quite different than the morality of the French or Irish, but that doesn't really make morality "all relative". Let's say that specific moral systems are applicable to the people who live within their domain.

As Jesus said, "You'll always have poor people." Even successful societies have beggars. In the normal distribution, most people will be at least somewhat successful in life, but there is that narrowing tail of bell-shaped curve on the left side that locates the people who don't and can't succeed. The less society accepts the fact that there will always be people on the bottom that need help, the more beggars there will be.

All good points.

Bourgeious — StreetlightX

Were you aiming for "bourgeois" or "bourgeoisie". That a moderator would misspell such an important term--scandalous.

But yes, bourgeois escapism--and proletarian fantasy.