Sunday Special--Morality; A Social Construct!

Morality is a social construct.

Morality (from Latin: mōrālis, lit. 'manner, character, proper behavior') is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper^. Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness" or "rightness".
In some cultures, it is moral to hunt, kill and eat humans.
Cannibalism is very much still alive today despite being considered repulsive by the vast majority of societies. such as Papua Guinea,Sigitoka Fiji,Ganges river India,Congo,Cambodia,Nuku Hiva French Polinesia,Liberia,Rotenburg Germany,Miami Florida.

Jis desh mei.n Ganga behti Hai!.........Chohra Ganga Kinarey wala!

In Varanasi

The monks feast on human flesh, drink from human skulls and are even said to bite the heads off life animals for their rituals.

Surendra Koli,an Indian who admitted to ghoulish crimes like rape, cannibalism and necrophilia

 The ‘man eater’ of Nithari had been charged with raping, killing – and cooking – children and women, 16 of them, over 2005 and 2006
Has been Henged till death.His admission of the Crime is as follows in Video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDkqQ3vAYFM.

The Karma Killings Trailer www.youtube.com “The Karma Killings,” is a modern-day crime thriller mixed in with Indian mythology and class warfare. The documentary delves into India’s most infamous serial ...

Cannibalism is moral in certain society but immoral in most of the world. What is moral in one culture might be immoral in another culture.

Morality changes with time.

What is moral today might be immoral tomorrow. Not that long ago, slavery was considered moral by many people. Is it moral today?

Morality is not always black and white.

Take this famous trolley problem in ethics:

The Trolley Problem: Life's Greatest enigma

The modern form of the problem was first introduced by Philippa Foot in 1967, but also extensively analysed by Judith Thomson, Frances Kamm, and Peter Unger. However an earlier version, in which the one person to be sacrificed on the track was the switchman's child, was part of a moral questionnaire given to undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin in 1905, and the German legal scholar Hans Welzel discussed a similar problem in 1951

The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics. The general form of the problem is this: There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice? 

The Fat Man

As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?

The Trolley Problem - YouTube

▶ 1:38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpf6KcWYyw

Is sacrificing one life to save the lives of many others the best possible outcome? Narrated by Harry Shearer .

Foot's original structure of the problem ran as follows:
Suppose that a judge or magistrate is faced with rioters demanding that a culprit be found for a certain crime and threatening otherwise to take their own bloody revenge on a particular section of the community. The real culprit being unknown, the judge sees himself as able to prevent the bloodshed only by framing some innocent person and having him executed.
Beside this example is placed another in which a pilot whose airplane is about to crash is deciding whether to steer from a more to a less inhabited area. To make the parallel as close as possible it may rather be supposed that he is the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed. In the case of the riots the mob have five hostages, so that in both examples the exchange is supposed to be one man's life for the lives of five.

Here is an alternative case, due to Judith Jarvis Thomson, containing similar numbers and results, but without a trolley:

A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor. Do you support the morality of the doctor to kill that tourist and provide his healthy organs to those five dying persons and save their lives?

I can already tell you the results. I have done this experiment on many unsuspecting subjects. On average, you will find that 75% people will pull the lever in first case and 75% people will not push the obese man over.

Although, logically both of these are same, you will find that people behave differently when they have to touch someone instead of pulling a lever.

What is the correct moral option for us to choose?

What might seem moral to you might be immoral to someone else.

At the root of morality is society and moral behavior leads to happier society.

Searched,Compiled and Illustrated by Tejinder Kamboj