I increasingly think of our understanding of morality as immature, almost childish. We grow up instructed under a set of rules what to do and what not. There is an endless stream of imperatives to follow. We are indoctrinated about what is right and what is wrong, encouraged to think there is a clear distinction between these two supposed polar opposites.

The traditional source for the validity of such rules and imperatives was God - the divine command. The Bible and the moral law were God’s words and were not to be argued with. In recent times that source of authority is in demise. This is what Nietzsche meant when he said that God was dead. He believed that we were left with nothing solid to fall back on. All we have is a kind of relativism or more precisely, perspectivism, in order to present a framework for these rules and laws.

The upshot of Nietzsche and secular humanism generally is that the moral law and its rules are devised by humans for humans - usually particular humans at particular times working within certain historical contexts. These rules are therefore often seriously coloured by those certain individuals who are for whatever reason able to impose their will on the rest. In other words, morality is always prejudiced in favour of a way of thinking, a certain type of person’s world-view, or a group whose interests are best served by the adopting and enforcing of its particular imperatives.

This is something not widely appreciated. Most have a relationship with authority that never gets beyond the childhood set of commands given them. They tend to think of moral values as absolute. Traditional religion reinforced this. Apart from anything else it made societies easier to control, understandable as that has historically been no easy task. Believing in this fixed version of morality however is too puerile, mythical almost, and misunderstands the genuine power dynamics that obtain in the world even at the everyday level.

Mature, developed and enlightened individuals would feel a duty to some kind of moral code. They understand the fragility of this though and respect the relative nature of the code. Perhaps that requires a less zealous use of the various types of enforcement than has been typical historically. This approach would be consistent with liberalism and its tendency to move away from fixed truths. It contrasts the many adult-children who still go around consumed by morality, overly concerned with what others should and shouldn’t do, perfectly happy to see them coerced into conforming.