In spite of some commonalities, morals are local and tribal. They tell us who is like us, but only after we accept someone as in one way or another part of our extended tribe or family. Even someone with “no morals” must already have some basic relation to us. Outsiders don’t count – they have no more morality than animals.
Morals tend to be habitual. They are acquired during the socialization of growing up human with caregivers. They naturally blend with those of the caregivers. Most have a rational basis for social success, and the most important are enforced by tribal law.
Ethics, on the other hand, are generalized fairy tales. They may claim to be a distillation of morality, but they are anchored in a fragile logic that ignores the fundamental fact that many morals address our illogical and contradictory existence. Like passion or mood. What does ethics ever say about passion?
As I aged, I came to distrust a reliance on logic as a basis for existence. Consciousness is not logical. It is an ineffable gift. How it is experienced cannot be tied to ethics.
Morality may be crudely but effectively reduced to written law. But it can never be elegantly or sufficiently expressed in mathematic logic or brittle words.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 