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Comment by MrMcCall

The averages vary from culture to culture and are different as the gradients change over time, sometimes up and sometimes down.

The important point is that every person has a conscience (however much they choose to ignore its suggestions) and our cultures [we are a sum of many cultures, from the large (country, religion, ethnicity, ...) to the small (neighborhood, school, family, ...)] each exert a force towards vice or towards virtue, for any of the 19 pairs.

We are the only creatures who can self-evolve, but we all have the free will to self-evolve in any direction we choose. This explains how WWII Germany, Japan, and others created their oppressive terror movements.

Compassion is the highest ideal, but its opposite, selfishness, is endemic to our lower, mammalian (and still lower reptilian) processing centers of the brain, and the current direction our planet is moving is due to our worldwide complacence with moral ignorance.

parent MrMcCall 1 year ago

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