Who Needs Morals?

So Eve, God and the Snake conspired to teach Adam some ethics the hard way. Gone was the easy life of tree fruits and air-conditioned paradise. Now he had to work for his food and shelter. Also, regardless of the tens of thousands of years of experience, in sin and good deeds it seems Adam's and Eve's descendants haven't learnt a lot about morals. On the bright side though (one must always think positive) Adam didn't have steak, beer, or fried chicken in paradise and we suspect there was no sex too so he (and Eve) had gained something. And if we include the joys and trials of motherhood and fatherhood then humanity has had an opportunity to feel the frustration of trying to to teach good and bad and seeing no results. Just like God.

On the other hand the way Adam and Eve's descendants have set up a society in which, regardless of declared principles, deception, manipulation and coercion are the preferred methods to get what you want. So obviously wrong and frustrating was that that Buddha decided that all desires must be wrong. But without desires Adam will return to his vegetative state of the pampered gardener of Paradise – with no freedom, no pursuit of happiness and frankly no life to speak of.

Perhaps if your passion is focused on higher purpose you will achieve worthy goals but what if your passion is drifting towards something horrible – than if Nature or the Divine are cruelly fair then your self-destructive wish may be granted too.

When man became good at accumulating the things that he wanted three things became obvious = first, that with your neighbor’s help you could produce more, second, it’s easier to steal the fruit of your neighbor’s labor instead of laboring yourself, and third, with the help of your neighbor you can easily overcome the resistance of your other neighbor when you are stealing the fruits of his labor. Unfortunately that other neighbor might have figured out the same arrangement before you did.

Centuries of trial and error led to the universal understanding that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights - not because that sounds good but because it is in my personal interest. Obviously without life there cannot be any appreciation of happiness and without the freedom to choose your own path to happiness it can never be real happiness.

Without the freedom to choose to know what is good and bad Adam and Eve couldn’t have been created in God’s image!