Nothing is free: in reality, everything has a cost. Morals are a collective attempt to balance the cost of basic human needs. Morals are concepts built on our concepts of real costs. When morals lose touch with reality, their behavioral results are likely to be toxic. Morals out of touch with reality are particularly pungent due to the mismatch between perceived and actual social credit. Believing in having committed a great kindness, only to receive neutral feedback, calls into question whether the self is out of touch with reality, or if the world is being unfair to you in particular. Societal health requires faith in humanity: the problem is best assumed to be the self.
In American culture, individuals are taught to look inward, not outward, for solutions. But, it's the experiences that people have within society that really fulfill and form people. Experiences alone are hollow. People are naturally apathetic to things that are not bigger than themselves.
The idea that some individuals are more valuable than others is a misleading truth. Really, it's the connections that an individual keeps with other members of society that are more or less valuable than others. Actual people are very much the same on the inside. Here lies a beautiful oxymoron: everything that makes the individual uniquely valuable in the eyes of a society is external to the individual. Individuality as we know it is about perception, not content.
In full, critical honestly, we are a sum of the information we recieve and the unique processing we do on that information. We differ most of all in what information we recieve, and then in the information generated by processing. This may affect how we're perceived. I argue that American culture is increasingly interested in the perception, and disinterested in the information. Normal behavior is increasingly shallow.
Expressing depths of emotion is essential to (a.) health and (b.) every other kind of intelligence. For this argument, I'd have to write a compelling narrative to truly, honestly explain. That will come later. All I can do immediately is express that, without an emotional outlet that meets needs, people go crazy and dumb themselves, numbing until the pain goes away. Those that do have reliable and deep emotional outlets have every chance to succeed in their intelligent pursuits. This is really what holds people in urban ghettos for generations: emotional pain with no healthy outlet, frying brain cells and dreams. Healthy handling of emotional pain is what essentially distinguishes the rich from the poor. The divide is cultural and traumatic, much more important than any material difference.
Generally, the more love that a person freely gives, the more emotionally mature they are. For the most part, this comes from women. They are often sooner to take the risk of giving more than they receive than most men. What I mean to express in broad terms is that the skill of intelligent emotional investment is, for reasons I don't understand, found strongest in women. Like all skills, it can be grown in anyone. How much of this divide is cultural, and how much is essentially sexual: I wish I could say, but I do not know.
To maintain an increased depth of emotion, at great personal expense, for the sake of aiding another's emotional processing.
People of different cultures operate on wildly different depths of emotion. This is probably the real reason none of us get along until we've fallen in love with each other.
It's technically true that we can never know if any emotional information expressed by anyone is true. But, the result of this view is a considerable amount of energy spent on the uninteresting question, is this true? Lots of instances of this question have no forseeable answer. Considering that:
I experienced a series of unfortunate events. Their impact directly damaged my sense of morality. During the fallout, I enjoyed worldly pleasures as never before; but I could not be sated. I read of the Raven of Haida mythology: I saw myself in him. I abused the good will of those around me. Happiness was an impossibility.
Returning to school jump-started my heart; the rich fusion of youth and idealism reawakened my sense of ideals. I no longer carry a strong mass of emotional baggage with me. The gravitational pull of my emotions is now uplifting!
Some people spend a lifetime escaping the biases impressed upon them. In my case, I was showered with praise, at the cost of agency. I spent years fighting the laughter of the self-obsessed. By fire, I escaped. I left home by working a toxic job, quit it, and now scramble for work. In this, I have learned to earn what was once given to me at a price chosen on my behalf: that is, bought and paid for without my consent. Now my morals return to me. My heart is full, at my own expense.
The only way out required:
In every adult life, ideals break. We realize that we are unlikely to get what we want, in spite of effort we've spent. But even at great cost, they remain a sound investment of emotional energy. Fully without them, the body goes limp and the heart becomes insensitive to others. The difference between a person who shuffles and another who strides may be of the body, or it may be of the heart. Keep the heart healthy and invest in ideals!
Stress flows like fluid. To where it is lesser, it flows from a source. Work to keep environmental stress low, so that it does not flow into you. Keep internal stress moderate, so that it does not flow into those around you.
In the absence of somebody to love, people will love the first person who lets them. Love, the sweetest mental illness, does not discriminate. People are not loved for who they choose to be. They are loved for the role they serve. Without love, every joy is a vice. With it, the value of every happy moment is doubled for free.
There is something in all people which demands that the whole of life is seen as soft and pleasurable. A knack for cultivating health and comfort is essential to womanhood anywhere. Men must work hard to theorize about and develop the natural wit and intuition which women grow into. There is why men need women so much more than women need men.
Pushing the self as hard as possible, without pushing everybody else, is the most valuable art. Comfortable people hurt no one. Loudly struggling people hurt everyone. Silently struggling people help everyone but themself.
The root of evil is said to be money; just as sure, the root of happiness must be sexual satisfaction. As children, we delight in our crushes. As young adults, we grow strong and dare to move away from our parents, for less certain horizons. From the beginning of a social life, sexual need is an utmost priority, regardless of how well we accept it. Sex is not just a necessity for society, for nature, it is a necessity for the individual. The lack of this nutrient is the source of lust that spews forth uncontrollably in selfish, heavy, burdening acts. People without true satisfaction sprout narcissism in all its ugliest forms. Conversely: the pleasure of a healthy flirt, with good timing, is always true happiness. Do not hide your needs from the world, letting them fester into a source of pain!
It is not as though there is no value to reservation of feelings. Nor may I say with a clean conscience that maximizing sexual pleasure is quite right. What I can assert, with an idea simple enough to be independently verified, is that all of the animal world naturally experiences sexual need, and that refraining from those needs beyond the limits afforded by nature is a grim path. The worst days are when there is no one to talk to: no one to share joy with, or to accept our flaws, or to share our latest readings with. On these days, the chance of sexual stimulation is nil, and the body grows weary. As little as a strange smile while walking across the street is a source of happy connection! In these moments, we know that we are desirable, lovable, and have some chance of happiness.
This did not come to me for free. It cost me a best friend (as sexually frustrated as I), a Summer worth of peace, years of confusion, and an angry childhood! Read The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and watch Stalker, and you will be guided towards the above conclusion.
Awareness is pain, but awareness is also intelligence. Intelligence is the difference between following rules grimly and treading lightly on the world. Awareness reduces life's structural pain. It comes at the cost of energy and bandwidth. Awareness is measurable by the strength of the two-way connection between reality and the mind. A brain connected to reality, lucid and backed by a happy heart, is worth orders of magnitude more than a disconnected, or unhappy, brain.