To ask what are morals?

[InNeedOfBrandy]

I don't get morals, say you feel stealing is wrong and immoral do you feel stealing to feed your hungry child is immoral to?

I really don't understand what morals are, I wouldn't say for example sleep with a married man because I wouldn't want to be involved over a break up of a marriage, but I don't condone anyone else who does. Am I supposed to be outraged because I wouldn't do it.

Inspired by another thread, I don't see spending money on your children at christmas or buying them designer clothes and trainers immoral. I don't see what morals are involved there.

I haven't had a religious upbringing do install how the church want you to behave, are morals just the 10 commandments for example?

Laymans terms please spell it out to me lovely MNetters

TIA

Well I haven't taught mine any morals, apart from the trip back to hand over the stolen football cards once.

If I don't even know my own morals how can I teach my children?

Just to point out, anarchism is nothing to do with morals or a lack of them, nor necessarily does it involve being leftwing. It is about objecting to a hierarchical way of organising society.

(Though in practice most people who describe themselves as anarchists are on the left - rightwingers would tend to describe themselves as libertarians.)

that bread one - there's a story about a man going into confessional and telling the priest he'd sinned because he'd stolen bread to feed his family. the priest said that wasn't a sin, but that stealing jam for the bread would be.

yes, morals are a tricky business.

"If I don't even know my own morals how can I teach my children?"

I suppose even if you don't explicitly think or talk about them, how you behave in your life will reflect your underlying moral outlook.

I'd much rather meet the children of a kind hearted person who behaved well to those about them and tried to help people in need than the children of someone who talked about morals all the time whilst eg selling arms to dictators and employing illegal immigrants on poverty wages.

nickelrocket - wouldn't it also depend who he stole the bread from and the circumstances - if his stealing resulted in someone elses children going hungry and if he could perfectly well have got a job that would be rather different than stealing a loaf from the supermarket in absolute desperation?

it didn't used to be immoral for a woman to read. women were the ones who taught the children.
literacy rates were higher in women in this country for centuries.

in the middle east, it's only in recent years with the extremists and the taliban that women haven't been allowed opinion or education. In the past, women had to be educated to a high standard because morally, men could not talk to women unless they were related. that meant that women had to be the doctors, lawyers etc to women.

Takver - yes, i agree. I'm pretty sure the story only mentions the jam, not from whom he stole it.

You clearly have scruples about the question of morals