User blog comment:Alchemical/Morality and its Relativity/@comment-4962138-20120610035804/@comment-4962138-20120613183432

Ah, but there wasn't a moral obligation of preserving life in the first scenario. I was saying their one moral is to "respect authority" for the sake of keeping the point clear. Obviously that's hypothetical and impractical, but the point does stand I believe.

You say that the fact that the golden rule applies to everyone makes it a universal moral. I can see where you're coming from there, in my rudeness example if the action performed was dependent on the culture it is performed in, then one could avoid complications by having the principle of behavior "don't be rude" rather than "perform this action regardless of circumstance."

However, "treat other people the way you want to be treated" is still a problem. How do we include masochists and sadists into this? What about people who prefer "tough love" and people who are very sensitive to criticism? You could translate this to "treat everyone the way they want to be treated", but I feel that even if you don't take that to a significant degree (ie. give them all your worldly possessions) it is still taxing on the individual and is realistically impossible.

Assuming it wasn't realistically impossible, I believe it would completely deny individuality - and thus the system would break itself. If I'm X and I'm with Y and Z, and I seek to treat Y and Z exactly how they want to be treated, then there isn't any X showing. My personality is completely covered by my moral code.

I guesss I don't see how you can reconcile a moral absolute with a truth when it breaks if taken to an extreme, which to me it seems it does.