the golden rule

It's not that the child is inculcated with a moral compass by his parents, the kid is born with a moral compass.  Before there was a state or a religion people were raising kids and getting along.

I think we need to talk about moral compass here.  The morality I am thinking about is altruism, being nice to each other, the golden rule, that kind of stuff.  There is also rule-based morality, mostly negative, consisting of things not to do/  It is a sin to tell a lie, maybe the Ten Commandments, Thou Shall Not things.  There is a subset of these pertaining to sex, which I bring up because sometimes these are considered an ultimate morality.  A person who abstains from sex is considered a good person no matter what else they do.  I think that pretty much covers morality but if either of the dawgs can come up with other forms I urge them to present them.

There is kind of a circle of morality.  You can be good just to yourself, but nobody else is going to think you are a good person.  You can be good only to your family, like those mobsters who are good family men.  You can be good to a smaller or a larger group, and generally the larger the group the more people think you are a good guy.  Generally people will be more likely to think you are a good guy if they are among the group that you are good to. 

There is kind of an edge when it comes to national boundaries.  A lot of people draw the line there.  If you are good to the people in your own country then you are a patriot, and the hell with people in other countries.  Generally, it is thought that it's not right to just go to some other country and start killing other people, but you can always get around that by declaring self-defense, but outside of that you don't owe other countries anything, and indeed  if you are seen as being too nice to other nations your patriotism will be questioned. 

I don't think morality differs that much from place to place.  I think people play lip service to the golden rule around the world and things like it's a sin to tell a lie are generally accepted and everybody has some prohibitions against certain kinds of sex.

Religion is kind of a troublemaker here, beyond the core of being nice to your neighbor they add on a whole lot of arbitrary rules like what to eat and what to wear and what to do on certain days, and this becomes a kind of morality, to disobey these rules becomes well, a sin, and sometimes it's not enough for just the adherents of the religion to obey their religious rules, everybody has to obey them. and this leads to all kinds of trouble.

I'm not considering this kind of stuff as true morality, it has nothing to do with the golden rule.  When you are born you have a natural instinct to be nice to your parents, you don't have an instinct not to eat fish on Friday.

Which is tomorrow and I will continue the sermon then.