Love

What does love have to do with morality?

Love is the human superpower that makes morality work. Love is that propensity for humans to do more for someone than they expect to receive in return. Living a moral life means some sacrifice by avoiding some actions for the advantage of the community.

Gee, I would like to have that big screen TV, but I am not going to steal it. I will have to wait until I have earned enough to afford it.

Living a moral lifestyle is not altruistic. In the fullness of your life, staying on the moral track will benefit you as much as anyone else.

On a simple level, your relationships with everyone you know will be better. They don't need to fear you will steal from them, and they will trust you with things they might otherwise be guarded about.

It also extends to larger scale. My commitment to not steal, and my neighbors corresponding actions, mean that my neighborhood can exist without steel bars over the windows. Everyone sees the benefit, and so we all benefit.

Love is when you truly wish the best for others, and morality is the definition of living life the best. When you do something, you will try to do what is "good" for them, and morality defines what is good for them. You know that stealing is bad, so you don't steal.

Love extends to strangers in your community. If you saw a person dying in a ditch on the side of the road, you would help them. It might be inconvenient to do so, but we all are willing to do so, because such actions benefit everyone. Of course someday it might be me down in that ditch, but it is really not self interest in that directly way that drives the behavior. Instead, it is simply the knowledge that some actions are good, so we do them, and some actions are bad, and so we don't.

We want to live the best life possible, and as a consequence the entire community benefits along with us. That is the meaning of morality, and that is the consequence of love.