Our conscience is the faculty that exists within us from birth which enables us to distinguish between good and evil. The very word itself means “with knowledge” or the possession of the “ability to know”. The American Heritage Dictionary informs us the word conscience derives from:
Middle English, from Old French, from Latin cōnscientia, from cōnsciēns, cōnscient-,present participle of cōnscīre, to be conscious of : com-, intensive pref.; see com- +scīre, to know; see skei- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.Without this faculty to distinguish one thing from another in an abstract form, human beings would not be able to think. They would have no means of understanding opposites, let alone the synonymous. Therefore the faculty that we refer to as the conscience has from time immemorial been recognized as the conscious element within humans that is the quintessential determinant which distinguishes humans from animals. This is not a chemical or biological function, and nor does it emanate from biochemical interaction.
Because we possess this faculty which enables us to be conscious of right and wrong, good and evil, and express these ideas in abstract form, we also possess the ability to think.
Morality derives from our conscience. When we make decisions to go against our conscience, we are exercising thought processes that will cause us to have psychological issues of some sort. Many people resort to alcohol or drugs to dull the internalized pain that their conscience causes because they have chosen to do something discordant with their inner faculty of right and wrong—like listening to discordant music. The problem for those plagued with a conscience that persists in troubling them is surgeons cannot remove it like they can a cancerous tumor, because, as stated above, the conscience is not biological nor chemical.
Morals are principles or., if you like, laws of behavior. They emanate from our ability to think. However, while people can possess a distorted conscience because of cultural programming, whereby certain aspects of the conscience is slowly deadened to not feel the internal pricks for doing wrong (sodomizing the innocent, becoming a prostitute), this does not mean the faculty does not exist, nor has its own internalized recognition of good and evil—good being that which is right to do and evil that which is wrong.
When we are challenged from within about some action that contradicts our natural recognition of right and wrong this becomes an issue of morality, if we know that what we are doing is something we would not like done to us.
True morality is about the rightness of our actions that affect other people when we know that those same acts would be detrimental to ourselves and, of which, we would not approve, if we were the recipients. Simply put these immoral actions are identified in the second half of the Decalogue. The moral code within the Decalogue covers every aspect of human interaction. One half of the Decalogue is about honoring the Source of our conscience and the reason why we have the capacity to think.
False morality is anything that is superimposed upon our conscience (even through conditioning as children) that causes us to contradict that which is found in the Decalogue. This could be a dress code that, if not adhered to, is considered a grievous violation worthy of ostracization or even death. This could be a code that requires people to marry within the social status of their family or the persons selected by their parents, otherwise offspring are automatically ostracized, if not killed—tantamount to an abortion that would have been, if the future had been known by the parents. False morality could be the exaltation of nature over humans to the extent that the latter is killed if seen contravening expectations. False morality is the conditioning of children to accept unnatural moral concepts; a fact evident in many cultures and the reason there are conflicts inherent in forced multiculturalism.
The difference between one’s conscience and true morality is the conscience is the source and morality is the outcome. So when a person says, “That is against my conscience,” or “That is against my morals,” this is like saying: the water comes from the tap and the water comes from the spring—or river, or dam.
Understanding The Decalogue Is The Key To Discovering Your Authentic Humanity
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