Ruminating on the Relativity(?) of “Moral Compasses”

August 10, 2026

As I ponder the differences between my attitude and my Mom’s attitude (see yesterday’s post) towards lying, I came across an interesting post on twitter/X. See below, Rothmus, on Haidt: “Moral judgments come from instinct, and are then rationalized.”

BTW: Please read beyond its stated “political” context, as I think distinctive moral compasses emerge from some kind of deeply personal/sociological context that lies way underneath such surface phenomena. 

And wow, just noticed: truth-telling is not one of Haidt’s “moral foundations.” Huh? Or maybe once we get into epistemology, we’re at a different level than authenticity, so that authenticity is the foundation of truth-telling. . . Oh wow, wait a minute. Now I notice that not even authenticity is a foundation, in Haidt’s analysis. So maybe sanctity will fit the bill?

Okay, let’s look at the Ten Commandments, many of which make at least an indirect reference to being and behaving in a real, rather than fake manner, i.e. authentic.

In any case, here’s the post I promised above.

https://x.com/Rothmus/status/2086642819716755890?s=61&t=aUBDiSUrvn0aSlRBtZx0wQ

Re: moral “relativity:”

Thinking again about my mom: her mom would not let her meet her own grandparents, even though they lived in the same town: Rochester, Minnesota. Why? Because meeting them would somehow expose the fact that she was Jewish!

I remember, as a kid, when the Rosenberg treason trial was being held, asking Mom if her name was Jewish? No! She instantly replied. “That’s Rosenberg, not Rosenberger.”

The strangeness of her obviously uneasy denial stuck with me, and makes her irate denial that she did NOT dent her son-in-law’s car, despite a witness, understandable.

 

Jordan Peterson had more to say on the subject of lying.

https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/2085488175934243059?s=61&t=aUBDiSUrvn0aSlRBtZx0wQ

 

 

And so here we are today, when not even biological essentialism is acknowledged by a portion of the populace as real. Anybody can “change genders” at any time, and demand others use (their) “correct” pronouns. Maybe we can lessen the severity of what to me would be the “sin” and call this attitude pretending, rather than lying?

 

Happy Ending to One Uranian Drama: Son Colin to the Rescue

August 9, 2026

Late yesterday, I got this text from Colin:

“All set. I talked to them at length and I got the whole thing canceled.

You can finally relax; I will explain tomorrow. I really can’t talk anymore today.”

If you recall, Colin is the son (paralyzed from waist down and with extreme nerve damage since August 16, 2023 when he suffered an aortic dissection from which he was supposed to die, and didn’t) whose ongoing suffering and inspiration I update daily on caringbridge.com.

He can only talk for a short while each day before nerve pain ramps up.

 

 

BTW: this entire ongoing Uranus drama began on that very day, August 16, 2023, when transit Uranus reached my natal Moon at 23° Taurus.

 

 

 

Okay! So it’s true! He’s right! After receiving that text, I could and did begin to relax. Colin did it. He knows how to do it. How to work with this kind of emergency.

In fact, as I told him this morning, when he called to let me know what happened: “I appreciate so much both your and brother Sean’s ability to work through this kind of problem for and with me. In fact, the two of you could have been attorneys, with your own law firm: Sean behind the scenes, knowing how to ask really penetrating questions, and you as the attorney who handles the public face of the firm.”

Frankly, I was truly amazed. And even as the situation was “going down,” I marveled at how this drama illustrated just how much both sons in their 60s are there for me, in my 80s. I felt completely protected, frankly, even though I did freak out, constantly, Uranus erupting over and over again, when I discovered the firm intended to charge me $5 K for incorrectly canceling a contract.

He told me he had decided to call them every half hour yesterday, after they did not return the call he made to them within minutes of me telling him their “accountant” had tried to call me, because I had “Breached a Contract.” Finally, Colin had a phone number, so he could return the call. This had been missing, despite numerous attempts to get one.

(I’m condensing, simplifying here, so as not to bore either myself or my readers with the tangled web of details.)

 

“Here,” he told me this late this morning, “is what happened.”

Their accountant finally called back, after he had called about four times in a row. She simply said: “Please tell me what you think happened.” Great way to begin! Then she simply listened to him as he spelled out the situation, starting with the back story of me sending $8K in cash twice to a stranger in a strange land three years ago, when I was 80 years old.

That set the tone. The rest of the very complex tale followed easily. Colin said he spoke in a calm, detached manner, detail by detail, until done.

After he was done, ending with the remark that he would be willing to take the situation to court if necessary, she simply said, “Okay, I’ll just cancel the contract.”

 

I was stunned at how efficiently he dealt with this difficult situation. But then he went on to tell me that when he worked with his small company, Garden Tower Project, he was always the one to call back customers who were furious at the company for some reason. He’d say, “Hello, I’m Colin, the inventor of the Garden Tower and founder of the Garden Tower Project, and I’ve been given a message that you are unhappy for some reason.” That he began this way never failed to deflate any fury that had been present originally. Then he’d simply ask them to tell him what was going on. (Just like the accountant did yesterday). Without interrupting, he’d listen until the customer was done, and then simply say something like, “Wow. If that had happened to me, I’d be furious too!” It always had to do with the company not including some part or other in the package. While he was with them, they sold 80000 towers in 18 years, so you can imagine just how many packages did go out incomplete.

In fact, he says he relished being the one to return especially calls from the most furious customers (and of course offer to send what they had thought they had asked for in the first place, and more, free, at times even sending it overnight.) That he had great fun inviting them, especially through his calm, even tone, to tone down their fury. And he concluded this story by saying that there was one case where his company had sent the wrong or incomplete product, three different times! That was the absolute worst case. But by the time he and the irate customer completed their call, she told him that if he ever traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, would he please look her up?

So I’ve been “in good hands,” with both my sons, during this entire drama.

BTW: Colin tells me that aside from the weird, forgotten $8K drama, twice, three years ago, he is not aware of me actually beginning to “lose my memory.”

Now I look back and begin to recall in a hazy way some sort of situation during that year that made me feel utterly ashamed, guilty, and so on. That’s likely the incident I “don’t remember.” Because I don’t. It just dropped out of my awareness.

I do wonder if there have been other times when something truly important on the material plane has simply disappeared from my memory. And likely, it’s true; there are holes in my memory. Or if not already, then there will be at some point.

I spoke to sister Kristin last night, and she and I talked a bit about how Mom entered that undesirable state of age-related dementia, sometime in her mid-80s. But Mom’s attitude was not mine — To Right Every Wrong — at least so far. Here’s one story Kris tells from that deep past.

Mom had taken the car (at 86 years of age) to church. When she got there, she accidentally bumped, and dented, the car belonging to her son-in-law. And what she did not realize: someone had witnessed that accident. When everybody came out of church, and her relatives pointed to her son-in-law’s car, what she had done to it, she denied it irately. “I didn’t do that!”).

She never did admit it.

I wonder if that’s when she actually began to lose her memory. Is dementia sometimes the result of people not wanting to remember situations in their lives where they felt guilty or ashamed?