…all?
Humans, like other animals, act to fullfill their desires. Humans are unlike other animals in that they can consciously choose whether or not to pursue a certain desire, for whatever reason they want. They may pursue a set of rules by which to live: a morality.
There is no one overarching morality to which everyone must subscribe; nor is there anything wrong with following a moral code. There is no shame in sleeping with everyone around you; nor is there shame in abstaining until you meet somebody who’ll commit to you forever, or abstaining from sex entirely. (nota bene: the only shame is to submit to fear or laziness).
Committing to a morality is to your soul as committing to a rhyme and meter scheme is to a poem: it’s a creative limitation. And, perhaps paradoxically, that limitation opens a whole world of freedoms and possibilities of expression (See Nietz BGE 188).
Shakespeare wrote mostly in iambic pentameter: difficult, sure, and often he strayed (artfully) from strict formal adherence to his chosen meter. The beauty of his work speaks for itself. Compare that with free verse poetry, which is usually just prose without clarity or direction, making a play at artistic substance by sounding vague and mystical. Perhaps artistic meaning and truth is possible in free verse, but more often its an excuse to write badly and lazily while keeping the approval of the standards-free “artistic community.” Make whatever analogy to life with and without moral rules that suits you.
Morality at its simplest is an ideal which a person pursues, an image to sculpt out from the raw stone of his human potential. Or, better, it’s a means towards living and expressing the ideal lying nascent within us, similar to how clothing may both mask and amplify the beauty of the body it covers. The one universal creed: express yourself!
