I agree that it lacks context, but I also think it inherently has no context. The more I research, the more I believe that morality is just an idealization, like a base code. Remember the 3 laws of robotics? It's preference until people believe it's absolute, and then it becomes morality.

That's why there are two ways to see the issue. Absolute "good" and "bad" tied to perception (setting up axioms like "it's good to be happy", "the goal is for everyone to be happy", etc.) and relative "good" and "bad" tied to goals (which can be the axioms or something else, like "in order to have a boat, it's good to get wood").

The first axioms are also arbitrary. I think you said it perfectly:

a bit of historical perspective, a dynamic view. A bit of "systems thinking" as well. Human groups are evolving systems.

Well, evolution of the species is one likely culprit. As the human species evolves, we realize that killing people is "rather bad" for the group.

Morality: survival fo the fittest

The idea here is that whatever we evolve towards, that must be "good". In that axiom, whatever we perceive is good or bad is good or bad. That obviously leads to complications: what if Islam spreads its Sharia Law around the world? Historians in the future would see that oppression and violence against women is an evolution constant. They would be able to conclude that, as they perceive women as inferior, we are inferior (perception-tied axiom) and we must be oppressed, limited, violated and beaten. What if that is the "fittest" way, as Darwin would put it?

If good and bad are defined by whichever morality survives (survival of the fittest), then we must accept that those moralities that we don't agree with could potentially become dominant and therefore, whether we like it or not now, by the fact that they will be the ones to survive, they are superior and whatever they consider to be good or bad is good or bad.

What if humanity evolves toward something unexpected, that we would now disagree with? The fact that we agree with the changes doesn't mean that people would have agreed with them in the past, or that they will in the future, or that we will agree with future changes.

In the west, we measure the success of a regime (how much "good" it has done) by the reduction of mortality rates, hunger rates, etc., because we consider death and hunger to be bad. Simple evolution factors. Death and hunger are signs of risk of losing a surviving gene pool. If "good" is whatever helps us survive in the long-term, then whichever means we use is good, no matter how detestable it seems now.

It would follow that not only is morality fluid, but relative to the culture where it lies, and the absolute "truth" is predetermined by the beliefs and behaviour patterns of the last living species to survive closest to the heat-death of the universe, or the last human relative. And then, if that is true, we can't know what is "good" or "bad", but only guess by looking at historical trends, as you point out, and betting on the winning horses, who might break a leg further down the road.

Morality: towards goals (but which goals?)

And even then, this definition of "good" and "bad" would be goal-based (good/bad for the survival of the species) and not be absolute (simply good or bad like "killing is bad" instead of "killing is bad for the survival of the species"). Then we would have to combat the axiom "the survival of the species is good". Why is it good? - Is it, really? If the species dies in 100 years, will it matter as long as we all live happily in this generation? If the answer is yes, then the axiom can stand, and if the answer is no, then all of what was said above simply falls apart into "killing is alright regardless of whether it helps humanity survive".

What or whom do we serve?

And that brings me to the last point. Good for humans, good for humanity. Do we serve ourselves, or do we serve humanity? From a utilitarian point of view, we serve humanity. From an individualist point of view, we serve ourselves. Where should the priorities be drawn? Survival of ourselves, of our communities, of our countries, of our cultures, of the human race. Survival? Happiness? Fulfilment? Which emotion or concept should we serve? Should we even serve?

Buddhists said that what was "good" was realizing that this world doesn't matter, and that once we truly accepted that fact in mind and body, we would achieve Nirvana and end the reincarnation cycle. As I understand it, for them, the goal was dying the final death. Their morality was not even tied to any kind of survival, the goals of humanity or anything. Their goals were fully selfish. And even in their selfishness, their goal was not their continued existence but the ending of it.

That's just to point out that survival is just one of the many possible goals, and that death can also be a moral goal.

Morality: whatever gets us there?

Is it good or bad to eat dogs? Depends on how it impacts the human species - if it's bad for it, it will be in time "selected out" and will tend to disappear, as did cannibalism for instance.

This falls again into the discussion we were having before, about the "free market" being morality.

I said

Is what you described a minimalized description of the monetary system, where the "selection" process is the free market? In that sense, it is impossible to leave the market, and therefore it is impossible to go against the moral rules because morality would be embedded in causality (kind of like cryptographically enforced rules in blockchain if they were impossible to break with sufficient power). Manipulating market participants would simply alter the selectability, the way people do when they lower or raise prices or create new services and products.

and you said

The problem with the monetary system and the market. These are "moral-less" or amoral - they function as they are intended to, there is no need for "good" and "bad". As you correctly note, if the rules of the market are called "moral rules" (which I don't, but let's pretend for the sake of the argument), then it is impossible to go against the "moral rules"

So no. The main message that many people are trying to reformulate in various shapes: a (market + monetary system) is necessary but not sufficient to sustain a prosperous society. You need an additional "anchor point".

Varying/contradictory goals depending on culture

The anchor point here would be "the survival of the species". And anything that leads to that consequence would be good. And even then, that's just an opinion, since there are others who believe that "good" is other things, like Buddhists, who believe in death as the ultimate goal, or Jihadis, who believe that the expansion of Islam is the ultimate goal (at the price of murdering the infidels or themselves), or Heaven's Gate Christians, who believed that the ultimate goal was to get rid of their earthly bodies and serve God (Ti) for all of eternity in a spaceship. They all killed themselves and deemed it "morally good" just as you would deem "morally good" to serve humanity in its search for long-term survival. And working toward these goals, any action that advances it would be "good" even if it's perceived as bad by most, such as killing, stealing, raping, destroying, oppressing, etc.

The goals vary from culture to culture, and they often contradict each other. The survival of the species doesn't seem like a priority for most people. It certainly isn't for me. As I established before, in order to call something "good", it's essential to also establish "for X" (good for survival, good for happiness, good for fulfilment, good for loyalty/honour). In saying "the survival of the species is good", we are lacking "for X". For our happiness? And then, we would do the same, "happiness is good" for what? For our satisfaction? "Our satisfaction is good"... Etc. We reach a point where it's impossible to advance. In the end, it becomes pointless to keep trying, and there is nothing else but the realization that whatever is "good" is simply what we want, what we like, our preferences. You want the species to survive, I want to be happy, Buddhists wanted to be fulfilled, Vikings wanted to be loyal to their families, their lords and their nations.

Therefore, these are preferences. Morality would be the preferred behaviour required to reach the preferred goal. But it's not in its "preference" stage that it's called morality but once it's solidified in the mind as a law, because we may understand our preferred goal as THE ultimate goal, and we may link causality (things happen thus more things happen) with duty (dogma/faith-based loyalty/service to ideas/institutions).

Duty vs. voluntary enterprise

Personally, I prefer not to understand things as absolute duty but as selected enterprise. As there are many things to do, I might as well set up some outcomes I like and work towards them. It doesn't mean that my actions toward those goals are "good" in absolute or part of my morality, but that they are "good for achieving X purpose" that I establish.

Therefore, if one of your selected enterprises is "the survival of humanity", let's observe the following assertion:

What we can say with a high degree of confidence though is that "killing others" is a clear negative and will continue to decrease.

It's a clear negative for the survival of humanity in general, unless of course we're talking about killing "undesirables", "killers", "dangers to the survival of humanity". It doesn't mean that killing is bad in absolute, or morally bad, but that it's bad for the specific goal established, which is the establishment of humanity as a Darwinian entity fit for survival.

If, on the other hand, we don't care about humanity surviving, but we want instead for humanity to be a civilization of great and honourable warriors who will fight one last duel in 500 years, then our goals may vary and killing would be an absolutely great thing. (Not that I want this, though it wouldn't be uninteresting).