Must Watch/Remember:
The Lethal Drug Trial That Turned Men Into Elephants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRs_tlb2-GM
Without universal moral law, morality collapses into desire and convenience
If ethics is only “what I happen to want” or “what my group finds agreeable,” then moral obligation has no authority over rational agents. The requirement is that morality must be something reason can will as a rule for everyone. That’s what makes it binding rather than negotiable.
This is why Kant’s formulation matters: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” If moral ideas are “virtue less” in the sense that they don’t claim such binding authority, then people can always treat moral rules as optional—reinterpreting them to fit appetite, ideology, or advantage. The result is not freedom but instability: each person’s “morality” becomes a private exception system.
Even if you state good principles, you still need the human structure that reliably turns principles into action: virtue is not a one-time decision; it is trained character—habit formed by repeatedly choosing the right action until it becomes part of who you are.
When justice is treated as “optional,” the moral damage becomes internal: the person becomes harder to trust, harder to govern, and easier to corrupt. Such a society can not function.