The question is: does living morally add to or detract from a life, period/question mark, period

PERUSING MORALITY
There are three good tools to use when perusing morality (a difficult problem for philosophy).
They are 1. Definition, 2. Explanation, and 3. Speculation.
Definition: We must decide if we are talking ?social,? i.e. some consensus of a group that it is good to enforce some rule; or, ?personal,? in which an individual knows independent of the group he/she is a member of, that it is ?good? and ?right.?
Explanation: The contribution of scientific processes: what practices and beliefs are necessary for survival, for health, for physical success. Then these are codified by investing them with an almost mystical, magical significance.
Speculation: Endless speculation is the realm of philosophy. What is an instinct? Is there something instinctive about morality? In a one-on-one with Derrida, I asked him if one accepts the premises of deconstruction, and one could imagine (the impossible) end or absence of symbolism and reference and metaphor, what would be left standing as human. He said ?I?m not certain, and don?t quote me on this, but I think it is something like ?justice?.? I speculate that ?morality,? in all its meanings and forms, might be an expression of that innate justice Derrida was talking about.

Morality and Truth.
Equality or truth is self-evident, and once its been found it must be practiced or lived.
Living the good life is more simple and less demanding when One understands that All is truly One.
To be good to the planet, to Nature, to One another is truly to be good to Oneself, and that makes the Way the only Way to be. To be or not to be, there is no question in me.
Just be,
=

I can't resist saying something more about methodology re this subject. Sorry to be so verbose.
MORALITY
The Greeks didn?t really use a word ?morality,? they instead talked (and I do mean spoken, as writing was seen as sophistic advocacy, and truth was arrived at through challenge, i.e. dialogue) about virtues ? very interesting, the distinction, in light of what follows:
Thinking about some objective notion of morality, I argue that there also is a very subjective morality, too. Lipman wants to codify (i.e., take out of the realm of religion (just because he doesn?t like religion)) VIRTUE not morality. He probably means at the very base, the golden rule: (better stated) DO FOR others the way you would have it done for you AND DON?T DO TO others anything you wouldn?t want DONE to you. Go ahead and try to legislate something like that, I don?t have any problem with it. Though it is more like a social contract we all agree to obey in return for protection and commerce.
The Greeks said virtue (i.e., being good) was basically forming habits of good judgment and behavior. Greek ?morality? was composed of knowledge and practice: think how much you have to know about history, science, psychology, biology to know what is truly good, and then think how you can practice behavior (practice in both senses of PREPARING and DOING) based on that knowledge. You have to INITIATE; you have to take ACTION; you are not moral if you just sit there and think, ?This defines the good.? The Greeks called it ?right action.?
To the extent morality is what I am calling ?subjective,? it is founded on ?belief.? This is a subject I have done much much philosophical work on. For very good reasons, humans (and probably animals) are compelled to various beliefs. Because everyone naturally wants to ?say what is right and what is good.? And golden rule morality is obvious and objective (there are exceptions, see Nietzsche); to say what is right and good about subjective matters, is based in belief. These are the moral issues we debate and disagree about, and fight wars and kill over.
What is always most interesting about ?morality,? after ?where does morality come from,? is ?which moralities are objective and which can we call subjective.? I did a study of ?fear?; think about what part of your fears are real, and what part imagined. What moralities are ?real,? and what are ?imagined.?
The moral philosophers most applicable to these issues are: Peter Singer (especially about animals. He is THE animal moral philosopher), and Bernard Williams (died recently; Oxford Dean of Moral Philosophy). And over it all are: the Greeks, the pragmatists, religion, Nietzsche (who wrote the ASTONISHING ?The Genealogy of Morality?) and Derrida on justice.

Mirugai:
Seems to make good sense to me. Morality and justice are certainly linked, though sometimes in our modernity the connexion gets blurry. I really should read Derrida.
Warmest, Neuman.

I am always fascinated by linkages and connections. Jung referred to something he called synchronicity, which seems to embody some aspects of a linkage/connection-oriented world. Many years ago (the 1970s, to be more precise), I read some books by a Robert Monroe, concerning what he said were out-of-body experiences he had had over some period of time. Entertaining and thought-provoking stuff, and, I was young and impressionable-ever searching for new frontiers and ideas. In one book (the first or second, I think), Monroe set forth a sort of credo regarding his thoughts about morality, life-after-death, good and bad, and so on. Fast forward to 2015 and Tom Campbell's My Big TOE (Theory-of-Everything). Campbell, it seems, knew Monroe and even conducted some research (with Bob Monroe's assistance) into the notion of life-after-death.
I won't go into a huge discussion of all this coincidence-any who are curious may research and read Monroe and/or Campbell for themselves. I will, in closing, say only this much: Morality can work to one's advantage, depending upon what best meets one's needs for comfort and acceptance. Criminals clearly have little use for or need of a moral life. Criminals, too, have some need of linkages and connections in their lives. Continuity, then, may be different things to different people. Just like happiness. And just so.
Cordially,
Neuman.