The Globalization of Morality

Hello, this is Patrick.
In preparation for my blog post, I began a conversation with the other members of my Mayfield on my proposed topic. It ended up becoming a lengthy debate on the subject of morality in cultures around the world. My topic promptly changed.
The debate revolved around the question of whether morality is innate or learned from society. Whatever one's opinion may be on the subject, anthropology and world history provide a valuable insight into the moral concepts of various people groups throughout time. From the human sacrifices of the Mayans, to the Bacchanalia of the Romans, to the child sacrifice of ancient Canaanite peoples, to the rigid doctrine of the Puritans, to today's postmodernist relative morality, it is safe to say that humanity has failed to come to a consensus on right and wrong or if they exist in the first place. The following discussion will not answer the question but will perhaps shed some light on the subject.
My first statement here is that morality is not part of a human's basic instinct. We do not instinctively do good or evil; we have free will, but with an additional mental construct of what is good and what is evil. If good were an instinct we would not have the option of evil, and vice-versa. As it is, we have instincts as well as an ability to choose between instincts that are often brought into competition.
From here I will assume that certain moral ideas are common to all humans. Principles such as the preservation of one's own species, preservation of one's own life, the valuing of loved ones, etc. are not reasoned out, they are inherent in everyone who has ever lived. When Buddha came along and presented the Seven-Fold Path, he was not introducing a radical new framework of morality but merely elucidating the ideas that people already have. Jesus Christ taught about loving your neighbor as yourself but this wasn't an original idea. People had been loving others for millennia, simply because they felt that it was right. These great teachers showed people how to more effectively carry out the principles they had already known. Question: What about cultures of headhunting or human sacrifice?
In these cultures, the idea of loving your neighbor looked very different from the concept that western civilization has, but they still esteemed members of their own tribe and hunted down the enemy peoples for the purpose of eating them or sacrificing them. Jesus' teaching of loving your enemies was a new one.
I will also state that since morality is not an instinct or a drive, it can be overridden by other desires. This may seem obvious, but it has implications. Of course our desires for selfish gain can overpower our desire to do what is good. What I am saying is that each culture takes the integrity of its moral code upon itself over time. Each culture can shift its focus from monogamy to polygamy, perhaps based upon the lust of its men for more women. Here, the self is overriding the moral tendencies. Cultural deviations from what might be considered "standard moral practices" occur over time as its leaders make good or bad decisions that may or may not be influenced by their selfish desires. Tribal religions can cause new moral rules that are spawned because of one man's desire to rule over his peers through the influence of a supposed deity. This then leads to other practices such as child sacrifices or orgies or whatever one sees in historical cultures. This is the case of people interpreting innate moral concepts in various ways throughout time.

How does this apply to the 21st century? Is there a case to be made for morally equivalent cultures? Hitler has to be mentioned at least once in any blog. I'll go ahead and say that his culture was morally inferior to ours. However, on what basis do we condemn the evil of other cultures? Our moral concepts were shaped over time as people made decisions about moral interpretations of certain logical principles. I think it is important to find principles in this and decide what really is right and what really is wrong. What ideas are innate to everyone? How does rationality enter the picture? Relativism only hurts the cause by taking away any basis for judging other cultures. When one can't judge other cultures, one loses the ability to judge individuals, and thus a justice system becomes impossible. I don't have an answer here, but someone should do something soon. Morality is arguably the most important issue confronting humanity today and pushing it to the side with relativism and situational ethics will not help.