Universal vs Individual Ethics

It probably will not come as a surprise that I do not believe in universal ethics. I believe that human kind is too widespread and diverse for there to be cookie-cutter rules that everyone needs to follow. There are exceptions to every case, if you ask me. In order for universal ethics to be truly applicable, people would need to be similar—and that ruins the beauty of humanity. Individuals are individuals. People have different mindsets and opinions, views and ways of living life… One cannot just implement a set of umbrella rules that are supposed to encompass and apply to everyone. True, there are many rules that have found their way into different cultures. However, cultures share more than just ethics. Societies of people separated by thousands of miles and oceans have shared similar explanations toward divine beings and deities. They have unknowingly created stories that are eerily similar to other stories that take place in faraway places. I think that perhaps there are inherent ideas that are very common in humans because, even though we are very different, we still have core similarities. The idea of not murdering has been mentioned quite a bit. While it seems to have a strong stance in many cultures, I don’t think it’s a universal ethic. Many groups of people across the globe have featured ceremonies where sacrifices are key components to identifying their culture. In our own modern society, we still permit the murder of human beings who have committed heinous crimes. So while one could say that we have this “thou shalt not kill ethic,” what is the point of ethics if they’re not actively doing anything? Were they just rules created to remind us what we probably should do even though we won’t heed to it?