(no subject)
The world is a cold rock, safely and truly, no one can trust you and you cannot trust anyone. It is under these pretenses that governments, corporations, and many people go about their daily lives, living according to a cycle of greed and mistrust. I believe that it is the responsibility of the individual to break this cycle and step above the backstabbing, law suiting, accumulative greed that our worldly society is bent upon. Only when individuals break this trend can healthy friendships, relationships, trust, and basic love for fellow man become established. Almost every living being is born without the tendency to backstab those closest to them, but what our society needs to learn is to extend their compassion beyond their closest relatives, to push past the barriers of expedient greed, and reap the rewards of honest self gain.
My personal system integrity needs to be a general statement if it is to be true. Individual actions like stealing and lying live upon a spectrum that is always dictated by each individual situation. To break away from a situational definition of personal morals, my view of whether something is right or wrong is based upon one simple question. Does the action create a victim? If there is a victim of an action than that action is wrong. But of course trouble comes when one must define who’s a victim and who’s not a victim. First of all I believe for some one to be a victim they need to be injured either physically, mentally, emotionally, economically, or socially. Now what is the definition of an injury? In this case I believe an injury is any hurt that impedes the operation of a victim. For instance, a paper cut is not an injury, neither is a five cent piece of candy stolen from the grocery store, but a sprained ankle, or a stolen delivery van filled with 5000 dollars worth of the finest steak, those are injuries, they impede the operations of a system.
An ethical problem that I have always found a dilemma in my life and in society as a whole is weather revenge is right or wrong and how to tell between revenge and justice. This plays a huge role in how a society ensures that its members behave morally. For is this country's justice system not based upon fear of punishment rather than enlightenment to ensure that its citizens stay in check? In South Africa the Truth and Reconsilliation committee worked to solve a problem where both the offendant and the victims "benefited" I think that if society were to have a more personal level justice system that made perpetrators really empathize with their victims more immoral people might actually understand the wrongs in their ways. Of course every society has its bad apples and some form of hard punishment needs to be coupled with the system for serious misdoings.
But how does society make its laws for such a justice system to be executed? Society needs a moral base that does not hinder its citizens. Martin Luther King puts it into the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas in his letter from Birmingham Jail, "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." I agree with Dr. King, and I beleive that there need be no other moral reasoning for laws. This set of moral questions covers a broad feild of issues; for instance environmental laws may not seem to fall under this classification at first, but on closer examination, does a healthy environment not affect the way human society grows and evolves? Society needs to step away from its path of greed and move towards upholding human personality, it is scary to think that things can be worth more than lives.
My personal system integrity needs to be a general statement if it is to be true. Individual actions like stealing and lying live upon a spectrum that is always dictated by each individual situation. To break away from a situational definition of personal morals, my view of whether something is right or wrong is based upon one simple question. Does the action create a victim? If there is a victim of an action than that action is wrong. But of course trouble comes when one must define who’s a victim and who’s not a victim. First of all I believe for some one to be a victim they need to be injured either physically, mentally, emotionally, economically, or socially. Now what is the definition of an injury? In this case I believe an injury is any hurt that impedes the operation of a victim. For instance, a paper cut is not an injury, neither is a five cent piece of candy stolen from the grocery store, but a sprained ankle, or a stolen delivery van filled with 5000 dollars worth of the finest steak, those are injuries, they impede the operations of a system.
An ethical problem that I have always found a dilemma in my life and in society as a whole is weather revenge is right or wrong and how to tell between revenge and justice. This plays a huge role in how a society ensures that its members behave morally. For is this country's justice system not based upon fear of punishment rather than enlightenment to ensure that its citizens stay in check? In South Africa the Truth and Reconsilliation committee worked to solve a problem where both the offendant and the victims "benefited" I think that if society were to have a more personal level justice system that made perpetrators really empathize with their victims more immoral people might actually understand the wrongs in their ways. Of course every society has its bad apples and some form of hard punishment needs to be coupled with the system for serious misdoings.
But how does society make its laws for such a justice system to be executed? Society needs a moral base that does not hinder its citizens. Martin Luther King puts it into the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas in his letter from Birmingham Jail, "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." I agree with Dr. King, and I beleive that there need be no other moral reasoning for laws. This set of moral questions covers a broad feild of issues; for instance environmental laws may not seem to fall under this classification at first, but on closer examination, does a healthy environment not affect the way human society grows and evolves? Society needs to step away from its path of greed and move towards upholding human personality, it is scary to think that things can be worth more than lives.