Morality.

From birth, we are raised to have beliefs, practices, and morals based on – or lack of – our parents, religion, and education. Our parents give us these because of what they were raised on, from their parents. They try to have us follow in their steps so that as adults we can have a base to build ourselves into socially accepted people. Society conditions us to feel we have to have these things because without them, we are considered “social deviants.” Out of the three, morals are the hardest to instill and in turn, the hardest to change - we can alter what we believe in, we can adjust our practices, but it is hardest to change what we consider morally sound.

Many people ask themselves, “Why do we live morally?” We do, because morality is what we consider to be “right” in the world. Society has taken morality and created laws, i.e. religion creating the “Ten Commandments” and government taking said morals and creating laws and ordinances to mirror those. These laws are more unspoken than anything, and rather than having a reason why these laws are institutionalized; we just accept that crimes like murder and robbery are “wrong.”

Morals, we well as ethics, are based on a multitude of things like religion, education, socio-economic status, etc. Common moral arguments like “stealing is wrong” plays differently for Luke, who lives in San Diego with his upper muddle class mother, father, and brother; compared to Adam, who lives in the heart of Brooklyn with his single mother, his two younger sisters, and doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from. The same goes for Simon, the account executive who shoots his wife and the man he catches her with when he comes home early from a day at work; compared to Dwayne, the police officer who has to shoot and kill the perpetrator in order to secure the safety of the victim. We’re all raised with the beliefs that stealing and killing are indeed wrong, but there are certain circumstances that take us and make us put our morals to the side and operate, doing what “needs to be done.”

In 2010, our society is based off capitalism. We function and live our lives every day searching for money and trying to get as much of it we can. As teachers, we try and give our students lessons and ideas on how to be better people for our world but we start to use incentives to make this happen. “The winner of the school wide recycle drive gets two free movie tickets to any movie of your choice.” Or “The student who brings in the most cans of food for the Katrina care-package gets extra credit on his/her next test.” Not saying these things don’t work or that they’re wrong in any means, but we shouldn’t have to include incentives in the school context as well as the real world to get people to have a selfless concern for the wellness of others. It might be from a pessimistic point of view, but it’s more common that people “do good” because of what they can get out of it, rather than what it will do for the people in our community… or the world.

Ideally, we have morals because they “make us better people” but I don’t know how true that is, because there are so many people who would steal or kill if they knew they could get away with it. In conclusion, we have morals because our parents have given them to us, but we act morally because we have to. I guess rather then focusing on the end result of having morals, we should teach our students why we have morals, then we might prepare them to really make this a better world.