Morality

By James Pratt

For Literature with Mr. Reynolds

What Does Morality Mean to Me?

Morality to me is how we determine a good person from a bad person. In my eyes, one of the biggest confusions with morality is between morality and the law. Many people think that people that are breaking the law are immoral, and as easy as it is to define people who break the law as immoral people, there is much more to the picture! One way to easily see that morality and legality are two different topics entirely is in the thought experiment: would you steal food to feed for your starving family. Knowing someone's morals is knowing if they are a good or bad person, and if you can trust them.

Hover to Learn More About my Beliefs on Morality!

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I believe that in the classic bread example, stealing to feed your family would be acceptable if you knew that the store owner would survive the loss.
(so its not ok if you know you are stealing from someone who needs the money)
Additionally good intentions make your actions morally acceptable, but not all good actions are morally acceptable.

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Doing something considered “good” for personal gain or for other poor intentions, is immoral.
For example, building a homeless shelter simply to get into a good college!
I believe strongly that intentions are IMPORTANT!

Why do
We do This?

Our Ego

We constantly will believe that WE are the most morally correct, and that other people are immoral, simply due to our ego! Additionally we can let out ego “get in the way” and cloud our judgement! In fact, too much ego can lead to a large number of immoral actions!

Our Ignorance

Ignorance can play a large part in us taking immoral actions before we know the whole story, or even care to know the whole story. If we are ignorant about the fact that the seller of the bread in the store is just as hungry and starving as our family is...then stealing would be immoral weather or not we were ignorant and knew about this!