Moral Living

The below question is what is asked of me this week:


Reflect on the three key lessons you take away from the course. Reflect on your perceived value of this course.

This is a difficult question to answer as if you try to isolate three components of morality I feel that you’re missing something. Morality and ethical living are less lessons and more a way of life. You can focus on a component such as crime and punishment or gun control. You can examine policies such as affirmative action or euthanasia. You can even study philosophies such as deontology or consequentialism and still miss the point. Taking a deontological or consequentialist view of a given moral quandary may provide a foundation from which to deconstruct affirmative action or euthanasia but it doesn’t provide the impetus to do anything about it.

Instead, what I take away from studying ethics and morality is that it is a constant process. There are more than two ways, or even four or five ways to look at a given problem. Every choice will have consequences and every choice can harm or help the greater number of people. You can serve the greater good and still hurt individuals. You can help individuals and hurt the greater good. Morality isn’t a black and white adventure it’s a constant shifting of variables and conflicting values that must be weighed against your own view of morality. I do hold that there are moral truths and that moral relativity can be a lazy excuse to avoid offending someone. Nothing in this course has made me think otherwise regarding relativity. Just because a culture has a norm that subjugates women doesn’t make it morally correct even if one can find women in that culture that agree with subjugation. What minimizes one of us ultimately minimizes all of us.

Despite my protestations over moral relativity the study of ethics is invaluable, especially to anyone that wants to lead. One has to reflect on all points of view and assign them value and that cannot be done without a frame of reference in which to operate. This is why I usually find the lessons on the philosophies themselves to be of the greatest use. Additionally, studying racism and policies such as affirmative action are invaluable as they force one to look at something other than themselves. Anyone that says they oppose affirmative action as they themselves are not racist and slaves are no longer owned is missing the point. They are making it about themselves.









Morality isn’t about how you effect yourself but how you effect the world around you. Even those of that love isolating still need others to produce a society safe and healthy enough to sit in splendid isolation. We are a social species and while doing good things may feel good (and thus be about one’s self) the inescapable fact is that someone else was also affected. Studying ethics forces you to look at the bigger picture. I honestly feel that if you simply seek you better yourself through moral living you have it backwards. Instead one can study ethics in order to be better for others and by natural consequence be better yourself.