An Approach to Morality - Essay Example

They are self-conscious, reflecting on their past and future, on life and death. Before discussing them as good or bad it is essential to describe what do we mean by being "good" or "bad". (Gmez-Lobo, p. 1-3) I believe being good means to fulfill the criteria of morality, that is, the customs, habits, aims, and values adopted by a given society, or, stated differently, the quality of rightness or wrongness the society attributes to the acts and attitudes of an individual as these conform or fail to conform to prevailing custom.

In a moral sense "Bad" is contrasted with "Good". If an orderly, rational universe is postulated, and particularly if it is assumed that there is an omnipotent and beneficent creator, the bad or evil disrupts the order and results in sorrow, distress, or calamity. In a derived sense, being bad is equated with any suffering or other misfortune. Its cause and what can be done about it are perennial philosophical and theological problems. (Cooley, p. 61-63) Observing the above criteria I believe that nature has created human beings with both negative and positive potentials.

He is provided with all awareness of ethics and morality but, somehow, possesses a natural inclination towards bad deeds also. This tug-of-war between good and bad constitutes his life pattern and the ultimate end. Moreover, I have observed that these potentials of goodness and badness may be augmented or mitigated, unknowingly, due to the type of environment and brought up an individual comes across. No child is a born criminal or saint, but most definitely it's his type of environment and the kind of brought up given to him or her by the parents determine his negative or positive responds towards the society. David T. Lykken, a professor of psychology considers the psychopath as a hero and believes that "The psychopath and the hero are the twigs of same branch.

" He thinks so as both are comparatively daring. He believes such behaviors develop as a result of the type of brought up given to a child by his parents. (Akers and Lanier, p. 397-402)In my opinion human beings are not angels. Angels by nature are not inclined towards bad deeds or sins, but human beings have this natural inclination, which he mostly controls successfully but at times these negative desires overwhelms his positivity and compel him towards being bad, this is why, concept of crime has been a part of society ever since people began to live together in groups.

Where there is involvement of human mind the potential of crime is there as it is rightly said by a British poet W. H. Auden that "Evil is unspectacular and always human and shares our bed and eats at our table". (Nietzsche & Kaufman, p.167)To conclude I would say that there cannot be love without the possibility of hate, or good without the possibility of evil. One cannot choose to excel unless there is the possibility of failure. To deny the possibility of moral evil is to deny human freedom.

Yet in the exercise of freedom, innocent persons are maimed or killed. The consolation of the topic is that although evil is real, God does not will it and actually suffers with humankind, and that a person's faith in God's goodness will be vindicated in the life hereafter. In order to overcome evil people need to fight with the devil inside them instead of blaming and accusing others.Works CitedAkers, Timothy A.,