The battle between emotion and reason - Essay Example

HERE HERE YOUR HERE HERE The Battle between Emotion and Reason Ethics involve whether or not an individual behaves according to standards and principles that would be considered upright, virtuous, and respectable based on social codes of behavior and principles associated with community nobility. Ethical living is defined by excellence of social and moral performance in which an individual’s conduct provides good to the greater whole of society. Tools of critical thinking for ethics self-reflection, making comparisons to previous scenarios and situations in which individuals or community leaders have violated codes of decency, and ensuring a sense of emotional intelligence in which an individual concerns himself with the needs of others.

Personally, emotional intelligence is the most significant tool for ethics and has been used to understand one’s reasoning and logical behavior by conducting various self-assessments both scientific and based on emotional self-control. Ethical living involves ensuring adherence to relevant laws designed to protect the safety and well-being of others. Ethical living is also recognizing that one’s behaviors have a direct impact on the environment and on the attitudes of others in the broader social network and then attempting to conduct oneself according to the standards and principles.

Emotional intelligence is the tool for ethical living that is personally considered the most important as it allows an individual to proverbially step out of their own shoes and consider how one would feel if they were exposed to non-ethical behaviors that could serve to strip others of their dignity or sense of social belonging. It is not hard to live ethically, so long as others in society follow similar codes and principles and do not engage in hypocritical behaviors that are detrimental to the emotional or physical health of others.

Reason is necessary for making ethical decisions as it is founded on logic and allows the individual considering how to behave in a situation requiring ethics to be aware of the damage that non-moral behaviors can cause. Intuition involves an inherent self-awareness and instinct that alters one’s perceptions, a sort of sixth sense, that is proactive in guiding one’s ethical or non-ethical behaviors. As it has already been established that emotional intelligence is paramount to ensure ethical behavior, emotion such as sentiment and passion is important in guiding ethical conduct and attitude.

It allows an individual to have genuine feeling for others to ensure that psychological harm is not caused against others. A personal ethical scenario involved whether or not to cheat on an examination, knowing that it would be successful. The rewards for this cheating scenario would have guaranteed acceptance to a desired university and would have brought considerable accolades based on performance. However, I realized that this could potentially take opportunities away from other, more genuinely talented individuals, and therefore emotional intelligence and reason took over and prevented me from conducting the cheating activities.

By examining how this might impact the life of another individual who actually did not require cheating to be successful on the exam, I thought about how their opportunities for growth and income development could be affected over the long-term and thus the cheating did not occur.