Liberal Studies: A Sense of Moral Obligation - Essay Example

Set To do the right thing for Banham (78) means to act out of a sense of moral obligation. In other words, an individual does an action not because of its consequences but because he/she recognizes by reasoning that it is ethically the right thing to do and therefore regards him/herself as having an obligation to do that action. A person may at times get some pleasure or other gain from doing what is right, but to act ethically, one does not do it for the sake of its wanted outcome, but rather because he/she knows that it is morally the right thing to do. In this context, Banham’s (79) view towards morality parallel’s the Christian view regarding obedience to God’s commands, according to which the Christians obey God’s commands because God commands them and not because of fear of punishment in hell or for the sake of rewards in heaven after death. Hence the rationale is one does the right thing because he/she recognizes him/herself has a reason to do and not out of feelings. For most Americans, being successful is all about raising an being part of a loving family, about contributing something meaningful to their society and about maintaining healthy relationships with friends and colleagues. The worthwhile contribution may be local in scope, as in volunteering to assist school, charity or neighborhood church. Or it may involve wide social or political stage i.e. including national or even global movements like those trying to reduce world poverty, fighting the HIV pandemic or seeking greater equality for politically, socially or economically underprivileged groups. It is a fact that people have different views on success because our individual life experiences and genetic make-up combine to make our individual objectives unique. But in a broad sense, success is the same for all of us. To me, a successful life is a journey I choose along the path to fulfillment of my unique genetic ability as a human being (Scott, 26). Moral confusion is present today in the United States and it continues to escalate under Obama administration which widely supports the incongruous political combination of publicly funded gay marriage and abortion. The moral confusion undermines every of life in the United States, from uncouth local politicians to foreign policy to the teenagers whose social media accounts, which they can easily access, divulge bracing vulgarity and materialism. Without proper guidance, this generation of young people is putting their future in danger, posting all manners of rubbish on the web. The drift from moral truth in the United States is leading to mass confusion among the youth. The children are taught on proper use of condoms in learning institutions while they are told by their mothers to abstain from sex. Young children who attend public schools are taught that homosexuality is normal, even preferred. More than 300 women kill their own children in America annually, homicide being one of the major causes of death of children under the age of five years. Set 6 According to religious creation theory, god made humans fully formed with no related previous species. But could Evolution be God’s tool? In his book, Darwin did not mention anywhere about God. However, Darwinism undermines both the notion that man is made in God’s image and the notion that is a unique creature. In addition, if Darwinism is correct then the idea of human dignity will not make sense. To replace the human dignity doctrine, Rachels (57) offer the concept of moral individualism which he argues that it is more in keeping with an evolutionary perspective. According to this concept, how a person should be treated depends on his/her own unique traits, rather than whether he/she is from a certain favored group of human beings. Therefore the Darwinism and religious theories cannot be compatible. Capitalism is an intrinsically crisis-prone economic system. The forces behind it causes it to be unstable and self destructive. This still applies today as it was over 150 years ago when Karl Marx, in his communist manifesto, described capitalism as a society whose workers face exploitation from their bosses. Today in modern factories, for example, an average worker is not much more than a replaceable gear in a massive production apparatus. Workers have basically lost control over the production process. As an end result they have become alienated from their very human nature. Capitalism has to be done away with for the emancipation of the society to be complete. It can be compared with absolute monarchy or any other repressive system. But while absolute monarchy bounds people’s autonomy by controlling in political sphere, capitalism limits them by controlling their workplaces as well as their economic lives. Economic depressions and recessions were part of capitalism at its birth and continue to plague the world economy to this day (Sowell, 164). According to Midgley, the social Darwinism is only but an unofficial religion of the west. It is built on exaggerated individualism which is an unrealistic acceptance of competitiveness as key to human nature. She argues that individuals not only are greedy and selfish but hold philosophical and psychological theories which remind them about their greed and selfishness. She posits a notion of duty that is less restricted than the contractual use in modern philosophy. Atkins arguments imply that cultural variation arises from interaction and natural selection, with precise short term environments and contexts. He adds that humans like the rest of the nature are continuous and same laws are obeyed by the entire nature. It should therefore be possible to trace the informal steps that led to fastidious groups of minds in a particular time and place. Of the two, Midgley seems more persuasive in her arguments. Set 13 There is a big difference wanting and needing whereas both are simply emotional states that one needs to be aware of. There is a vicious and horrible mentality that a good number of things we have we need, when in reality, we only need a few things and the rest are what we want. Scholars argue that even though there is nothing wrong with wanting, allowing ourselves to think that we need some things will only stop us from getting them. It is good to be familiar with what we want and we must have a passion to get them. However, the challenge for many people is that they fall into attitude of neediness. We cannot get what we want through the attitude of neediness. As a matter of fact, the neediness mindset will only make it harder for us to get what we desire. We ought to have a burning desire of what we want as it is the emotional driver that brings those things we are craving for closer to us. We should trust that what we want will come to u, or better, will be delivered to us by the universe (Dwayne, 104). Levitt and Durbar’s account of cheating is brought out in the first chapter of their book called Freakonomics. They use economic theory to demonstrate the existence of cheating in wrestling among the sumo community. In a wrestling contest, all top division wrestlers compete in 15 matches and whoever that does not win at least eight matches faces relegation. Levitt uses their winning statistics along with the fact that corruption is part of the match results to conclude that those who already have 8 wins conspire with those with 7 wins and let them win. They also posit that various enticements encourage teachers to cheat by helping their students with multiple-choice exams. Levitt analyzed the patterns of answers if a teacher cheated and found out that the more hard questions found towards the end of the exam sections will be answered correctly more often as compared to easy questions found at the start of exam sections (Dubner, 32). Ariely on the other hand posits that lack of clarity in what people expect is a great mastermind of cheating. For example, it might imply that asking a peer what he/she thinks a question means if the words are not clear is pretty reasonable, then, in a natural sense, that discussion of intent might lead to what the answer might be. Also prolonged discussion of topics like corruption could easily instigate dishonest behavior in those taking part. Furthermore, people concur that cheating in the social domain is in many cases acceptable – mostly referred to as white lies. For instance when a friend asks how she looks in her new outfit and you say ‘nice’ when she is not, that’s often excused from sphere of dishonesty. References Banham, Gary. Kants Transcendental Imagination London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Davis, Scott: Moral Confusion Takes Its Toll On America http://www.severnaparkvoice.com/index.php :2013 Dubner, Stephen: Yes, This Blog Is Leaving NYTimes.com: 2011. Dwayne Gilbert: Want Vs Need - The Difference Between Wanting and Needing http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dwayne_Gilbert :2006` James Rachels: Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism Oxford University Press 1999 Thomas Sowell, Marxism: Philosophy and Economics: New York: William Morrow: 1985 Read More