Morality vs. Rational Self-Interest - Essay Example

Morality vs. Rational Self-InterestRational self-interest and morality are like two different sides of the same coin. Without rational self-interest, morality would have no place in the society. On the other hand, without morality in the social system, self-interest would additionally be predestined. Morality is a good thing. Immorality, on the other hand, is a deviant behavior. A person in his or her rational self-interest and drive should always do good things and avoid bad things at all costs.

People do behave immorally though immorality is not encouraged at any given social institution. This means that an immoral behavior, as opposed to the moral one, is hypocritical, irrational or insincere. Psycho-socially, there are situational occasions in which people weigh the pros and cons of their behaviors, and rationally and sincerely decide that the best things for them to do is precisely what moral forbids. In other meaning, what do we make of the situations under which morality tells you to do one thing whereas self-interest tells you to do exactly an opposite thing?

Accordingly, many social role players are psychologically directly inclined to improve their self-interests above any other innate behaviors including morality. For the psychologically inclined individuals in the elevation of self-interest, when self-interest and morality come into a head-to-head conflict, morality loses out. Per se, rationally speaking, morality should always conquer self-interest.In summary, the conquest nature of morality on self-interest, in the long run, may ruin the societal structural functionalism.

In a society where morality set standards to the self-interest there would be an implication of lack of facts about the right and wrong; people would be free to do whatever they like thus leading to dysfunctionality of the structures in these societies.