How has experience changed your view of what's right or wrong?

[Fugu]

Fugu,

 

I apologize if I read your post wrong and misinterpreted what you were trying to convey.

Thank you. I hope I made more sense the 2nd time around.

[Joel]

This is the best thread that's been started in this forum in a quite a while. Thanks to the OP and the responders.

 

I've pondered this a while, and I can't seem to account for how much my views have changed over time. What has changed with time and experience:

 

1. I try to examine my views to see if I really believe in why I hold them, rather than adopting them because I was told to, or because it was comfortable or convenient.

 

2. I think my own moral compass is as steady as it ever was, but I choose more carefully how to confront the evil I perceive. My energy is finite. Sometimes it seems better to spend it in support of good than combating every evil\wrong\affront. Some of those things would just go away if we ignored them.

 

3. I try to give more thought to the consequences of my actions and others's reactions, beyond the immediate effects. As a result, I'm frustrated by what I perceive as rising levels of individuals' indifference or inconsideration toward others. I'm also wondering how many people think beyond whether they CAN do a particular thing to whether they SHOULD do that thing. It seems to me that there are a lot of things we can do, but shouldn't.

 

4. I tend to be more concerned about how much herd mentality I perceive. There weren't just a few culprits in any of the recent scandals (subprime, options backdating, accounting fraud, performance-enhancing drugs in sports, etc.). It seems that there have been herds of people working hard to overcome their consciences by rationalizing things along the lines of "well, everyone else is doing it, I guess I should too, or I'll get left behind."

 

5. Related to #4, I'm bugged that so many people seem to think that some activities aren't wrong until you get caught doing them (theft, tax evasion, infidelity), so they won't stop until they get caught.

 

As negative as some of that might sound, I still believe in the general goodness of most people, and that our communities consist mainly of people who care about doing the right thing, building strong families, and leading by setting good examples. I see this in action every day. It offsets what the mass media tries to tell me is really going on in our world when they emphasize the weird, wrong and evil while practically ignoring all the good that goes on around us.

[steve.foote]

Dave, I think your "German soldier" analogy is an excellent example of how one's paradigm can shape their view of right and wrong. I firmly believe that how and what we are exposed to during our lives dramatically shapes our system of morals, values and principles.

 

Watch the paradigm change in the following story:

 

In the middle of the night a scraggly-looking man is peering through windows of various shops. It's obvious that he is nervous and in a hurry, and that he is looking for something in particular.

 

After passing by three different shops, he finds what he is looking for in a jewelry boutique and smashes the window with a rock. Brushing away the shards of glass, he reaches in and removes a fire extinguisher.

 

With the fire extinguisher in hand, he runs back around the corner and quickly arrests a small fire which had started in a dumpster below an apartment building. Ten minutes later, the fire department arrived.

 

Was he wrong to smash the window and steal the fire extinguisher? From a technical standpoint, yes. Would he have been wrong to have simply waited for the fire department, possibly allowing the apartment building to catch fire? Technically, no. Were we wrong to assume in the first part of the story that he was a common thief?