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Effects of Religion in Society
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Making Rational and Moral Decisions as an Adolescent
As adolescents growing up in such turbulent times, it is often difficult for persons of my young age to make decisions that are both rational and moral. I have watched a countless number of my peers make decisions that they understood to be immoral. Whether or not they were simply trying to "fit in" or avoid peer pressure, I cannot say. I can only say that I observed this with sadness. For I only wish that my friends could have the strength to believe in their morals, values and reason that are the roots of their very existence and not have to resort to acting out of their desire to be accepted.
I feel a sense of sadness because I know in my own life, I have developed a moral system that allows me to make decisions without a question or doubt. It is this system that allows me to face situations with the knowledge that I will come out ahead. It is true that the majority of what I believe to be moral can be attributed to my parents and the values they have instilled in me. For example, I have been told from an early age that lying is wrong. My experiences as I have grown older, and the constant reminder from my parents have only shown this value to hold consistent moral worth. However, my education, socialization and firm faith have only been the stepping stones to becoming a righteous individual. As a thinking, rational being, I see it as my duty to take this basis to a higher level. I must be able to critique my thought processes and analyze them in order to understand fully the roots of my very existence. Only then can I find myself on the road to becoming a mature and original thinker.
In addition to the moral framework that I have received from my parents...
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...ning my reasoning powers, allows me to make many of the same decisions that I feel Aristotle would have made. As I face battles, obstacles and choices day in and day out, it is often hard to keep my passions in check and make decisions based on what is moral and just. Yet as a strong-willed and determined individual, I strive each day to use my reasoning powers not only to make the correct choices but also to guide my life towards one that is complete and satisfying.
Bibliography:
Bibliography
Johnson, Oliver A. Ethics: Selections from Classical and Contemporary Writers, Eighth
Edition. Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Fort Worth, TX. 1994.
Pojman, Louis P. Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, Second Edition. Wadsworth
Publishing Company. Belmont, CA. 1995.
State University of New Jersey, Rutgers Accounting Web (RAW).
As a teenager we are all looking to be accepted by our peers and will do whatever it is they want us to so we can be accepted. That is to say the feeling of needing to be accepted by ones peers is done consciously; the person starts to do what their friends do without thinking about it. (Teen 3) In fact, teens are more likely to be affected by peer pressure because they are trying to figure out who they are. (How 1) Therefore, they see themselves as how their peers would view them so they change to fit their peer’s expectations. (How 1) Secondly, the feeling of needing to rebel and be someone that isn’t who their parents are trying to make them be affects them. (Teen 2) Thus, parents are relied on less and teens are more likely to go to their peers about their problems and what choices to make. (How 1) Also, their brains are not fully matured and teens are less likely to think through their choices thoroughly before doing it. (Teen 6) Lastly, how a child is treated by his peers can affect how they treat others; this can lead them into bullying others who are different. (Teen 3) Consequently this can affect a teen into doing something good or bad; it depends who you surround yourself with.
author Alexander Robbins states: “From the age of five children increasingly exclude peers who don’t conform to group norms. Children learn this quickly. A popular Indiana eighth grader told me ‘I have to be the same as everybody else, or people won’t like me anymore’” (150). The human brain is wired such that children will end friendships with kids that they find different. Robbins finds this behavior to be undesirable saying that it is not only unappealing, but it is a cop-out. In agreement with Robbins, parents across the world, organizations, and teen movies tell society that conformity is bad and that children should not conform to the group, rather they should stand alone and be individuals. However, Solomon Asch’s study may have discovered why this is. He concluded that: “The investigations described in this series are concerned with the independence and lack of independence in the face of group pressure” (1). Asch determines that in the face of pressure people are more apt to conform.
Our Young Folks was a children’s magazine that ran from 1865 until 1873. Although the magazine didn’t last long, it was widely read by children across the country and even abroad, and circulation eventually exceeded 75,000 (Kelly 345). The magazine began publication just four months before the end of the Civil War, and during this time of upheaval Our Young Folks was an ethical guide for the nation’s children. Nearly every story offers the reader a moral, and children were continually urged to put others before themselves.
...Aristotle’s conclusion relates human good, activity of soul and excellence. It is this expression of virtue through action that allows happiness to be obtained. Such dependence on virtue sets the scene for Aristotle to examine virtue more closely. He will elaborate on the two parts of reasoning well (virtue). The first part of reasoning well is having the right desires to aim oneself at the right good and not just the apparent good. The second part of reasoning well is knowing how to get to this proper desire. This will be further elaborated in book two where Aristotle will explore what it means to reason well and what is means to be virtuous.
As I developed into my teen years my actions were as every teenager; rebelling and doing all the things I was told not to do simply because of the fact. Of course the results were a mix of regrets, yet also discovery, about myself and the world around me. As my friendships developed, I found myself wanting their approval so my morality was more conventional obeying only the rules that would make me seem as being a good person by...
... instead of following the majority. The issue of peer pressure can relate to teens, as they are in constant pressure to be ‘cool’ or to be in the ‘in’ group. It does not really promote individualism, so people cannot develop their own ideas but rather follow the leader of their group.
Peer pressure and acts of mass blind obedience are all too common occurrences in our everyday society. A person, who under any other circumstances would never act in such a way, will commit unthinkable acts when backed by a single person or even worse, a large mass of individuals. It’s almost always destructive, and the person or persons involved usually always end up feeling regretful and bewildered by their actions. When thinking about group peer pressure, there are several other words that come to mind such as; conformity, compliance, brainwashing and social influence. Group peer pressure can make a person with the purest morals and the highest values act in ways that are more than contradictory. Group peer pressure can turn a saint into a sinner, a leader to a follower, and an individual to a tiny speck in a large and corrupt mass.
There comes a time when you 're not a youth anymore. Being a teenager means your body is going into multiple changes and sometimes these changes cause you to act a unique way. Most parents don’t pretend that raising a teenager is easy. In this part of their life is when all the changes happen and they start going through puberty. Mood swings start to happen and this has all of us questioned. Why does this certain age group act the way they do? What factors influence decision making in teenagers? The significance for the factors that influence decision making in teenage behavior is that we study this because we need to know why certain people like teenagers act the way they do. This could help answer many other questions going on in a parent 's head. The factors that most influence decision making in teenagers are biological changes, positive and negative reinforcement, but not a need to be obedient to authority.
Many adolescents display qualities of social interest (Ballou, 2002) such as self-worth, self-assurance, involvement in community, and encouragement of others. However, the adolescents who display traits of selfish tendencies, including the need to dominate, refusal to cooperate, desire to take not give, greater concern with self than community (Durbin, 2004), will be perceived as socially useless. Roger Ballou discusses this by stating some youth, “become discouraged either because of unfortunate life situations or despite the quality of their upbringing. Some teens become demoralized in their attempt to find their place in life and instead decide to pursue mistaken beliefs” (2002, p.
Alert! Alert! We 've all seen it on TV shows and in the movies: a good kid with a good home and a good family life, but questionable friends. Soon enough, the kid is going out every night smoking, doing drugs, and partying. Every parenting book on the planet, it seems, has a section similar to this with warnings all over about how to save your child from the harmful, gripping effects of peer pressure. This all promotes the idea that peer pressure is damaging to school-children and teenagers. As a whole, society has become obsessed with individuals making decisions for themselves, so much so that we 've been trained to hear alarm bells when we think of peer pressure. However, though it is usually connoted as a negative influence, peer pressure perpetuates many positive qualities within a number of social situations.
Peer pressure is very common with teenagers now a days, being with group of friends for teenagers make them feel belong. Belongingness that they seek, to feel good about themselves and also to cope up with the trend that the society is feeding them. Being “cool” is what the teenagers want to be, they want to be famous to be idolize by their fellow teenagers. In that state of mentality, they do all odds to be famous or to be cool they try different things to stay cool. Others also try to fit in with their peer groups so that they are influenced to do things that they do not want to do to be belong to the group. Also if a teenager is rejected it can lead to hurting
right or wrong in human behavior; based on what is you think is right or good. Morals
There are two paths to choose from, one leads to the right way while the other leads you to the wrong path. Jim tells John that the right way is the cool looking one with monsters, violence and illicit drugs. James tries to persuade John that the decent path with is the one with priorities, goals and success. John thinks for a second and decides that he wants to be cool instead of responsible. He listened to Jim and before you know it he took the wrong path and chose to be cool for a while than in the long run. Such is the life of being a pressured teenager when there are people with good or bad intentions. Peer pressure affects us all in our lives and it is most potent in our teenage years. When we are growing up as children all we want is to have fun and focus more on what kind of fun will there be next instead of self-discovery or identity. As we mature then we start focusing more on what we like, our interests and who we want to be. A big portion of that is determined by our peers or who we hang around with. That is what makes us become mature adults or broken souls, “It's not unnatural for peer behavior to affect us, but following your peers blindly is not a wise thing to do”. This is when the person decides to make a decision on his own or let his peers decide for him. Will it be the best possible path or will it end up being a disappointment?
...t everyone else would expect him or her to do, especially their peers. It is a stress or strain that one feels from their friends and school mates to actually act, behave, think and look a certain way. But we can somehow lessen our exposure to peer pressure if we are involved with such teens that posses the same boundaries, ethics and interests that we do. It is therefore important to maintain a strong basis of ethics, both in the personal and social world, in order to withstand negative peer pressure and to restrict ourselves from being drawn into evil things, like joining gangs, drugs or any other self destructive activities. In the end, curbing such behaviour by reporting the wrongdoer is then better than turning a blind eye for the sake of our relationship with the person. Therefore any relationship should not be let to interfere with one's own beliefs and ethics.
In the rapid change of the world today, the importance of moral among youth seems decrease drastically among teenagers in the world. The society plays a huge role in misleading the youth with advertisement that seem to ruin the moral values. If the society pays good tribute on the welfare of the future generation, the future of our world will be better. Thus, the importance of moral values among youth also can help them discover and develop into a better person too. Those who value good moral get the privilege of modifying and altering their lives for the better. It helps youth to inculcate and good qualities inherited from healthy youth. General George Washington once said: Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem you own reputation negatively, it is better alone than in bad company. Hence, we can see that it is very importance to instill moral among youth. There are a lot of advantages of maintaining a good moral among teenagers such as: to avoid social problem, to develop a good friendship and relationship, ensuring peaceful country in the future, represent who we are and keeping a positive thinking.