1041923 The first question that comes to my mind when faced with a moral dilemma is: “What would my father do?” For my entire life, I have looked up to my father and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life. Many of my personal morals can be contributed back to the lessons and examples my father has provided consistently. The basis for the majority of values I hold is the idea of respecting everyone. Underneath this umbrella are honoring my word, being reliable, and never intentionally harming someone –physically or emotionally- unless in self-defense. For as long as I can remember, my father has told me, “A man is only as good as his word.” Over the past couple of years I have watched this belief be tested. My mother suffers …show more content…
I do not understand all of her struggles, but many of them I do as I suffer from similar health issues such as chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and chronic depression. I also have an autoimmune disease. I can relate to wanting to crawl into bed and staying there. What I cannot relate to is my mother choosing herself over those she claimed responsibility for, for the three children she helped create. How am I to respect a mother who denies her role as a mother? How am I supposed to acknowledge her as an authoritative figure when I had to take up the role of mother despite only being a young teenager? How can I respect someone who I am suppose to rely on but …show more content…
I do rely on a sense of duty or obligation such as in Deontological theory when it comes to keeping my word and being responsible. Much like Kant, I act on certain principles and values that I would want others to uphold and to treat others as people, not tools that can be used to promote myself. The ethical theory I relate to the most is Virtue Ethics, though. I do believe that being essentially a good person will help in making the right decisions. I very much listen to my conscience and gut instincts when I am in a situation that is morally questionable. I have been lucky enough to not have been steered wrong thus far. I also clearly have a role model that I try to emulate and who has taught me through examples and lessons. I evaluate many of my actions and the consequences that may follow in a Utilitarian way. I try to limit the negative outcomes for those around me based on my choices and often I take an altruistic approach, doing what is good for others rather than what I
My mother was a very well-tempered woman, who kept to herself. Like Suzette, I didn’t know much about my mother’s background, or a lot of the pain and hardship she went through until I was older. This is when I realized why my mother conducted herself the way she did, because of all the pain she had built up inside of her from her past. For example; it was very hard to get my mother to talk during emotional situations, she was always quiet and would just mostly stare at you in silence. My mother was born in Philadelphia on October 3rd, 1966. Diane was the oldest of her four siblings, and if it’s as common as I think older siblings tend to have it harder than the others because they have to set examples, their looked up to as the protectors, and are just assigned a lot of responsibility at a young age.
...h conclusion about my struggles with my mother. Mothers (and fathers) do what they can with what they know. That is all. They believe that they are doing the right thing, and we as children must learn to appreciate that.
Everyone has their own personal values that the gain throughout their lives. Some of these values are passed down through the different generations of their family. Values can change over time and some people learn more values as they grow up. I personally have gained a range of different values in the past eighteen years of my life. My own values include: respect, honesty, empathy and trust. I gained the value of respect through my parents as I was always told to show respect to others and they would then show me respect back. When I was really young I had to respect other people’s things and their feelings. Through my parents I was brought up to believe that it is always better to be honest and tell the truth about everything. I feel that
When I was born, my mother breast fed me for two weeks, I stayed in the hospital room with her instead of going to the nursery, and she was home with me for the first five years of my life. My father worked and my mother tended to the home, with the help of her mother and grandmother. I ate Gerber baby jarred food and my mother read to me every night. My family did not adhere to many other cultural norms however. It was culturally expected that a husband and wife would have a home, with stable jobs and an established relationship before having children. My father was eight years my mother’s senior, and my mother was only 18 when I was born. My mother never earned her high school diploma. My parents were married the month before I was born. My father worked in construction and had a criminal record. Every single one of these descriptions violates the cultural norms of where I grew up in North Carolina. Although my story starts to sound a lot like a Lifetime movie, my mother defied all odds to provide a safe and secure haven for me. “When they sense that a parent is consistent and dependable, they develop a sense of basic trust in the parent” (Crain, 283). I could rely on my parents and trust that they would be there to take care of me which lead to my development of “the core ego strength of this period: hope” which emerges from the child developing a favorable balance of trust over mistrust. “Hope is the expectation that despite frustrations, rages, and disappointments, good things will happen in the future” (Crain, 285). My mother is the living embodiment of that sentiment. As early as I can remember, I can remember her insistence that as long as we were together, we were
A majority of people would describe themselves as good and virtuous if asked to describe their personal character. Many would go on and describe the numerous occasions when they donated money to a charity, committed a random act of kindness to a stranger without being told to do so or chose not to lie. However, it is possible that people do not naturally act in such honorable ways, but are pushed to behave morally. With the fear of receiving negative consequences for wrongdoing, it is debatable whether people willing or naturally behave justly.
Ethics are moral principles that can be used to help guide peoples decisions. We are all different and therefore our beliefs and opinions differ. There are many ethical theories, and according to Panza and Potthast (n.d.) the following are some that are widely used. Virtue ethics is one theory which states that personality is the most important thing. Living an ethical life, acting right, requires that one develops and demonstrates the quality of courage, compassion, wisdom, and temperance. It also requires that greed, jealousy, and selfishness is avoided. Utilitarianism states that the amount of happiness and suffering created by a person’s actions is what matters the most. As a result, acting rightly includes maximizing the amount of happiness and minimizing the amount of suffering around you. At times you may need to break some of the traditional moral rules to achieve such an outcome. Kantianism is another theory which highlights the principles behind actions rather than an actions results. It states that it requires to be motivated by good principles that treats everyone with respect. If you’re motivated by good principles, you overcome your animal instinct and act ethically. Another ethical theory is the Contract theory, which suggest that ethics should be thought of as terms of agreements between people. It suggests that doing the right thing means obeying agreements set by members rather than those of society. For this theory ethics isn’t necessarily about character, consequences, or principles. The last theory I’m going to mention is Care ethics. Care ethics focuses on ethical attention on relationships before other factors. As a result, acting rightly involves building, strengthening, and maintaining strong relationship...
To answer this question, we must consider what the right thing to do was. Moral reasoning poses two questions: What is the right thing to do? and What are the virtues of traits of a person who lives life well.
She’s one of those old souls stuck in the fifty’s and refuses to see the 21st century. She is a good mother, it 's only when it came to me she lacked. I met my mother when I was four. She adopted my little sis and me. Through my younger age I hated her I absolutely hated her and she failed to understand why or explain to me so I could understand whom the lady was that I was staying with. Where my real mother was. She failed to help me see what was going on and with me only being four I thought she kidnapped me and I hated her. As I grew up I learned precisely what was going on and I no longer had a heart for her it dwindled down to more of a dislike. I understood why was with her, but I expended most of my early youth wondering why did this have to happen to me. And why did I have to be with her. My mother wasn’t a bad mother she only lacked the nurturing a love I needed. She held my early years against me and we’ve been stepping on thin ice ever
According to the article, “Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making”, developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer, there are five different approaches to values to deal with moral issues, which are:
I believe that my childhood is a primary influence and for me, this was a negative force that continues to drive my ethics today. I grew up with instability, insecurity, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. When I achieved difficult tasks such as winning an ice-cream cone for getting high scores in my reading assignments, I was ridiculed. When I tried to take positive steps by going to youth group to learn about Christ, I was told “now, you think you 're better than everyone”. These acts along with the abuse lead me to believe that I was worthless, undeserving of love and affection. Prior to leaving home, there were times in my early teens I lived with my mother who decided it was okay to supply me with drugs and alcohol. The use of these drugs stopped my developmental growth. When I came of age, I left home to live on the streets, it was better than the abuse. Life on the streets led me to even harder drugs that nearly cost my
In my formative years, I am sad to admit that I was the most critical of my mother. We suffered from what experts would identify as ‘mutual incomprehensibility’, and I believe at times we still do; however, as I grow more and more into woman hood and our bond has been strengthened with experience, I have had the amazing opportunity to gain a true sense of my mother and have come to admire her in many ways ( though she probably doesn 't believe me). For whatever reason, I once found solace in reducing all my problems as some fault of my mother’s inability to prepare me for adulthood. Instead of seeking advice and wisdom, I rebelled! Looking back, I now realize she only wanted to protect me, to help me, but as a teen that felt like control
It 's ludicrously ironic now, but as child her logic made perfect sense, and I reasoned myself out of blaming her. She was right. I was wrong. She only mocked me subjected me to strange accusations and verbal cruelty, and we had always done something, anything wrong. After years of constant uncertainty, belittling, and the mounting awareness that my mother was losing her grip on ordinary behavior, I was beginning to realize that I had been afraid. Without a trusted adult telling me in a multitude of ways that everything I did was suspect and somehow bad, I regained a shred of emotional security. I fully realize how strange it is that it took me so long to realize this was a form of abuse, but anything can seem normal when you don 't know anything different. It 's now clear why I looked forward so passionately to overnight visits with friends, and why watching them interact with their mothers, easily, lovingly, and unafraid, made me feel so cold and so perplexing ly angry. I was jealous of any parent-child relationship that wasn 't rooted in fear and uncertainty. On my darker days, I still feel that twinge of envy. Today I speak to my mother only sometimes, and never in any great depth. There 's nothing below the surface that would be pleasant to
Everyday we are tested as individuals to make the right choice. How we view ourselves as individuals and how others view us are directly correlated to our moral decision-making. But morals are somewhat misleading. What might be a wrong decision for one person might be a solution to another. So how do we define morals? Do we follow Gods’ moral rules because to do so would increase out likelihood of obtaining salvation in the afterlife? Or is it simpler than that. Is God going to deny our entrance into heaven because we have run a stop sign here and there? No. I believe our moral values are much simpler than that. I believe that our moral decision-making comes from our upbringing of what is right or wrong. Our parents and the people we surround ourselves with, are, I believe, direct causes of how we make decisions. Having more positive family influences as we grow up to adults will better help us come to make the right decisions in tough situations. In this paper, I will take you through a situation where my morals were tested. It takes place in the northern woods of Vermont in a little town called St. Albans where a young boy transforms into a young man by controlling his emotions and making the right decision.
My values were all influenced by my parents. The only one that I had to
The first one is on my professional duties which follow rules and professional codes. The second one is applying ethical behavior in my day-to-day personal life. As I mentioned earlier, I tend to follow the theory of utilitarianism in order to do positive things in my day-to-day life. In general, I believe that ethics must be a rule for all human beings throughout their entire life. Finally, I believe ethical behavior is a teachable theory and education can change society’s understanding about the importance of ethical behavior and morality. Therefore, unethical behavior has negative consciences to someone’s life and to the community as