Reflective Essay

While many moral absolutists believe in a black or white world regarding ethics, I believe there is a gray area of uncertainty in every moral situation. I believe most moral issues are often ambiguous and have multiple viewpoints to judge them on, but that they do not neatly fall into a category of right or wrong. Personally, I do not think the morals of any person should be automatically judged because morals are usually based on the culture and the environment in which a person is raised.

The philosophical idea of tabula rasa explores a theory that every person is born as a blank, uninfluenced slate with no sense of ethics or morality. However, moral standards begin to form as the person grows up and adopts the ethics of their parents, cultures, or experiences. While these morals may be similar, every person will grow up and learn a slightly different set of moral “rules”. For example, if one child is repeatedly scolded and punished for biting others, he/she will eventually understand that biting is wrong. Contrastingly, if a child is never reprimanded for biting, he/she will not understand that biting is wrong and may continue to bite people into older stages of his/her life. Parents obviously have a strong influence on the morals of their children and because of this, morals are often passed down through generations. While right and wrong has changed with time, the basic principles have been handed down from parent to parent and result in the shaping of morals in the current generation of the family. Many children without parents or a stable family system become immoral or amoral members of society. Too often children growing up in poor homes or in orphanages become criminals or gang members because they did not have a const...

... middle of paper ...

...ures and individuals.

Christians and people of faith are often moral absolutists because their religions clearly state a moral doctrine within their teachings. However, even some morals upheld in the Bible are no longer believed to be true. The set of morals in Leviticus are often disregarded because they do not apply to modern time, but other ethical ideals are picked from the Bible and believed to be true. Because every person believes in a different standard of morals and every situation is different, a gray, ambiguous, and unknown area of ethics is created. People should not be judged based on their moral standards because parents, cultures, and experiences often shape the morals of humans. In an ever-changing and constantly moving world, morals can never be completely absolute because these ideas of right and wrong must adapt to the new standards of the world.