Morality is a difficult idea to describe. I don’t know if we can ever know how a human would act if he had never had intelligent contact with another human. However, if we met such a person, we would judge his survival behavior as moral. If Shakespeare is right in saying, “In life, there is nothing right or wrong, only thought makes it so,” then how do I define morality? Much of morality is based on what is right or wrong, right or wrong. Looking at so many cultures, many people believe that their point of view is the correct way. However, there seem to be some common elements shared between cultures. For example, most cultures value the value of birth and the care that is needed for a newborn.
Therefore, I will define morality on two levels. One level is the morality that is shared by the simple fact of being human and the other is a more subjective version (state morality) that comes from everything that has influenced our lives and has shaped how we believe and how we see the world . I think that in my subjective version, there is also a sense of relativity. For example, a man develops a definition of what is right or wrong in a very conservative black and white mindset, supports everything the government says, and has served in the military. This man has a son (a son) and experiences a joy and love that he has never felt before. He grows up to soften and now sees war and youth deaths, and begins to question his earlier hard-line thinking. When your son turns 18 and signs up for the military, he has a complete change in the way he views his beliefs and those of others.
Another way that morality can change is through biological influences. While adolescents, especially Islamic or Catholic religious upbringing, are encouraged to believe in abstinence, the hormones of adolescence can increase the desire for sexual encounters and challenge morals. Conflicting behavior, such as premarital sexual activity, can provoke feelings of anxiety or guilt (Gardiner & Kosmitzki, 2005). Most of these moral conflicts have their origin in what Piaget calls autonomous morality (Santrock, 2009); This is when older children realize the rules of their society and understand the consequences.
This sexual example can also illustrate gender differences in morality. For many girls, especially in the West, society promotes and reinforces expected gender behavior. Girls for women should act with less aggression, more patience and compassion, while boys are given much greater freedom for deviant behaviors (including drinking, smoking, sex and aggression). While laws can cause these behaviors to have similar consequences, women tend to suffer more severe stigma, such as acting like a lady (Santrok, 2009).
Sexual, gender, and other moral differences can have even greater polarities when viewed from other cultures. In the states, morality seems to be in the eye of the beholder. Ideas are much more abstract and can change if life experience is fostered. Other cultures, like that of India, have more stable boundaries centered on their beliefs that make morality less wavering. At an early age, children are taught values that are more based on “living and respecting universally” as practiced in Hinduism. Violations are not considered in a hierarchy; instead, there is a specific way of looking at life and the social rules of humanity and there is not much room for interpretation (Santrock, 2009).
Many people adopt the beliefs that form the values of their parents and their culture (Santrock, 2009). However, it is clear that influences remain a part of our life throughout its entirety. This accumulation of continuous experience can modify the way we see things (and this is also influenced by our past because those experiences help us teach us to be more flexible in our thinking or more rigid) and change or modify our beliefs and alter our morality.
Reference:
Santrock, JW (2009). A Topical Approach to Life Cycle Development (Custom Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Gardiner, HW and Kosmitzki, C. (2005). Lives across cultures: cross-cultural human development (3rd ed., Pp. 163-184). Pearson / Allyn and Bacon.