World Religions

I think the main problem with morality in mankind is individuality. This has occurred to me before, but not as strongly as it did today during our discussion about conscience. Mankind is flawed, in that we are all different. While this is our greatest strength(allows us to develop science and specialize in our strong fields), it is also our greatest weakness. We can not agree on standards of anything, perfection is impossible. Morality will never be generalized in that perfect standard we need, and man will continue to argue over the nitty gritty right and wrong. This could be interpreted as we get different sides to the argument, and our morality is therefore flexible to allow us to do the right thing in certain situations, but this deliberation is costly, and makes morals more unwieldy in my opinion. It is like a diamond with too many faces, and in the end is bloated and no asthetic appeal. All these different takes on situations prevent action and provoke argument. In the end, though, who are we to judge what is right and what is wrong? We’re all human, intrinsically imperfect, and our morality is no more perfect than our person. The general ideas have evolved to the point of basic rules, like stealing is wrong, as well as killing, lieing, and so on, and society generally accepts these. Whats the point of arguing with it? It is the general opinion, the closest to an absolute standard, so I’ve decided to stop questioning it and just go with the flow

My Christmas this year involved several gifts that made me question what was right and wrong. For starters, I purchased a game called Braid using some gift money. Normally, a video game would not make me question what was right and what was wrong, but this one did. Braid is the story of Tim, who is questing to find a princess, and the game is ironically remniscent of the Mario games. However, when you get to the end of the game, you realize that the princess does not want to be rescued by you, and when you attempt to, she runs away. This made me stop for a second. Is it right for you to violate anothers rights out of love? I don’t believe so. If the princess does not want to be rescued, you should be able to respect that, after all, people do tend to know what is best for them, unless they are crazy, or very immature. The other moral dilemma I got for Christmas this year was in the form of the latest installment in my favorite book series, Dusk Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. Dusk Watch tackles the common theme in literature, Good and Evil. Once again, I found myself asking me, is good really all that different from evil? In Dusk Watch, Good and Evil do whats necessary to achieve what, in their opinion, is right. The best metaphor I can think of for these two powers is Communism(Good) vs. Capitalism(Evil). Now you may think that since capitalism is evil, they author actually thinks that, but again, they really are the same in the book, they just want different things. The “good”" guys want everyone to be happy, whereas the “evil” people wish for survival of the fittest. I personally side with evil myself. The good guys wish for an impossible goal, one that is blocked by human nature itself. Even though they live only for others, their powers come from happiness in other people. In order to survive, they must eat happiness, making others miserable, and is that really all that good? Evil lives off of suffering, alleviating others of their pain, that does not sound all that bad. Also, they aren’t your typical bad guys, they occasionally donate to others, and their “seflish” actions are better defined as self-interested, which as a calss we previously deemed “alright”. In the end, this Christmas made me question not only who I was as a person, but made me think about my actions. Should I really try to rescue that metaphorical princess, and, in the end, what is the difference between good and evil, aside from their goals?