Morality is a difficult idea to describe. I don’t know if we can ever know how a human would act if he never had intelligent contact with another human. However, if we were to meet such a person, we would judge his survival behavior as moral. If Shakespeare is right to say, “There is nothing right or wrong in life, only thought makes it so,” then how do I define morality? Much of morality is based on what is right or wrong, fair or unfair. Looking at so many cultures, so many people believe that their point of view is the right path. However, there seem to be some common elements shared across cultures. For example, most cultures value the preciousness of birth and the care necessary for a newborn.
Therefore, I will define morality on two levels. One level is the morality that is shared by simply being human and the other is a more subjective version (state morality) that comes from everything that has influenced our lives and shaped how we believe and how we see the world. . I think 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 or white way of thinking, supports everything the government says, and has served in the military. This man has a child (a son) and experiences a joy and love that he has never felt before. He grows to soften and now sees war and the death of young men, and begins to question his previous hard-line thinking. As his son turns 18 and enlists in 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 by biological influences. While adolescents, especially those with an Islamic or Catholic religious upbringing, are encouraged to believe in abstinence, the hormones of adolescence can increase the desire for sexual encounters and challenge morality. Conflicting behavior, such as premarital sexual activity, can lead to 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 become aware of 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 enforces expected gender behavior. Girls to women are required to act with less aggression, more patience and compassion, while boys are given much more latitude for deviant behaviors (including drinking, smoking, sex and aggression). While laws may cause these behaviors to carry similar consequences, women tend to receive more severe stigma, such as acting unladylike (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 by promoting life experience. Other cultures, like India’s, have more stable boundaries centered around their beliefs that make morality less wavering. At a young age, children are taught values that are more based on “living universally and respecting” as practiced in Hinduism. Violations are not seen in a hierarchy; instead, there is a specific way of looking at life and social rules for humanity and there is not much room for interpretation (Santrock, 2009).
Many people assume the beliefs that form values from their parents and their culture (Santrock, 2009). However, it is evident that influences remain a part of our life throughout its entirety. This accumulation of continuous experience can change the way we see things (and this is also influenced by our past because those experiences help 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: Intercultural Human Development (3rd ed., pp. 163-184). Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.