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Observations…
By Karthik | July 9, 2008
It was all so sudden. My experiences have been completely unexpected, and they came without notice or warning. In the recent days, I have seen the many different faces of humankind. In the beginning, I became fearful. But after constant exposure, I have only begun to learn how to handle the sophisticated characters of people.
Each episodes of our lifetime, we have temporary hypotheses of our life. Hypotheses that are designed to justify our life. Hypotheses to have a sense of identity. A sense of uniqueness. Hypotheses…
Each individual are unique on their own way. They are all good, as well as bad. Only actions determine your character, and actions not necessarily have to be internally motivated. Most of the time, they are externally motivated, in other words, situations demand sophisticated actions. Your actions are mostly justified by your mind to satisfy your conscience.
So to the world, you may have done the wrong. But in your head, you have justified your doings. You did what you had to do, because the situation demanded you to do so. Let me give you a brief scenario:
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that?
This is Kohlberg’s moral dilemma. Kohlberg is not really interested in whether the subject says “yes” or “no” to this dilemma but in the reasoning behind the answer. The interviewer wants to know why the subject thinks Heinz should or should not have stolen the drug. The interview schedule then asks new questions which help one understand the child’s reasoning. For example, children are asked if Heinz had a right to steal the drug, if he was violating the druggist’s rights, and what sentence the judge should give him once he was caught. Once again, the main concern is with the reasoning behind the answers. The interview then goes on to give more dilemmas in order to get a good sampling of a subject’s moral thinking.
And it goes deeper from there. But the point I am trying to make is that, what people generally do, their actions, are strongly based on their moral reasoning and the situation. Most of the times, people are good as well as bad.
And this is for you, sister. By quoting your words.. “‘Its human nature to think that they are right in what they are doing.’”
Topics: Inspirational, Personal |
