hey, i have a problem. i need help rationalizing "sacricing some of your morals for your own advancement". examples, allusions, etc. would all be very helpful. thanks.
what are we making reference to?
are you having a personal problem you need someone to talk to about...or just writing a paper or something?
It seems to be a paper (because of the allusions, examples, etc.). Most people wouldn't ask about those specific things if it weren't for a paper. But I very well might be wrong. I'm sorry that I personally don't know anything on that subject. Hopefully someone else does . . .
Silverdragon0
it is for a paper. you see, the assignment was to write a paper on a quote. mine was (i chose this) "little things like morals shouldnt hinder ones ambitions" . but the more i think about it the less i like the quote. but it is too late, so i am trying to ride it and i have been having a hard time.
any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks
It's an argument along the ends justify the means side of thing.
For example, to do something good, you might try to justify doing something bad along the way. And when you get to the end, you put yourself in a better position to do something good.
My best answer would be to tolerate immoral practices in an organization to rise to the top by following the system, then put yourself in a position to change the rules and make them moral.
You don't necessarily have to argue that the quote is correct. You can argue that it's plain wrong. An example of this: Nazi germany, perhaps. Another example of someone for whom the ends justify the means (much less extreme) bill gates/microsoft, perhaps.
no, it has to be a quote that you believe in. and i do, to an extent. but it is not presenting itself that strongly.
maybe you should mention that in the paper...that you liked the quote originally, but now that you think about it...you don't believe in it that strongly because of some of the examples you came up with...Hitler, etc.
anyway, i disagree rakso, you are not necessarily doing something bad to put yerself into a better position to do good...you are doing something bad to make things personally better for yerself...which may allow you to do better things
robbing a bank to get money to donate to charity or to buy your wife a big xmas gift...but then one might ask where you got all the money from and then you might have to lie...Doing wrong lots of times only breeds more wrong-doing
There is no hedging on morality. The thought and act must be pure from its inception or all that follows is tainted. If the original thought is pure then you will not be tempted to transgress. In your case you are seeking personal advancement. You advance yourself by becoming a better person and not by the accumulation of material rewards. This may come your way as you advance anyway or may become a mute issue entirely.
Confuscious said that we must move forward spiritually or a part of us dies. You are stepping backwards each time you perform an unethical act and it will revisit you.
Even the statement
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i need help rationalizing
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indicates that there is something wrong with the premise. You already have the answer.
there is something wrong with the statement i am using, but i dont want to show ANY weakness in the paper and i am having a difficult time doing so.
i do believe in the statement im using to an extent, but the extent that believe in it pretty much only allows for theft and the like. thats weak, and thats where im stuck. i just want to make a strong case on why morals shouldnt stop someone.
"Morals are restrictions on ones life, and should be looked at as nothing but." is my main argument.
thats the weakness im talking about.
Bebe you will have a hard time in life.
Nix i would base most of this on Corporate Culture, although i have a talent for fasttalking and you may have a hard time tying it in. This is something i beleive in.
You must walk a line too. Breaking morals without breaking the law is possible, eg. accounting claims that legally claim things up to three times ar immoral, but hell it saves you $700 on your year-end taxes. Focus on legal but immoral actions and you will find this easier. Some people confuse fear of retribution with moral unrest.
-Liam
if you really are reaching around try to blend "morals" with "religeous teachings." I know i will be gutted and dried for this but i'm an athiest to the core, and "you'll go to hell for that" doesn't worry me in the least (Azhrei)
-Liam
if i was an atheist then this would be a lot easier, because that would be a perfect argument, but im not and i cant deny my religion for the sake of a paper.
i will try to present it from a side that offers legal alternatives, thanks for that suggestion.
ok, thanks for all the help so far. this is slowly but surely improving.
bebe, no where does the statement say what the "advancement" is...it could be personality, it could be material.
and remember Nix...you are sacing YOUR morals...not societies. So you would be doing something YOU found wrong in order to advance. Even if you were Atheist, you would still believe certain things to be bad and you would have to do those bad things, according to the original statement...sorry if this complicates things more.
hmm...thinking about it some more
you chose a tough quote...morals are basically actions taken to appease others...this can be as simple as not smoking in the non-smoking section...but it can also be not murdering or stealing from someone...
i see anything that harms someone else as being immoral, whether it be physically, mentally, or emotionally
of course, what if you were the only person left on earth...would it be immoral to kill animals for the hell of it? the animals probably don't appreciate it, but they can't express it either, not in an understandable spoken language anyway...there are no people around to disagree with you, but do you disagree with it..hmm..gotta love these deep discussions, eh?
Liam - I have very easy time. And I can assure you that I am a few years your senior. Who cares if it breaks the law? You think I should play the Peter principle corporately? I cannot.
Serra - It really doesn't matter what your definition of advancement is. It's still personal aggrandizement.
Now if I wee an existentialist (I'm not) I could pesent an argument for Nix's case since there is no true morality with that set of beliefs.
Everyone knows in there heart what is moral. Ethics become laws but morals ARE NOT ethics. They are in a different realm. I need to be able to smile when I see my reflection.
Nix, I believe your quote is defendable, if you go at it from the other direction.
Your morals shouldn't interfere with your ambitions.
If they are interfering, ask yourself this:
Is the problem with my morals, or with my ambitions?
If you find that there really is no way to reach your ambitions without sacrificing some of your morals, then is it an ambition that you should be striving for?
I think that what you are going for is the thought that "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet."
An example would be the following. You are competing (sp?) with someone else on a work project. You know that the winner will be getting a raise and the loser will not. You have just found a file that contains the other persons notes and strategy. You can look through it without getting caught. Do you do it?
You know that from this moment on you will feel guilty for looking but you also need that raise if you want to buy that house this year. Do you do it?
At this point you make a decision that will affect the rest of your life. On the one hand you feel bad and guilty from now on. On the other you will always look back and think "If I only looked".
That bad feeling is your morals and ethics. This is an internal thing and does not need to have any relation to society. Many people simply don't do something because it feels wrong, not because it is illegal. If you want to argue your quote then you need to justify living with that feeling. When you look at this you can bring up the regret that yor unfulfilled drive to succeed will leave behind. You also need to put things in a perspective of time. Some events truly are once in a lifetime. If you don't do what you have to then you will never get another chance.
I spoke to a man who had been accquitted of murder on the grounds of self defense. He said that he felt horrible. He had shot someone when they pulled a gun during a bank robbery. What he did had to be done. His actions protected others. His morals would never allow him to carry a gun again. However, sacrificing them that one time was justified.
The most famous work on placing ambition over morals is The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli. You could cite some quotes from this work, as well as use people who have followed his advice as examples. This book has been hotly debated and there is a good amount of info on it all over the web.
Also, someone wrote a modern version of The Prince concerning the corporate world. I don't know what it's called though.
Another thing that may or may not help is to figure out what "morals" means to you. You said you were religious, so are your morals based on something that your religion teaches? Or are your morals something that you've come to on your own? For me, my morals are based on the religion that I was given when I was younger, but have become increasingly based on what I see around me and my own experiences. If your morals are based on religious teachings, then it's all a matter of how seriously you take your religion. If your morals come from your own life, then it's much easier to break... let's say... REVISE... them for whatever you need. Morals should be personal, I think. Society shouldn't dictate morality, and as long as you can live with a change in your morality, then no, they shouldn't hinder your own advancement.
Trying thinking along the lines of the individual vs society. Which is more important?
In traditional societies the collective whether family, tribe or village WAS important. In such societies morals were a way of bringing people together, ensuring that people could be trusted because they shared the same moral system.
In today's society where individual achievement is seen as of the highest merit, where your village, and neighbours can be changed if you get a bad reputation, and where extended families/tribes have ceased to exist for most of us (I'm not talking about Italian Familias here, though they do tend to have quite strict morals), the individual often decides that his own personal advancement is more important. Morals are lost.
This is not to say that an amoral or immoral society is of less value than a moral one. I refuse to judge whether morals are a good thing or not - I have my own, I stick to them, and feel it is a purely personal matter - but I do think that morals vs personal advancement should be seen in the light of the individual vs. society conflict.
Morals are an invention of humanity to control society. Like religion (wich is build on moral) it is useless (exept politicaly) and therefore Evil according to Flogic.
Morals are a weapon to control the individual. Because man has lost it's instinct, it needs other ways to sustain it's group-survival. An individual that doesn't comply to the laws of morals is a danger to society BUT has more freedom then any other human.
He has given himself the right to kill.
If the ambission of every human is to become God. To become endless potential, then Morals are a boundary he must break.
-FLOGICA-
"To make an omlette, you have to break some eggs."
-Stalin