MUSIC256A: THE LAST!
what are we at the core?
Upon reading chapter 8 of Artful Design, I‘ve been thinking more about how “morality has to be a choice.” I agree that true morality is not so that we can look good or avoid consequences, but a decision made simply because it is the right thing to do.
However, I think as humans, things get messy really fast. How do I know that something I did is truly “moral”? Even if it seems truly moral on the surface, what if there are subconscious and deeply hidden means-to-an-end reasons for why I made a moral decision? Bad intentions that I don’t even realize were my intentions? What if I make a decision that I think is moral but is actually hurtful to others? It’s scary to think about.
Then, I started wondering about human nature and human essence, and what the heck that looks like. For example, are humans born wanting to make moral choices? Are we authentic and pure and good at our base? If not, how do we learn to be moral? And if we are moral at the core, how is it that so many of us learn to make immoral choices?
I think it would also be unfair to say that people are born with different amounts of “morality” built into them. I like to think that we’re all the same when we’re born, at the core of our humanity. But maybe that’s idealistic and immature of me. Who really knows? Not me haha.
I suppose in the end it’s useless to worry too much about how each of us comes into our moral selves, because in the end it’s not like we could develop a perfect child-rearing plan that everyone would follow to become perfect moral citizens — what matters in the end is that each of us recognizes our own thoughts and feelings when making choices, and that we recognize the lives of those around us as well.
