Morality is fundamental of human socialization. It is an inner sense of differentiation between the right and the wrong. There is a common understanding of these concepts familiar to all people regardless of culture such as killing is bad and self-sacrificing is good. These are two opposite extreme concepts and in between them many others that often hard to discriminate due to the emerging subtleties that are not defined within morality. Paul Fussell in “Thank God for the Atom Bomb” describes well the complexity of understanding of the reality in line with morals “Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present” (670).
Living according to morality is the same thing as living according to conscience, and it is not always easy to do in everyday life; however, in making an important decision in life regarding oneself or others morality plays a vital role, since such decision affect and often change relationships, life, and consciousness of oneself and/or others.
The ability to distinguish the right from the wrong is the inner quality of a person which is assimilated and cultivated within society. The main task of morality is to make people aware of the necessity to live and to behave properly in the community of others. It is like the law that people must abide to, the only difference is failing morals will not put them into jail; however, this may create unpleasant conditions for living among people due to ignorance or violation of the rules of cohabitation.
The ability to make right decisions is a skill developed with the experience. People make plenty decisions in the course of the day as well as throughout their lives and reap the rewards accordingly. Those decisions shape their life and relationships with others. Good relationships are the key to a healthy and fruitful life. To get along with other people one must treat them in line with common morals, as morals are shared and justified social values.
The main role in the formation and the development of morality belongs to culture. Culture is the social environment that covers the political, religious and traditional beliefs and defines the moral values that people follow. Sometimes these values are truly immoral; however, these are the moral values that majority members of society live by. For example, the German-Nazi society, that wiped off the face of the earth millions of people around the world had a racist ideology which allowed them to murder without a twinge of conscience. Globalization of the modern world unites most of cultures and sets up a ground for common moral values, since moral values are the glue of coexistence, cohabitation, and cooperation which are necessary elements for any successful and peaceful relationship.
Morals constantly evolve within society, and some values that were considered immoral at one time became a part of morals at another time. This is a complex topic like the chicken and the egg causality dilemma. If it is approached from the point of view of evolution, one can see that everything began with a flash of consciousness in a human being followed by the necessity to unite into society that gave rise to the collective conscience of all members of the society. Among these members, there have always been distinguished ones; distinguished by genetically determined intellectual and emphatical qualities which allowed them to see and realize the nature of things differently than others. In other words, they experience a leap in consciousness. These people are progressive reformers who influence and change society life and morals one way or another.
Human behavior is the only objective indicator of moral values. The consequences of those actions are self-esteem and evaluation by others. It is ensured by the power of public opinion, inner conviction of a person on the basis of the ideas of good and evil, justice and injustice, virtue and vice. Moral values express the fundamental human need: the nature of relationships between people, the general direction of human activity and the quality of consciousness. In this regard, the aforementioned serve as criteria for morality.
I am to approach the task of deciding what I morally ought to do: I must ask who will be affected if I choose to do one thing rather than another, how much each individual will be affected, and where the best results are most likely to lie which option, in other words, is most likely to bring about the best results, the best balance between satisfaction and frustration. That option, whatever it may be, is the one I ought to choose. That is where my moral duty lies (Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal rights” 613).
Responsibility for making important decisions is a heavy moral burden which is especially pronounced for people who are in charge of society. When making an important decision, it is necessary to take into account the impact it will have on peoples’ life and how it will affect or even change their consciousness. This is considered a moral responsibility. Moral values differ from person to person, but the basis of morality is the same for all people. Do no harm to another.
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