Essay about Conscience Created versus Innate - 1429 Words

Conscience Created versus Innate To what extent do you think you are dictated by your surroundings and your up-bringing? Do you claim your opinions to be your own? Do you trust your logic and your conscience? These are questions that are seldom asked by ourselves or by others. In fact, these kinds of questions could almost be considered taboo. It seems to be generally accepted that one can trust oneself, one’s authority, and one’s conscience. Upon these premises we seem to build up everything else. We rely on our beliefs. We trust them and once we decide they are true, we put our energy towards protecting them. We find justification for obeying the things and people we believe in. Whether it be our government, our parents, or†¦show more content†¦Stealing, murder, lying, etc. all are generally accepted as wrong, but one can always justify a wrong by finding loopholes in one’s conscience. In times of war, killing is accepted. If it is from the ridiculously rich, stealing is justified. If it is for the better good, lying is accepted as ethical. It is on an individual level, then, that we decide what is justifiable from what is not. Therefore , we all have different consciences and standards to obey. One can certainly obey one’s conscience and still be in the wrong. Our consciences are developed in much the same way that our personalities or belief systems are, they are relative to our environment and experiences. With some explanation, one may come to the knowledge that one can’t trust one’s conscience as a source of absolute moral truth. If one obeys one’s conscience as such, one can’t be sure that his actions are justified. With this knowledge one shouldn’t lose all faith in oneself and others and become entirely skeptical. Rather, I would like to promote a re-questioning, as it were, of some fundamental questions about the beliefs that have become premises on which we operate daily. In doing so, I w ould hope that we could gain a more objective vantage point that we could use to our advantage. The purpose is not to make paranoid and reluctant to believe, but instead to make note of our natural tendencies of bias. In â€Å"Group Minds,† novelist and essayist Doris Lessing illustrates the â€Å"veryShow MoreRelatedEssay Physis vs. Nomos in Sophocles Antigone1460 Words   |  6 PagesKnown today as the Nature versus Nurture debate, the question of human social conduct and character development has remained a topic of interest for many philosophical discussions. Centered around the natural and socially constructed, ancient Greeks referred to this debate as physis versus nomos Ââ€" is individual behavior a primary product of custom and convention or absolute natural fact? 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