Morality is subjective to an individual and is not black and white, how one evaluates right and wrong is based off of the teachings and environment they grew up with and the circumstance they are evaluating. At a young age, parents teach their kids what is good and bad, and as they grow up, they keep and develop those moral standards their parents set for them, and those end up becoming their own beliefs. Without consciously thinking about it, people also passively absorb the ideas society has of what’s right and wrong. ideas of morality are not just one’s own but are evolved from ideologies witnessed through family and society.
Parents' advisements heavily influence their kids’ morals. When a parent teaches their child right from wrong, that is the child’s fundamental moral basis for the rest of their life. Many juvenile delinquents do the terrible things they do because of how their parents raised them. If they were beaten as a child by their parents, that messes with a kid's psychic and makes them think that’s a norm, and doing bad things like that is morally acceptable (Totenberg). In the first Kohlberg dilemma, the way Joe reacts when presented with his difficult predicament is based on what his parents taught him was okay. Is it okay for Joe to say no to his father, or should he honor him and give him the money? Joe’s decision will be heavily influenced by how his parents raised him (Kohlberg). Kids’ thoughts and ideas are constantly developing, and their parent’s ideas are developing with them. Kids aren’t being taught morality, but rather subconsciously absorbing their parents’ ideas of morality along with their own.
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Morality isn’t as simple as judging based on whether someone did a good thing or not, there are times when people do bad things with probable cause, and in that case, circumstantial evidence needs to be used to evaluate whether an action is right or wrong. Juvenile cases are especially tricky to evaluate, because as Nina Totenberg says, “their brains are literally less developed, they are more impulsive, more subject to peer pressure and less able to see the consequences of their acts”(Totenberg). One cannot judge a teen the same as an adult, because they are on different intellectual levels. Every case cannot be judged the same, context must be taken into consideration. Without considering context, anyone who murdered someone would be facing life in prison, instead of taking into account self-defense or prevention of a crime. In the case of juvenile killers serving life behind bars Totenberg argues, “In cases dealing with punishment for juveniles, context is everything.” Sentencing juveniles to life without parole for a crime without factoring in their age or their circumstances is arbitrary and unjust. This is important because teens' brains aren’t fully developed so they can’t fully comprehend or consider the long-term consequences of their actions. When judging the morality of anything, the context must be looked at to fully understand the circumstance at hand.
Environmental awareness is a crucial factor in the consideration of morality. In Japan, it is extremely offensive to have the bottom of your feet pointing to another person, and is considered wrong. In America, no one pays attention to the bottom of another person’s feet and there is no moral significance. Returning veterans are very aware of this environmental shift in morality. When Afghanistan war veteran, Capt. Kudo was fighting, he had to kill other men, and he saw those murders differently when he was in Afghanistan than when he came back home, “Capt. Kudo did not think much about killing the two innocent civilians while in Afghanistan, but later he could not stop thinking about it” (Martin). Determining whether it’s right or wrong to take a life is completely different in the middle of a war in Afghanistan, than any other kind of murder. It’s different for a war. Moral standards are different from setting to setting and impact one’s ability to evaluate right and wrong.
Morality is different for everyone and is complicated to determine, how one evaluates right and wrong is based on their childhood, parents’ influence, and the context of the given situation.
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