Scenario: You didn't hear your alarm. You're now in the kitchen with one leg in your pants and the other one dangling on the floor as you hurriedly pack lunch for your kids. You are running severely late and this is not the first time. Once you finally hit the door, everything about you in running. You arrive at the kid's school and you double park. It's cool because you will only be there for a quick second, not long enough for parking enforcement or law enforcement to really care. Besides, you're not in anyone's way really and you're in a rush so you wont be there any longer than you have to.
Now it's your turn. You are traveling to work, dipping and dodging in between traffic and the speed limit suddenly becomes a suggestion, instead of the law. This has GOT to be acceptable because it is far more less acceptable to be late for work, yet again.
Or is it?
This is definitely a hard question and its difficult for me to answer. In ethics, this was a huge debate amongst my classmates. Clearly there are some scenarios where breaking the law is acceptable and some scenarios where it is simply wrong. We even debated that if you were ultimately saving a life, that breaking the law okay. If you were preventing some one from being hurt then ,again, it was acceptable.
However, we discussed that what one perceives as good or bad stems from several different outside stimuli that come together to form our value system. These stimuli shape and mold everything we do and how we perceive why we are doing it. These stimuli include our parents, the media, religion and a myriad of other things.
Essentially, this is a complicated question with no one real direct answer.
You've just read me bouncing around answering the question directly, now it's your turn!!
I cant wait to read your thoughts!!
best,
aja moon
Click the photo below for a link to the guidelines for posting in the comments section and a sneak peak of the questions that we will be exploring over the next three weeks.
