In the quote below Rand explains why she rejects religion outright, and she believes man himself deserves the attention: Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. “Exaltation” is usually taken to mean an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. “Worship” means the emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man… But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions.
Cultural relativism is the idea that the moral principles someone has are solely determined by the culture one lives in. These ideas seem to make sense because we as a culture understand that the judgments people make in a different culture will differ from ours whether we choose to support it or not. Our culture has different moral judgments as well and does not look at something like killing someone for stealing as morally right since our culture values human life above theft. Cultural relativism does not exist because some principles are universal and not relative only to culture. People also have the ability to think morally for themselves so morality is relative to someone’s point of view.
However, it is almost certain the world issues originate from something that is considered to be unjust. This injustice can rift and unite the people who encounter it. Unfairness is derived from people who share similar opinions on an issue based on past experiences. In addition to this, people require power to seek justice and therefore, others with the same objectives join together to challenge the unjust. Also, in a world of inequality, people who share common views unite to seek justice and a sense of security, as well as belonging.
In exploring the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Immanuel Kant, there is a distinct parallelism running through their philosophical theories, the need to break free from immaturity or self-doubt in order to achieve enlightenment or self-reliance. The will to break free is an important function in developing self-trust. Self-consciousness is not simply a special kind of awareness each person possesses. Rather, the authority over the mind must be described as a kind of responsibility taken by the individual. To remain receptive to the intuitive process, an individual must trust in himself.
Adler and Jung Adler believed that people are motivated by inferiority feelings. These feelings of inferiority are the driving factor for people to become successful. Actions are intentional and those actions are more important than heredity and genetics. However, Adler also recognized that “biological and environmental conditions limit our capacity to choose and to create” (Corey, 2009). Adler used a holistic approach that the person is a whole and cannot be treated in parts.
Selfperception affects an individual’s self-efficacy skills, therefore affecting how an individual will communicate their experiences. While self-perception is an important trait to take into consideration when dealing with self-reporting, it does however, as mentioned, affect the validity of the results due to individuals underreporting and over reporting their actions. Comparisons of Limitations All three articles discussed the limitation of self-reporting, more so in Article 1. While self-reporting is indeed a valuable asset, self-reporting at times is affected due to individuals underreporting their behavior, as well as over reporting it (Hauge et al., 2009). Underreporting occurs due to individuals being dishonest regarding their behavior, therefore causing an error in the research done.
Non-conformity is an act of rebellion, opposing the expectations set by society. Non-conformity should be admired and admonished, valued and reproved, depending on the various situations it is applied to. I believe that non-conformity may have both positive and negative outcomes, ghastly consequences and excellent results. Those who choose not to conform either do it knowing it will result in an affirmative or negative outcome, or not knowing it what they are doing at all. In all fact, an act of non-conformity cannot be judged by its rebellious nature, but by its effects on the society or things involved.
They also struggled with understanding the difference between their ‘best alternative’ and the lens assigned ‘best alternative’. Ethical lenses adopted by individuals tend to influence decision making by affecting how problems and conflicts are approached. Your ethical lens of preference makes you ‘blind’ to the other approaches and makes it difficult to see the benefits of the other lenses and weaknesses of your own lens. This adds tension to groups because what seems like the best solution to a problem to a single team member might be completely inappropriate to another. The team found that these different approaches can create more issues within a team or group if you don’t understand that everyone has their own ‘right approach.’ To a rights and responsibilities lens approaching an issue head on and dealing with the conflict directly might not be fun, but it is necessary in order to move past the problem in the most efficient way possible.
As James Rachels said, “Cultural Relativism might be true, but it might lead to some consequences, such as no longer being able to say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to ours, or we could decide whether actions are right or wrong just by consulting the standards of our society and even the idea of moral progress would be called into doubt.” Cultural Relativism has some good advantages; it helps us to keep an open mind about other people´s beliefs. On the other hand, Cultural Relativism is not a good system that should be followed by each culture separately because there are some universal rules that should be followed, for instance no murder. Laws should be created under morality, and they might not be perfect, but they are the best rules that we as humans have. Even though societies still have arguments about their beliefs because it is impossible to have complete peace because of our differences. For example, For the Greeks it was believed that it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas the Callatians believed it was right to eat the dead, or the Eskimos saw nothing wrong with infanticide, whereas Americans believed infanticide is immoral.
Because it engages the whole self without a fixed yardstick it can be called a personal reflection…. [I]n this reflection the self is in question; what is at stake is the definition of those inchoate evaluations which are sensed to be essential to our identity (117). Taylor makes this claim about responsibility for self in opposition to Sartre’s characterization of the human condition as nothingness and absolute freedom. Sartre derives from this condition an understanding of freedom as the radical, infinite openness of the freedom of our choices and concludes that it is this freedom that characterizes our fundamental moral dilemma. Taylor argues that it is not the weight of the openness that defines our moral selves or the moral dilemmas we face, but the fact that various choices necessarily blind and pull us in different directions.