What makes you tick? Who are you and what do you stand for? What do you stand against?
Most of us absorb our values from our parents, community, and culture. We grow up with much the same set of principals as our parents.
If our parents are Christian then most likely we are Christian. The same can be said if our parents our Muslim or Jewish. It may even be that if our parents our liberal or conservative we will follow suit.
Not all of us, however, fall into line.
Some of us are rebellious. We question the premise these values we inherited were based upon. And if we don’t get the right answers, if the arguments for holding on to these values are weak, then we may discard them and adopt principles more reflective of our own morality.
But we cannot do any of this unless we examine our lives. We need to discover what we are all about, what we will accept, and what we will abhor. We need to look inward to discover ourselves. For as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living!
Socrates fully believed the purpose in life was to discover spiritual and personal growth. The only way to do that is to examine and reflect upon our lives.
We do have the capacity for a basis in moral reasoning. Research indicates the area of the brain called the insula is the seat of our emotional reactions. It is where our emotions tussle to find just solutions to problems.
The indication is that we have a strong sense of what is unfair and our response to unfairness is an evolved aptitude. Observation leads us to conclude that our reaction to unfairness can be a force pressing us to be more equitable in our dealings with others.
If it can be extrapolated from that bit of information that humans can discern for themselves a basis of morality, then perhaps it behooves us to question what authorities in our society tell us constitutes a moral code.
Perhaps, if we take, a few minutes from each day to question ourselves about why we believe what we believe, as Socrates suggested, we might experience richer more fully aware lives.
It's absolutely true that if one is a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc, et al, is because the parents were and the culture one grows up in. I'm an atheist primarily because my father was one.. But of course was the rebellious one because I took requiring proof one step further.. Whilst dad was an Atheist I did not adopt or share his penchant for believing in other "supernatural" things, Often I was accused of being closed minded. It's important to remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is not closed minded to require proof.
ReplyDeletePoint being is that we can learn and adopt from our parents, and we can be individuals by analyzing what it is they/we believe and why. One of the most important tools for living and growing that is not taught in school is how to think critically. I believe once we learn to do so, we can enrich ourselves. Don't just believe because someone told you to.