Ethics

• Blog – What are the ‘ethics’ of your life? How do the people you interact with on a daily basis contribute to your understanding of how you should behave? Think of your parents/teachers/adults, but also of your friends and peers.

Ethics can be confusing. There are so many different ‘groups’ that you may interact with on a daily basis that you may have several different personalities. Ethics is how you act around a certain group of people. However, being ethical does not mean just doing what the group accepts. But, in reality, most groups choose standards that are in fact ethical, but people’s standards of behavior can differ from those standards. This shows how most people are often influenced by others because what is considered ethical to one group may be considered unethical to another. For instance, you may act nice and polite around your parents but may act in a different way with your friends. This is because you act depending on how you want the people around you to see you as. So, not only do you decide what is the best for you to act, but also the people around you. I know that for me I act different around my parents then I do my friends. My parents taught me in general, what is right and what is wrong. So those standards include the obligation to refrain from stealing, fraud, murder, ect. So in other words they expect me to be polite and use manners around other people as well as respect them. Now with my friends it is different. Not that I don’t still act polite, but just do so in a lesser tone. With friends, as we all know, you can be more relaxed around. For the most part friends don’t harp on you to do things like your parents do. However, there are some things that my friends do that I don’t do, for example, a lot of my friends wait to do work until the last minute, while I do it when it is assigned. Not that doing this is wrong; it just isn’t the smartest or best way to act. While I act different around my friends then I do with my parents I don’t think that my “ethics” necessarily change all that much.