Right And Wrong

old brain acquired any knowledge from was my parents. They were my soul teachers on what was and what was not ethical. Then one brisk fall day my tiny right foot hit the bus steps and I was off to my first day of school. It was in this one isolated incident in wh Beginning from birth until I was about five years old the only source that my five-year ich my brain began to fog up from the entire worlds views on ethics. Basically in the fraction of a second that it took my foot to make contact with the rubber stuff on the bus steps, I became perpetually confused as to what was right and what was wrong. As I made my way down the aisle of the bus I found a seat with a very scruffy little kid (Danny McCormick), whom would soon become my partner in crime. This was my best bud back in the day when days lasted weeks and weeks lasted years. Now being an extremely shy child I was his lackey, he said jump and I responded how high? We were that children who always had to sit on the wall during recess for throwing dirt at little Billy or for teasing little Susie about her stupid pink bow. To this day the smell of Windex will send me straight back to the days of cleaning the chalkboard and the desks during recess. Also we were the well-published chalkboard names with the vivacious yellow check mark strategically placed directly following. The two of us could be found at any given time together and probably causing trouble. So my best bud until about fourth grade basically taught me to be a little punk. Which totally went against everything my parents had taught me. Here is where I need to flashback to fill you in on my parent's background and what they had taught me until I started attending school. My parents are the basic run of the mile middle class parents. They are not: drug addicts, alcoholics, quick-tempered, violent, or in any way emotionally scaring.

 To sum it up my parents are the Huxtable's without all the sappy make you want to vomit scenes. They had always grilled a sense of love everyone, treat others the way you want to be treated view into my head. So meeting my little scruffy Danny was something extremely new and exciting to me. He taught me it could be fun to get in trouble, my parents of course thought otherwise and would try at all lengths to keep us apart. This was like trying to keep Bert away from Ernie. During the summer before fourth-grade Danny and his family moved to the upper- peninsula and we lost contact after about five years of what seemed like an everlasting friendship. I'm sure my parents were pained to see me hurt by the whole ordeal of losing my best buddy, but I also believe that they jumped for joy internally when he left in his parents beat-up old station wagon that day lost so long ago. The memory lives on and what he taught me will always be apart of what I hold ethical. Upon returning to school in the fall of the fourth grade I found myself surrounded by all the familiar faces minus one. I realized all these kids were the ones that we had tormented for so many years, why would they ever speak to me. So for a few days I basically kept to myself, went back to being really shy and I spoke to no one. My whole personality had changed into something these kids had never seen; I was not being a little bad ass. And one day a little curly-headed girl, (Heather Ross), whom we had repeatedly tormented, approached me and asked me to come over to her house and play and I did. This was the beginning of my second most beautiful friendship. Heather and I would do everything together just as Danny and I had, but this relationship was quite different. We didn't do everything to physically or emotionally injure another person, which was what I basically was doing for my first four years in school. With her I discovered a true sense of do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. She taught me that you do not need to cheat on the spelling test to do good or you did not need to lie to always get your way. Now of course my parents had taught me long ago about not cheating or lying but I had picked up differently from the on true friend I had always had, and I had not forgotten what I had picked up just because he was gone.

 It took a few years until those old bad ethics crept back up to the surface, we were in seventh grade and I knew it all. All the early days of scamming and poking fun at others was revitalized this time I was the ringleader. Many of the kids in my class had never cheated or really told a big lie and they needed to know how to do it right, it just so happened that I got to be the one to teach them. Just like any other seventh grade across the country the whole class locked in on certain targets, and we rapid fired smart remarks at them, or actual rapid fire through the throwing of any object able to take flight. For the second time I had strayed from the standpoint of do good to others but this time it was different because the first time I went against what my parents taught me. The second time I went against what Heather had re-taught me which essentially was what her parents taught her. From the comparison of these two friends and from talking to all my other friends and foes which I have meet along the way I have come to realize that all parents start off teaching there kids basically the same things. Share your toys, don't cheat, don't lie, treat others the way you want to be treated, are the soul components of what parents teach their children. It is not until we learn otherwise from friends or television to act differently. During my childhood days I learned all from my friends but today's kids learn on the television level anything that they didn't hear from parents or guardians. I have learned something good or bad from every single person whom I have ever came in contact with had I not meet any one of those people my whole ethical stand-point would be seriously altered. My whole ethical view is a culmination of a little bit of every one I have had contact with in my nineteen years of roaming this planet. It would be extremely hard for me to ever try to put my definition of what I view as ethical into a neat little dictionary definition. The situation takes a total one eighty when you ask for a definition of ethics pertaining to persuasion because persuasion is not a living breathing creature whose views change as often as the seasons.

To make persuasion ethical I believe that it needs to be honest, and open for discussion. When I say open minded I mean that yes you can have your own opinion, but for a successful persuasion you must also be open to taking in info from others. I will explore these ideas in more detail as I read through Jerry Fallwell's speech on abortion to decide if his speech was ethical or if not. Upon finishing Jerry Fallwell's speech on abortion I really do not have too much to Say. The whole time I was reading the speech I was continuously finding myself shocked by some of the incredibly childish remarks. I am using the word childish in a sense, of I think this way and I can not or will not explain any different way, listen to me talk, and change your opinion. We may not agree with every person here on every aspect of the abortion debate but we can and must agree on one thing-that we must use our collective energies and resources to discontinue this national sin. We should also pledge never to publicly disagree with each other. This remark I have a few major problems with first of all the, we can and must agree on this thing remark. If this guy is supposed to be persuading them into his thinking then he should have worded that phrase totally differently then he did. The way that it is worded in the speech is not good at all because he is not inviting me to agree with him if I want to he is trying to tell me that I can and must agree with him. This whole attempt at trying to get me to be persuaded didn't work people will be persuaded if they decide to be and not by some guy saying you can and must. Therefore the can and the must statement are a prime example of an ethical flaw. The last part of the quote is the real kicker when he says we must never publicly disagree. Disagreeing with some one is a prime example of an important aspect to the human race. If we never disagreed with anybody our entire lives the world would be full of a bunch of zombies walking around all thinking and believing the same things.

I also think that his saying we should never disagree in public is Jerry Fallwell's indirect way of telling us that he does not compromise his views no matter what or maybe it was his way of saying he is a zombie. Which means that he would not want to take in any constructive criticism from others, he is just into brain washing. The biggest word ever to be used when discussing any form of ethics is honesty. And as with my openness theory I found some quotes that I found that really stood out as good examples of honesty or lack there of. … Bringing an end to this holocaust we call abortion. First thing wrong with the honesty in this quotation lies in the simple fact that there really is no conceivable way that any human being could compare the holocaust to abortion. Well I guess you could but the person would come off looking incredibly stupid. I think Jerry Falwell was trying to dishonestly stir up the emotions and mental images of thousands of Jews being killed by the Nazis. After he had stirred this up inside them he could tack on, which we call abortion, and without thinking people would think yeah abortion could be the same as the holocaust. With all honesty I can see how incredibly naïve people, who really didn't know what the holocaust was, or really stupid people could say that his holocaust point made sense. But being from a some what educated background I needed a few moments to really take in that statement. The holocaust was all about the total abomination of all Jews from Europe during World War II. So Jerry Falwell is basically saying that abortion is like the holocaust but abortions are not killing off any one type of group. This comment totally threw me for a loop and from the moment I saw it until the final sentence I found myself thinking about it non stop. So back to the big question is this speech ethical? My answer is simple this speech is no where close to being ethical. Although I only used two aspects to decide if the whole speech was ethical, two topics was all I needed. If I had continued my work I think I would have seen the same unethical-stunts that I had found in the first two. Jerry Falwell could not tell the truth and he was not into taking in any outside information. I could tell through out the entire speech he was very much you must do this and you must do that. It seemed if you were to sit down with him to discuss something in greater detail he would tell you the same exact thing over again, and he would never be willing to admit that he was wrong on anything, and would never conform his ways. There are many other statements throughout the entire speech that were not honest. The most important elements of having an ethical persuasion are the ideas of honesty and it needs to be open for discussion. This speech did not show any intelligent signs of either of the two therefore as I said before and I will say it again, this speech is in no way shape or form ethical. I have now taken a look at ethics on a personal view and a persuasive view. They are not totally different but they are in no means the same. With the persuasive view of ethics you can take it and make a nice little neat definition for the meaning. On the other hand when you talk of ethics on a personal basis you are talking very confusing stuff that really can not be defined. But the real question is not if or if not you can give a nice neat definition for ethics the real question is are you leading the ethical life?