My personal values are very stalwart in nature like I do not play video games until all my work is done or until I have done a certain amount of work for that day, and I also value respecting and trusting people until they give me a reason not to. I value honesty above all else, there is not a lot of things that set me off but a person being dishonest will definitely upset me; the way I see it, if I can be honest then why can’t that person be honest with me.
I can safely say that I was taught my personal values as well as my morals from my parents but as far as my moral ascension is concerned, I developed a good amount of it on my own. My parents taught me right from wrong and when to do the right thing and being respectful to my elders, but I taught myself other avenues of doing the right thing like taking the fall for a friend when he needed a scapegoat so he could afford to keep something sacred as his house and fulfilling my obligatory duty as a brother to my brother.
I would define ethics as doing the right thing when the need arose for it no matter what the cost; it is being truthful to someone who cannot see something for what it really is. It is never telling a lie or hiding something from someone who is in greater need than you are at the cost of endangering yourself or them. I would define ethics ultimately as living my life right which means always telling the truth when asked a question no matter how embarrassing or life-endangering it is. I would also define ethics as not doing something unlawful to get something that you more or less need or that can be acquired in another way.
I think my personal values and ethics could be challenged if I had a choice between what I had to do and what I should do. For example, my wife’s latch hook competition is the same night as my brother’s graduation from Indiana State University and both of them require my presence as well as my attention at the event(s). Ethically, it would be wrong for me lie to my wife about not being at her latch hook competition so I could go to my brother’s graduation and after party. The honest thing to do is to tell my brother that I cannot make it so I can be there for my wife.
I would go to great lengths to do the right thing even if it means that I am missing out on something, as in the previous example, I gave up a chance to go to a great after party with my brother just to spend time with my wife and be there to support her. At the end of the day, it is all about doing the right thing for the right reason.
The Ethical Theory that closely aligns with my personal ethics is the Virtue Ethics, the reason why is because I center my life around doing the right thing on a consistent basis because doing the right thing has shaped my character to a point that being honest is all I know and doing wrong is something that I do not know; something I cannot comprehend. To me, only good things, karma related good things, come from doing what is right even when you think it is wrong.
I remember an ethical situation that happened when I was in college, my friend asked me to come to a show to watch him do something that would get people’s attention. Knowing this act would not get him the attention he so desperately craved, I told him that I would go to be supportive but when I thought about it a little more then I told him I was not going to go because there was a better way to get the exposure he wanted. I felt like I violated my code when I chose to not to be there for him, but I felt like my cause for doing so was just because in the end it turned out that I was right about what I told my friend. To be honest, I felt like I had betrayed myself when I chose to not be there for him (the right thing) vs. doing I felt was right for myself.
