My Moral Compass and the Death Penalty.

Which way does your moral compass point? 

The topic of today's blog is your moral value system. It is important to clarify that what you are meant to discuss is NOT your particular morals, but instead what causes you to have the value system that you do. (You will have an opportunity at the end of the blog to give your opinion on one controversial topic.)

Please read the article "Which way does your moral compass point?" from the Vancouver Sun (linked in the sidebar) and respond in your blog. Use the following questions to guide your response.

1. What do you think are the three most important factors in your life that affect what your value system is? Why do you think each of these are important?
2. Are all value systems (of all people) equally acceptable?
3. Are you a person with a strong sense of what you believe to be clearly right and wrong, or do you see a lot of gray area in many issues?
4. Do you expect that your morals will change in any way over the course of your life. If they do, what will cause them to change?
5. How acceptable do you feel it is to impress YOUR value system on others?


The second part of the blog is to give your opinion on ONE of the following topics:

a) Conducting MEDICAL experiments on animals
b) Wearing fur
c)Cloning humans (or intentionally altering the characteristics of a fetus)
d)The death penalty
e)Abortion


1. The three most important factors that effect my life are my parents, my friends and the media. Since I am born, until I leave my house is when I will be mostly effected by my parents, morally. Even though we may not always agree on the same morals, we agree on most. They are also the ones paying the bills, so rebelling against them completely might get me out of my dad's wallet faster than I want to be. Ever since I was in pre-school, there was always someone better than me at something, and obviously I wanted to be just like them or better. To get me to that "like them or better" part I picked up some of the same morals as they, just so I can be accepted. I still struggle being completely independent with my thoughts, and not being effected with my friends today, and they will probably still be a factor to where I stand morally for the rest of my life. Everybody wants to be famous, so when you hear about another celebrity adopting an African child, you can go two ways about it. You can say, "Hey! thats really cool! She is helping someone out!" or you can think that they are just taking that child away from his culture and family just so that they can look like good global citizens. You also hear about a lot of celebrity couples having babies that aren't married. You can also decide whether this is morally right or not. The media isn't always about celebrities, but at sixteen, I might rather want to hear about another haitian baby being adopted, rather than another victim of cholera. 
2. I don't think that everybody's value systems are equally accepted. I think this because obviously Clifford Olson would not be accepted over someone like Mother Theresa. 
3. I like to believe that I have a strong sense of value of whats right and wrong, but at the end of the day I see a lot of grey. Its hard in today's society of everybody needing to accept everybody, it is hard to say something is right and wrong, when there have been exceptions to the rules. 
4. I think my morals will most likely change over the course of my life. I think this because I will meet new people who have a different view on life than I do that might steer me into another direction. I also think that once you get married your morals might change from not wanting to have kids, to having kids. Your morals also change when things happen to you. Going through cancer, or experiencing a natural disasters might also be a factor to how you feel about certain situations.
5. I don't think that it should be important to other people how you feel about certain issues all the time. Sometimes it is best to keep your morals to yourself. I think this because you never know what life might hit you, or what that other person has gone through. 


d) The Death Penalty
The death penalty has not been in Canada for a few decades now, where as places in Texas they are executing people regularly. I think that the death penalty should be practised in Canada for some cases. For example, the Clifford Olson killed eleven innocent victims, mostly children, before being caught. In my eyes this man has done so much damage to mother's hearts all over British Columbia that some might say he deserves to die. They also might think that he isn't worth spending out precious tax money on. Clifford Olson caused many for many families a great tragedy. But killing Clifford Olson doesn't mean you will get those eleven victims back from the dead or that all children are safe from serial killers.