When, if ever, is it acceptable to sacrifice* a person or one's morals for the good of the larger community? Why? Make sure you incorporate specific evidence from life, literature, society, or history to support your arguments.
* Sacrifice does NOT necessarily mean "kill."
As always, your response must be at least two paragraphs. Make sure you proofread your work. DO NOT repeat your classmates' ideas!
All responses are due by 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 10th.
One might say when they are not in a crisis that they would never sacrifice their own morals for the good of the larger community. However, once there is trouble, then a person might have little choice. Take for instance when Abraham sacrificed his son. Abraham had to show God and future generations that he trusted God. He had to attempt to go and kill his only son for the good of all the Jewish people. Another example would be if a person who does not believe in any form of violence is held in a bank by a robber with lots of other customers. If the robber was about to shoot someone but he dropped the gun near the pacifist, the pacifist for the good of all the people would have to shoot the killer. This would be the right thing to do so innocent people did not die.
ReplyDeleteIn the Lottery, Tessie Hutchinson’s children loved her. They did not ever want to hurt her. However, when she drew the black mark, the kids had no choice but to help stone their mother to death. The children had to sacrifice losing their mom for the good of the tradition of saving the crops for everyone in the town.
It’s very important that we have morals to live by in our society. Without rules and common sense to guide us our world would be an extremely scary place to live. We would most likely behave something like the kids in Lord of the flies, because they didn’t follow rules and they were very self-centered. However I believe that there are some instances where we have to go against our morals for the greater good. War is a perfect example. It is against basic ethics to kill someone. However when a country needs to protect itself and its people, they don’t have much of a choice but to stand up and fight for their own protection. Soldiers are very brave people because they defend the safety of innocent citizens at all times. These men and women should be rewarded for their courage, not penalized for going against basic ethics.
ReplyDeleteI think self defense is a very good reason to break one’s morals in most cases. Another, simpler example is if someone was treating you or anyone else. I think it is your responsibility to make sure that you and/or anyone else involved is protected even if that means you have to go against you morals. If you called the cops because a crime was occurring, they would try to stop the criminal every way possible without breaking their morals. However, they will use force if they are pushed past their limits. I think this is a good example of how to reasonably go against your morals in dramatic situations.
There have been instances in societies history that it has been acceptable to sacrifice someone's morals in order to better the community. Take for example in the situation of the Civil War, some of the union soldiers probably didn't agree with everything that they were fighting for, but they knew it would make the country a better place and do a lot of good for our society so they fought and won the freedom of all slaves.
ReplyDeleteWe can see from this exmaple that it might not be the confederate sides "morals" that they were taught to let their slaves go, but it better their community in the long run. This "sacrifice" for them was very important to building the type of society that we live in today because without this major war in history we would not all be living the same lives we do today. In situations like these it is very acceptable to focus on the betterment of the community rather than on one's own ideas.
I think it is unnecessary to sacrifice people for anything. Sometimes people sacrifice others to do their work for them instead of doing it themselves. People often treat others like their slaves but that is just because they are lazy. You can't just get through life by sacrificing others to do everything for you. You are eventually going to have to do something for yourself. I do not think it is acceptable to sacrifice other peoples lives for what they believe in. In the lottery, the town would pick someone from a box and that person would be sacrificed for the town so that they would have good crops. This is completely dumb because if you just do the right things, you should have good crops unless the weather is bad. There is absolutely nothing good coming from killing that person. It is not like the person's soul is going to bless the towns crops. No one wants to picked for the lottery. Everyone fears the lottery and dreads seeing that mark on the back of their card that means they are going to die. If no one likes to being picked, then what would make you think that that person who was killed would want to bless your crops. Sacrifice is not needed and there is no reason that anyone should encourage.
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