Learnt Morality

    Mankind is not naturally evil or just; it is a blank piece of paper that can be written on with every colour. Morality, too, is just another touch of paint on human nature that spreads on the canvas of life through time. Morality for each individual can only develop with coherence to the moral code of the society in which the person is present. Even if infants in their birth, with some mystical power, can bring along with them their own set of moral rules to this world, without adjustments made according to the rules of their new world, they will be considered immoral. As children grow, they will learn to adjust to what is considered moral in their own society and will finally be able to develop their own set of conduct to differentiate right from wrong based on the teaching their society casted on them.

    When a child is born, he inherits a dominating sense that will control all of his behaviors for the first stage of his life: a survival instinct. A baby will cry for food, for nourishment, and for all vital factors that he will need to survive the most vulnerable period of his life. He will not take into account or even understand the trouble he will cause on his parents, and will only consider what is needed for his own survival. At this point, his standard for good and bad is based solely on his survival instinct. He is ignorant of the concept of selflessness or sacrifice for the general good, which is closely associated with the practice of morality. The self-centered child controlled by this most innate instinct will not develop an understanding of what mankind considers as morality until he is taught the expectations and moral codes of his society. And only then will morality gradually take over survival instinct in guiding the child’s thinking and action. Even though, in many cases survival instinct is stronger than morality because of its innate nature. In life threatening situations, people will more likely follow their survival instinct instead of their moral obligation. Some can even argue that people only oblige to morality because of its close association with law. Self-centered mankind perhaps only chooses to follow moral rules to avoid being punished by law. Morality, enforced upon people after birth, is unlikely to be as influential to a person’s behavior as innate qualities.

    Because morality is a learnt factor enforced upon later in life, it accumulates through both the course of one’s life and the course of history. As time progresses, people integrate themselves and their view on morality. Just as new discoveries are constantly unveiling and knowledge will accumulate and be corrected, the code of morality has been developing with new rules added in and the old adjusted. Mankind has the ability to learn from past mistakes and improve himself, so does morality. In ancient times, people in caves have led a life of savagery and had little moral rules to regulate themselves. Yet as civilization develops, systematic regulations have appeared and people are starting to follow sets of moral obligations integrated together: the law. And law itself has been changed and amended thousands of times through the course of history to eliminate immoralities within it such as injustice and bias. Morality is like knowledge, as more of it accumulates, more is there to teach and to learn. Because civilization has changed, the morality taught in a particular time period is different, slightly or greatly, from that of another time. For an individual, his own set of moral code can also change with his growth and maturity. Experiences can change one’s view on life, thus changing the motivation for the person’s behavior. Morality is not always uniform and can be modified and altered because it is a learnt and accumulative quality instead of an innate one.

    Far from being congenital, individual morality is developed and changed through the course of life to meet the expectations of the moral code of the society. Morality cannot be inborn because the right and wrong that moral defines is itself a biased matter. No definite measure can be used to differentiate right and wrong as there will always be grey areas in between. Morality is defined and modified by its environment and a person is only called "moral" when he fits the definition decided by his society. Even if some innate "goodness" can be passed down from generation to generation, this "goodness" can only be considered as "morality" after it is adjusted according to the present moral code, as society is the ultimate power defining "morality".