Value Education

Ethical Dilemmas

Values influence our reasoning and clarify our choices. In order to make good moral choices, we must rely on our moral conscience. Wrong doing occurs when the moral conscience has become dysfunctional and our inner moral indicator is missing or damaged. Wrong actions also occur when an individual’s values are not clearly established. Education in universal , human and moral values helps an individual to define and inculcate their natural sense of justice and honesty, to clarify their ethical choices and to understand the governing principles that rule their lives. Through such education they become aware of the consequences of their actions, although moral choices are not always simply “right versus wrong”. What is right and what is wrong? Is right, right and wrong, wrong? "Right is right and wrong is also right." says Brij Mohan, Editor of "Purity", a publication reaching around 93 countries worldwide. "Wrong is right in its own right, but becomes wrong when it gets into you.", Brij Mohan goes on. The really tough choices are those that pit one positive value against another. For example:
It is right to allow our children to remain in school in order to receive a full education. It is also right to allow our children to learn a trade at an early age so they can contribute to the family earnings.
It is right to spend all our savings on our daughter’s/son’s marriage. It is also right to spend all our savings on our children’s education. There is only one enough for one, and dividing the resources in half is sufficient for neither.
“Right versus right” decisions are ethical dilemmas. Ethics are defined as “obedience to the unenforceable”. In contrast, law is defined as “obedience to the enforceable”. Laws usually increase in proportion to the decline of ethics.
Ethical means conforming to accepted principles of right and wrong, although these tend to change over time. In North America, when it was still right to own slaves, it was already wrong to commit adultery. When it had become wrong to own slaves, it was still right to possess women as property. The meaning of ethics can thus be expanded to mean: conforming to principles of right and wrong that are based on core values because these are universally accepted. A challenge we still face is the discrepancy between laws based on human rights and social attitudes based on long-standing social traditions.

The Four Categories

Most ethical dilemmas fall into one of the following four categories:
*1.- Truth versus loyalty
**2.- Justice versus mercy
***3.- Individual versus community
****4.- Short-term versus long-term

Example of these are:

*1.- In life and death situation, is it right to lie to protect your friend or ally?
**2.- When someone undergoing a personal crisis commits a criminal act, should
they be punished to “the full extent of the law” or be given counselling
and leniency?
***3.- As a woman, does she continue in a marriage that is abusive or does she
stay in it to satisfy the expectations of the extended family?
****4.- When making a career choice, is it better to earn a good income with a new
technology company or follow the steps of my father in the family
business?
When we analyse our real life dilemmas in terms of these four categories, the core values and the tension between them become readily apparent. As this tension begins to fit recognisable patterns, we are troubled less, can resolve more readily and with more maturity.